Abe,
in general I am sympathetic to your point, which you will allow me to paraphrase as
For contentious political topics, Wikipedia is a sandbox where loudmouthed extremists on both sides fight it out in an often ugly manner, but at the end an OK article will emerge.
Now, it's important to realize that *we* set the boundaries of that sandbox. For instance, threatening another Wikipedian's life is completely unacceptable and people have been banned for it, with wide support.
One might argue that we should adopt stricter boundaries, for instance throwing out those kids (on all sides) who repeatedly personally abuse others. The extremists who can live inside that boundary would then have to fight it out in the now smaller sandbox. It is not at all clear to me that that smaller sandbox would produce worse results.
Axel