[Mrs. Don-o]

A young man named Steven Lee from the PaloAlto Human Rights Commission was quoted in this article, trying to assert, --- in a rather equivocating way, but this is Palo Alto --- that haranguing and menacing a man for his hat is not the nonviolent thing to do.

I wrote Steven Lee an e-mail, trying to sound as Palo Alto-ish as I could, and may God grant that it provokes a bit of thought on his part. Here it is:

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stevendlee@gmail.com

Dear Steven,

Thank you for attempting a peaceable response in relation to the recent incident where an elderly Jewish man was verbally accosted and assailed because of his MAGA hat.

It is commendable for you to try to add a voice of reason in this fraught situation.

Looking at your statement --- as quoted in PaloAltoOnline.com --- that "the MAGA hat at its best represents a distorted and inaccurate view of America, its history, and its place in the world, and, at its worst, is a symbol of hate and everything that is wrong with America today." --- I wonder if that is quite fair.

Certainly the man in the MAGA hat did not intend to communicate these hateful sentiments. It is an odious thing to be accused of being a hater when hating is the furthest thing from your mind.

To impute malevolent intentions to someone on scant evidence, on no evidence, or against the evidence, is a form of rash judgment.

You did not intend rash judgment, I think, but, from another point of view, it hurts when such a prejudicial judgment is made over and over again. At length, some people feel perfectly justified in confronting and threatening an old man on the basis of his hat (!) and a rather innocuous slogan, for heaven's sake.

How does anybody know what the redhatted person's ideas are?

A reasonable approach would be to approach the man courteously and ask, perhaps, "Say, that's an attention-getting hat. What do you mean by it?"

That would be an interesting discussion.

Still with me, here? Then thank you for reading this long e-mail, and I hope we may someday meet and make each others' better acquaintance.

Sincerely,

[signed]

`

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Please consider writing to Steven Lee. Looks like a 20-something Asian to me. He needs to be nudged into the right path.

And please don't think it's useless. I used to be a young left-leaning sprout like him. Somebody nudged me good..

[papertyger]

I find it telling that in the midst of criticizing Mankey’s actions, Steven demonstrates the exact same attitude lacking only an individualized target.

Say what you will about Milo Yanopolous, but he is absolutely correct in asserting the big project on the left is to make physical violence (and all its less personally hazardous proxies) an acceptable response to words and ideas...even when those words and ideas come from the attacker’s own distortion of the victim’s actual position.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Very nice, well balanced, thoughtful letter you wrote to Mr. Lee.

I expect you will be called racist, evil, fascist, etc. in return.

[Dave W]

I love your response - the wording is perfect!

[rlmorel]

Sigh.

I don’t think it is useless at all, because we all know that there are young people who do make that transition from Left to Right. People get jobs, pay taxes, have children, people they love die, and they change.

I think all young people do have a degree of leftism at some point. I think I never had a lot, but I know there was a little, often in embarrassing corners.

What saddens and alarms me is the degree of loss of self-control of many on the left who should be capable enough and mature enough to avoid it, but...don’t.