The New Year had to navigate its way through extra layers of security and bad vibes to get here, but the first day of 2010 has finally arrived.

Standing at the beginning of a new decade always stirs up subconscious fears and passions. The problem is that we're never sure whether we're at the beginning of something new and improved or the edge of a precipice.

A decade ago, we were breathing a sigh of relief that the early hours of the new millennium didn't usher in a "Y2K"-generated apocalypse after all.

When a subset of paranoid Americans emerged from their bunkers on the first day of 2000, they were sensible enough to feel silly about having stocked up on so much toilet paper, bottled water, gold doubloons, canned beans and ammunition.

Being thought of as a "survivalist," however briefly, was a source of shame once upon a time. These days, the intense fear of the Y2K era has been mainstreamed for easy consumption. Turn on talk radio and the first thing you'll hear -- beside the hysteria of the moment -- is a hard pitch to buy gold.

By contrast, it was a relief when the calendar rolled over from the 1980s to the 1990s. I was a few years into my marriage and my career at this newspaper and feeling optimistic about both.

Looking back, I can see why my wife and editors were so annoyed by my Pollyannaish attitude. Some of Ronald Reagan's sunniness had followed me into the new decade. It took the seediness of the Clarence Thomas hearings and the spectacle surrounding the first O.J. Simpson trial to convince me that life, like American justice, was random and unpredictable.

Ten years earlier, when the 1970s ended and the 1980s began, I still believed I was on my way to becoming a painter -- one who would probably starve in an unheated garret someday, but a painter, nonetheless.

It would be a few years before I put that particular dream behind me in a fear-driven bout of desperation and newborn pragmatism. The difference between who I was then and who I am now still causes me to roll my eyes in wonder and embarrassment.

The stupidest thing I ever did in 1980 had nothing to do with drugs -- I didn't inhale, honest! -- but I did work briefly as a volunteer for former Republican-turned-Independent John Anderson's presidential campaign in Philadelphia.

After a bout of intense disillusionment with President Jimmy Carter, which I eventually got over, I flirted briefly with adopting a libertarian form of conservatism. I even read Ayn Rand's "Anthem," but found her writing so turgid that it dissuaded me from moving on to "Atlas Shrugged" or "The Fountainhead."

Because I was a fan of the polemicist R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. and of his then-witty conservative monthly The American Spectator, it didn't seem too far out that I could pull the lever for a Republican or two in my first election as a registered voter.

In the end, I stuck with the Democrats, but it was touch and go. Obviously, I didn't experience what it felt like to vote for a winning presidential candidate until Bill Clinton came along a decade later.

As we turn the page on a new decade, we're angrier and more partisan than ever. This doesn't bode well for our nation or our politics. Some of the loudest voices seem to have lost the most perspective.

Yesterday I heard that one of talk radio's angriest voices -- Rush Limbaugh -- had been rushed to a Honolulu hospital with chest pains. He is reportedly resting "comfortably," but he probably won't be returning to his radio show by Jan. 4 as originally planned.

It was initially reported that he was in "serious" condition when the news broke on Wednesday. His Wikipedia entry pronounced him "dead" based on unfounded rumors.

Admittedly, my first reaction was deeply partisan and inhumane. Though I didn't want Rush Limbaugh dead, I didn't mind that he was acutely aware of his mortality -- finally.

It took a minute or two, but the absurdity of wishing chest pains on anyone because of his politics finally overwhelmed me. Rational people should be ashamed of such thoughts.

Whether one believes Rush is merely a cynical entertainer who will say anything for ratings or a committed ideologue, his humanity should never be questioned or denied. That's what we do when we entertain the possibility of a man's death without feeling the most profound pity. Partisan advantage isn't worth a man's life -- even someone we consider an "enemy."

Here, on the first day of 2010, many of us who don't appreciate Rush Limbaugh's politics are in a position to determine what kind of political progressives we want to be in the coming decade.

I've been impressed by the genuine expressions of sympathy I've seen about Rush on the comments section of liberal Web sites like the Huffington Post and Newser.com.

For sure, nasty comments are posted there, too, but they're outnumbered by folks who choose to acknowledge the radio commentator's humanity.

Both President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are also in Hawaii vacationing this week, prompting jokes about the ultimate liberal "death panel conspiracy" on the conservative side of the political divide.

As much as the two top Democrats might be tempted to make a bedside visit to the man most responsible for demonizing them in the past year, it wouldn't be a good idea. Such gestures have a way of falling flat when there is so much suspicion in the air.

Perhaps flowers and a note of goodwill to the convalescing commentator would be a good way to go. There's nothing like a little compassionate liberalism to start a new decade right.

Tony's Take on Comix by Tony Norman is featured exclusively in the Opinion section on PG+, a members-only web site from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.