It's more than a tad disturbing to me this morning that Coulter has reiterated her desire for the New York Times building to be blown up!  I find it telling though that she has stepped out and made it publicly clear through a New York weekly on June 29, 2006 and also on an episode of Hannity and Colmes that same day that she means what she spats and she isn't kidding!

The next day, in a New York weekly, Coulter refuted the notion that she is only joking, and on Thursday night the subject came up again when she appeared on Fox News' "Hannity & Colmes."

Allan Colmes mentioned Salem's claim, and asked her if she wanted to take back an earlier statement that Timothy McVeigh should have bombed The New York Times office, especially if the reporters were inside.

"No, I think the Timothy McVeigh line was merely prescient after The New York Times has leapt beyond -- beyond nonsense straight into treason, last week," Coulter replied.

"This is great humor," Colmes replied, sarcastically. "This belongs on Saturday Night Live. It belongs on The Daily Show. "

I find myself wondering this Holiday weekend if Annie is trying to Get her Gun.  How much poking and prodding of a few of her most cultish fans would be required to actually get someone to attempt to blow up The New York Times building?  In some experts opinion and according to the book "The Sociopath Next Door" we have a glut of capable individuals just milling about in the American population.  Hope they aren't bored this fourth of July and decide to make their own fireworks or something!

And disturbingly, the prevalence of sociopathy in the United States seems to be increasing. The 1991 Epidemiologic Catchment Area study, sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health, reported that in the fifteen years preceding the study, the prevalence of antisocial personality disorder had nearly doubled among the young in America, It would be difficult, closing in on impossible, to explain such a dramatically rapid shift in terms of genetics or neurobiology.

Apparently, cultural influences play a very important role in the development (or not) of sociopathy in any given population. Few people would disagree that, from the Wild West of the past to the corporate outlaws of the present, American society seems to allow and even encourage me-first attitudes devoted to the pursuit of domination. Robert Hare writes that he believes "our society is moving in the direction of permitting, reinforcing, and in some instances actually valuing some of the traits listed in the Psychopathy Checklist--traits such as impulsivity, irresponsibility, lack of remorse."

In this opinion he is joined by theorists who propose that North American culture, which holds individualism as a central value, tends to foster the development of antisocial behavior, and also to disguise it. In other words, in America, the guiltless manipulation of other people "blends" with social expectations to a much greater degree than it would in China or other more group-centered societies.