Fear of the ‘oth­er’

The re­cent shoot­ing spree at a Sikh tem­ple in sub­ur­ban Mil­wau­kee [“7 dead in at­tack at Wisc. Sikh tem­ple,” page one, Aug. 6] points to a terri­ble con­di­tion in our na­tion. Poli­ti­cians on the far right have waged a re­lent­less cam­paign to paint President Oba­ma as an out­sid­er and some­one who is “oth­er.” Hate­ful rhet­o­ric is con­stant­ly aimed at Mus­lims, Blacks and Latinos.

When a U.S. con­gress­wom­an can free­ly at­tack the pa­tri­ot­ism of a de­vot­ed Mus­lim aide to Secretary of State Hil­la­ry Clin­ton, it feeds the no­tion that we are be­set on all sides by per­sons who are not true Ameri­cans.

Is it any won­der that, giv­en such a cli­mate, a mem­ber of a hate group felt com­fort­a­ble in at­tack­ing de­fense­less Sikhs en­gaged in wor­ship in a sub­urb of Mil­wau­kee? All Ameri­cans, es­pe­cial­ly those such as Rep. Michele Bach­mann and Don­ald Trump, should an­swer to them­selves wheth­er their free speech might be con­tri­but­ing to this cli­mate of vi­o­lence and hate. Speech may be free and large­ly un­fet­tered, but hate­ful and big­ot­ed speech can have se­ri­ous con­se­quences.

-- Ste­phen Ad­ler, Se­at­tle

What the Found­ing Fathers did and didn’t do

When our fore­fathers wrote the Bill of Rights, they were try­ing to make life bet­ter for all of us here. They in­clud­ed the right to bear arms be­cause they thought it was ne­ces­sary for the de­fense of their young coun­try.

At the time, there was no for­mal mil­i­tar­y. When the Se­cond Amendment was writ­ten, guns were mus­kets. The Se­cond Amendment was en­act­ed by men who had no i­de­a that guns would e­ven­tu­al­ly be capa­ble of mur­der­ing doz­ens of peo­ple with­in a min­ute.

If Thom­as Jef­fer­son, John Adams, George Wash­ing­ton and our oth­er Found­ing Fathers could see the way that guns are used now, do you think they'd still be­lieve that gun own­er­ship for all is a good i­de­a? Think a­bout the gun deaths you've read a­bout in the news re­cent­ly, in­clud­ing the two chil­dren who were killed here in Wash­ing­ton state and the nu­mer­ous mass murd­ers. Do you i­mag­ine that any of the above would be an­y­thing oth­er than shocked and hor­ri­fied?

The National Rifle Association propa­ganda says that gun own­er­ship for all makes the U.S. a safer place. How many peo­ple were saved by NRA mem­bers in the Vir­ginia Tech Massacre? Zero. How many were saved by NRA mem­bers dur­ing the re­cent shoot­ing spree in Col­o­rado? Zero. How many vic­tims were saved from any oth­er gun-re­lated trag­e­dy in re­cent mem­o­ry by NRA mem­bers? I can't think of a sin­gle in­stance in which an NRA mem­ber stepped for­ward to res­cue an­y­bod­y in such a sit­u­a­tion.

If the NRA is claim­ing that its mem­bers are de­fend­ing our citi­zens, why don't we ever see them do it?

-- Jody Harnish, Ev­er­ett