Letter To The Editor: Open Letter To Mr. Antos

By A Concerned Citizen
Los Alamos

Mr. Antos (link), the beauty of this country is that we (still) have the right to free speech – so you were able to publish a letter without punishment, despite the fact the large parts of it uses language unacceptable to any respectful trade of differing ideas.

 
If I disregard these unacceptable parts of your letter, you expressed some concerns that are useful to consider in any discourse that a democracy needs, to find a compromise in organizing this country. If you want to contribute to developing rules that benefits the majority of Americans, you might have a better chance to be heard if you leave out disrespectful rhetoric in your free speech.

I do not want to go into these concerns here, but I want to investigate one point in your letter that is representative for the present contentious situation of our country: “that Muslim Communist Obama”.

There are several things disturbing about this:

1. The constitution gives the right to religious freedom for any citizen of this country. So while you put the label “Muslim”in a negative context, it is just assigning a religious believe to a person and calling a Muslim a Muslim should not be different from calling a Christian a Christian. You and many people that use the word “Muslim” with a negative connotation either do not understand the US constitution or choose to disrespect it.

2. To look at the origin of this negative connotation: It is wrong when violence is done in the name of any religion. Fanatics are committing such acts, not regular citizens that go after their religious rituals in every day life. If you look at statistics about violent, religiously  motivated crimes, the majority of those in the US are committed by Christian fanatics, not Muslims. We would not go on a witch hunt against all Christians based on this, would we?

3. The worst thing about quoting this phrase is that it is known to be wrong. Former President Obama is neither a Muslim nor a Communist. This is itself is not a big deal – it is just not factual. What is a big deal is that the source of this phrase is a right-wing news organization that publishes half-truths and lies with just one goal – to incite hate against liberal politics and against immigrants. Considering your upbringing in Los  Alamos I have to assume that you are well educated and thus you have no excuse not to know this fact. So there is a suspicion that you might agree with the agenda of this organization.

So, if you want your views to be heard and considered, please tone it down and don’t quote sources of hateful propaganda to make your case. This would keep this community a better place. Thank you.

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