I don’t know if children should be allowed to watch the Republican presidential debates.

There’s so much talk of violence and mayhem as the solution to our ills. The candidates seem so eager to flex their muscles and engage the nation in conflict: Let’s continue the war in Iraq. Let’s show them what we’re made of in Iran. Let’s round up those immigrants and ship ’em back where they came from.

It’s like watching adolescent boys playing the ultimate video game, with no regard for the consequences. Rudy, the crime-fighter and terror maven, says he’s tougher than Mitt, who actually had illegals working on his property. Mitt begs to differ and says he’d like to double the size of the Guantánamo prison.

Are we electing a president or a sheriff?

Representative Tom Tancredo of Colorado wants to stop all immigration, legal and illegal. Too much immigration brings problems, he said. Among other things, “it makes it difficult for us to assimilate.”

(The bludgeoning of logic is yet another form of violence coming out of the debates.)

We’ve got the thunderclouds of a recession heading our way. We’re in the midst of a housing foreclosure crisis that is tragic in its dimensions. We’ve got forty-some-million people without health coverage. And the city of New Orleans is still on its knees.