LETTER: Make America great by taking down your sign

In response to Ron Erickson’s defense of his political sign in Lakeside:

Lakeside is great in part because Lakesiders meet one of our nation’s greatest standards: to tolerate others and their views. This standard was desired by the British settlers who came here to escape intolerance, established by the best goals of their colonies’ charters, formalized by the framing documents of our nation. And regardless of whether Mrs. Clinton or anyone else may have failed it, you are held to this standard. Give to bigotry no sanction. Use not your liberty to the disturbance of others. Do you not believe this is our duty?

You argue that we should be more concerned with the greater evils in this country than the smaller evil of your signs. But you wrongly reduce the scope of the problem that your views represent. Your views mean insults are a sufficient form of political discourse. They mean that when you encounter a woman you dislike, you slander her, call her a b****. Despite your excuses, your signs establish intolerance and bigotry — evils that are directly responsible for the political disorder now manifest in our country.

Any greatness we hope to create in America will come, not from a politician, but from our collected citizenry. Our government is composed of us, the American people; the disorder that exists in our government is no more than a symptom of the disease that exists in us.

You, Mr. Erickson, can spread that disease by establishing intolerance and bigotry within our community. Or you can promote greatness by establishing tolerant discourse and by upholding the moral standard that the colonists came here to establish, that our government is intended to preserve — the standard that has for so long made Lakeside, and our nation, great. Will you make America great again? —Joshua Brown, Lakeside