Remember Democrats? Remember how they were sort of like Republicans, except they paid more lip service to environmentalists, were uniformly pro-choice and for some reason were portrayed as fatter than Republicans in all the political cartoons?

They vanished last month. And I miss them.

Oh, they're still active, of course – but mostly at the technical and local level. One of them is ahead in the New Jersey governor's race, with polls indicating more or less that he's winning precisely because he's not a Republican.

But nationally, Democrats have gone quiet for fear of seeming unpatriotic or, not incidentally, reminding terrorists how to spell their names correctly on the envelopes.

It seemed like the prudent thing to have done after the attacks on New York, since most of the prominent political leaders at that scene were Republican – the president, the governor, the mayor. The only prominent Democrat involved was Sen. Hillary Clinton, and she also was the only one of these political figures who was attacked in the press.

The only voices of opposition left after that are the peace protesters, who have no party except the ones they throw for themselves. Republicans have no major public opposition except other Republicans. While the president asks for a $60 billion to $75 billion fiscal stimulus package, the people arguing for more money – trying to "throw money at the problem" – are the Republican-chaired House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee, which approved a $100 billion package. Lousy pinko conservatives.

Even a direct attack on Democrats bounces back to more Republicans. U.S. Senate Republicans are trying to make Democrats confirm more of President Bush's judicial nominees, so they filibustered a $15.5 billion foreign aid bill – a bill that includes funds for key Middle East allies in our military operation against Afghanistan, and which would help Bush gather international support. Neat trick, heh?

If they just stick by the president, the Democrats not only insulate themselves from charges of disloyalty, they also gain more free time in which to take up a musical instrument or perhaps plant and cultivate bonsai trees.

It feels strange to say this, but we actually need a little (just a little) of the open partisanship that seemed like such a colossal waste of time in the 1990s. Political dialogue is what draws out new ideas, stokes the fires, makes us think and sells countless shots of Bushmill’s.

I say this because many people have argued against any renaissance of public dissent. One point I've heard is that, in times of civil insurrection, the right to opposition and even to demand habeas corpus can be and has been suspended. But if we bar any major disagreements for the duration of this crisis, we may not be suspending it for a year, five years or even a normal life span. No less an authority than Vice President Cheney has estimated the war on terrorism may never end – and sometime between now and the end of forever, we'll have to have another election.

Another fair argument is that Osama bin Laden will point to our disagreements and claim we're factionalized and weakened. And indeed he will. If we have no disagreements, however, bin Laden will point to something else and claim we're factionalized and weakened. I don't know whether anybody else has picked up on this, but I doubt it matters what we say around bin Laden. I just don't think he likes us.

And whether our enemies understand this or not, our capacity for peaceful dissent is our long-term strength. Dictatorships have trouble competing in the world marketplace because they lack the capacity to discuss and adapt to radical changes of circumstances. But Americans already are starting to joke about terrorism. The guys in New York who used to sell watches out of a briefcase in Times Square have begun selling T-shirts and bits of rubble out of a briefcase at Ground Zero.

We can get used to anything. So we also can learn how to argue in public again – just like the loud, bickering, adopted family that we are.