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Letter: Repudiate the Nazis

This July 8, 2017 photo shows members of the KKK escorted by police past a large group of protesters during a KKK rally in Charlottesville, Va. Some white Southerners are again advocating for what the Confederacy tried and failed to do in the 1860s: secession from the Union. So-called Southern nationalists are within the group of demonstrators who are fighting the removal of Confederate monuments around the South. They say it’s time for Southern states to secede again and become independent of the United States..(AP Photo/Steve Helber)

It is said that the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. So we must speak out. In his remarks on Aug. 15, the president equated the fire department and the fire.

I strongly urge the Republican Party (the party of Lincoln) to repudiate the Nazi Party and the KKK. This should not be difficult, but it is necessary. Our silence implies acquiescence with the president’s sophistry, that many “fine people” march with torch-bearing night riders chanting words of racial and religious hatred. And that people who oppose intimidation are equally to blame for any violence that arises when hatred is repudiated.

Both of my parents fought in World War II against the Nazis. And, as Sen. Orrin Hatch has said, “We should call evil by its name. My brother didn’t give his life fighting Hitler, for Nazi ideas to go unchallenged here at home.”

So, please, Republicans, good men and women all, for the sake of our children, call evil by its name, challenge the Nazi Party, the KKK and, amazingly, challenge the words of the president of the United States.

Mark Gardner

Salt Lake City