Think today's political rhetoric is bad?

Reason has a pretty good example of a campaign add, oh, about 200 years old.  You know, back when civility and peace reigned over our political discourse:

http://www.youtube.com/user/ReasonTV#p/u/52/Y_zTN4BXvYI

(Thanks to  Donald J. Boudreaux of Cafe Hayek)
I could think of something worse than "hatchet-faced nutmeg dealer" to call Abraham Lincoln but regardless; anyone that has studied presidential history in this country knows that political discourse has always been rather crude and slightly provocative.  Sarah Palin saying "don't retreat, reload!" and President Obama wanting to bring a gun to a G.O.P. knife fight should not come as surprising rhetoric.

George Will, being George Will, lays it very well in his column today:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/10/AR2011011003685.html

As far as I can tell, politicians both on the left and right will act in a predictable reactionary manner to further the restrictions on guns and speech.

This is already evident:
http://dailycaller.com/2011/01/11/rep-peter-king-to-introduce-bill-making-it-illegal-to-carry-a-gun-within-1000-feet-of-high-profile-government-official/

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/live-blog-latest-developments-on-arizona-shooting/?src=twt&twt=thecaucus#bill-to-ban-crosshairs

 Jake Tapper of ABC also has the audacity to claim that civil libertarians are to blame because an older family member told him it was easier to have people like Loughner "locked up" decades ago.  I would really like to hear the reasoning and rationale behind what he is saying.  Did people decades ago have regular psychiatric screenings?  Were parents more prone to have their kids committed?  I hardly see the connection between the rights civil libertarians are in favor of (which by the way have been incredibly eroded since the New Deal) and Loughner not getting the help he needed.  If Tapper is in favor of mandatory psychiatric screenings, he should come out and directly say it.  To his credit, Tapper admits he wants to learn more about the topic, but making an assertion such as civil libertarians causing the Loughner shooting without any direct evidence is quite the claim for a mainstream news reporter.

*Update* Robert Wenzel has more examples of the kind of civility the founding fathers had when addressing each other.