And if it had, he added, "none of the panel's likely casualties would have represented the slightest reduction in humanity's intelligence, decency, empathy or honesty."

Sometime later, displaying little honesty, intelligence, decency or empathy, he amended the most contentious section of his piece, without an editor's note or explanation, to begin, "What if that blast had detonated in an Ultimo TV studio?"

What is most striking about Franklin's language is not its violence, but its banality.

In his piece, Franklin not only ponders the just nature of a mass killing in a room full of ABC viewers, he describes the Q&A panelist who incensed him most during its Monday night program, the American writer Lawrence Krauss as, variously, a "smug stick insect and tireless self-promoter," a "warmist shill," a "loathsome creature," and a "filthy liar."

Anyone whose work takes them into the swamps of what passes for public debate in social media will recognise this sort of dull, relentless, personalised abuse.

But it is a little jarring to see this rhetoric in the pages of Quadrant, especially for those of us who remember it as a journal of high-minded conservative intellectualism - grey in tone, small of font, rugged in defence of freedom of expression.

Quadrant was founded by the poet James McAuley, who beautifully illustrated his disdain for his modernist intellectual adversaries with the Ern Malley hoax. Its contributors include some of the leading public intellectuals of the post-war era, everyone from Sir Zelman Cowen to Clive James.

The Quadrant website still carries a quote from "Prime Minister Tony Abbott" (somebody should tell them) as saying, "This fabulous publication has done more than any other in this country to nurture the high culture of Western Civilisation."

The magazine has long been a champion of the robust and civil exchange of ideas. Its literary editor is arguably Australia's greatest poet, Les Murray, who on Tuesday evening was reading his work at the University of Sydney.

To find out how editor Keith Windschuttle felt Franklin's piece - and the general tone of the website - reflected this mission, I called him.

"You're talking bullshit, don't call back," Windschuttle said, hanging up before I could put a question to him.

Franklin himself was more willing to engage when we spoke. He stood by his piece, arguing that it was clear he was writing in opposition rather than support of terrorism.

What had prompted his screed was what he perceived to be groupthink by the ABC - and by Fairfax Media - that obfuscated what he saw as the root cause of contemporary terrorism, Islamic extremism.

He had been angered by the suggestion on Q&A that since the chances of being killed by a foreign born terrorist were one in 3.6 million, falling refrigerators could be considered as more dangerous.

Franklin believes this is an absurd point of view, just as others, mostly on the left, believe that the west is damaging itself by focussing too much on the threat posed by terrorism.

This is a debate worth having, and doubtless one we could have more easily without the sort of invective Franklin employed.

It is also worth considering how conservative commentators might have reacted if a Muslim had mused upon the justice of the mass killing in Australia of their perceived ideological opponents.

So far they have been awfully quiet.