My fellow Americans:

Most of us aren't neoconservatives. We don't stockpile guns, we don't advocate the immediate expulsion of illegal immigrants, we like to keep our religion to ourselves, and we're not really shills and apologists for big corporations.

Most of us aren't bleeding-heart liberals. We don't want a nanny state, we don't want to just pay money into a big government and have it doled out to us in dribs and drabs as we need it, we're not so open-minded and permissive that our brains fall out, and we're realistic enough to know that, as a much wiser man said, "the poor ye have with ye always."

Most of us are right in the middle. Sure, some of us are a little bit more conservative and some of us are a little more liberal, but the vast majority of Americans are not wingnuts, extremists, overreacters, or abdicators of rational thought.

Most of us would never dream of defacing a picture of a President (ANY President) to look like Hitler. Most of us would never become so riled up in a debate that we would actually bite off an opponent's finger. Most of us are smart enough to realize that the e-mails circulating about health insurance are very, very low on actual truth and very, very high on scare tactics. Most of us remember seeing the President on TV as children and being excited, and most of us don't actually think our kids are in for a half-hour of brainwashing next week. Most of us have an opinion and a sense of perspective that allows us to see that we're not the only ones in the world.

The problem is that most of us are boring. We're not newsworthy. We are, in fact, beige, and we are the overwhelming majority in this country.

The problem is that we beige people don't really protest. We don't make scenes and we don't have demagogues whose words keep us in thrall. We don't scream. We don't march around with defaced pictures. We're writers of letters, not wavers of protest signs, and so the mic and the attention go to the freaks and the wingnuts and the extremists, not the normal beige people like us.

But that doesn't mean we have no influence. There are a lot of us, you know, and it's easy to make little contributions to civil discourse.

So here is the Beige Call To Action:

• DON'T SIT IDLY BY WHEN CONFRONTED WITH BAD BEHAVIOR. You don't have to make a scene. But if you hear someone approving of the scare tactics, say something quietly. "I don't agree with the plan either, but this isn't the way to make our point known."
• DON'T DONATE TO GROUPS WHO ENCOURAGE DISRUPTIVE TACTICS. Think about what their public behavior is like. Are they trying to get people to act out? Maybe they don't need your $10 or $20 or $100 after all. Give your money to groups who wouldn't embarrass you if your donation were made public.
• WRITE YOUR LEGISLATORS. Or call them. Or drop by their local offices. Your opinion is just as valid as anyone else's -- make your wants heard. It might not change your legislators' minds but it allows them to gauge the level of political risk of acting out.
• DON'T PASS ON RIDICULOUS E-MAIL FORWARDS. Of either type. No more babies dying in the street while Senators relax in hospital beds with feather mattresses, no more stories about medical records being used to deny fat people their pizza deliveries. The buck stops with you.
• SPEAK PLAINLY. No more obfuscation. No more "America's plan", no more "killing grandmothers", no more "death panels". We're all smart enough to see through the "spin".
• BE RESPECTFUL OF OTHER VIEWPOINTS. This shouldn't be too hard. We're beige; we do this anyway. Get up and speak and let the legislators and their staff know that the wingnuts don't represent you.

We can do it. America is best served when we're nice and civil and respectful, and it's time for us to start letting people know just how big a group we are.