Disappointed…

Dear Editor,

I was dismayed to hear that Mayor Rognstad buckled under pressure and took his proposal to welcome the Syrian refugees off of the table.

“Welcome Back to the White Homeland!”

I hear the voices of the dissenters in my head:

“We hate everyone who is not like us. If you look different, act different, eat different, have a different religion, wear different clothes… we don’t like you!

We don’t want any Muslims in our city/county!

We don’t want any black people, hippies, brown, tan, red, yellow or green people. We certainly don’t want any blue people. Everyone knows that those blue Smurfs are pot-smoking communists!

We don’t want any Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, agnostics, atheists, Zoroastrians, pantheists, Jewish people or nature worshippers. If you pray to a God with a different name, we got a problem with you.

We don’t want any high-minded intellectuals in our town, no free thinkers or any other intelligent people in our city. We don’t like free speech that differs from ours. If you are smarter than us we want you to leave. If you have compassion for people who have escaped from their war-torn country, we don’t like you either. You need to leave also.

We only want people who call themselves Christians and think like we do, but do not act like Jesus told us to act in the Sermon on the Mount.

We don’t like people who tell us that we haven’t done our research on this subject. There is no doubt in our minds that most Muslims are bad and dangerous. We are sure of it.

Most of all we don’t like those guys who write these kinds of letters to the Reader.

And, to be perfectly honest, we don’t like each other very much either.”

Allan Bopp
Sandpoint