Tear down the statues, eliminate naming rights, legalize drugs and make masks mandatory, but for Grinch’s sake leave the good Dr. alone.

Dealing with crisis after crisis while sheltering from the pandemic has afforded extreme reactions to history, to art, to law and to human rights.

If it wasn’t for this world-wide pandemic, we might have had more civil debate about some of these things such as California moving toward legalizing psychedelic drugs, historical statues of people once considered heroes being destroyed, politicians with apparently nothing better to do wanting to rename everything from bridges, highways and parks to military bases.

We do believe that some of these issues were worthy to be considered, but others a real stretch as to importance. We can start with taking names off buildings, highways and parks. Why not respect the decisions that were made by the people that named the items? When the southern generals did the things they did during the Civil War, they did so with the clear intention of doing what they thought was right. Most of us believe they were horribly wrong in their decisions, but we are judging them in a different time and place.

If you want to practice judgement like this nearly two generations later, we need to burn all historical records including the Bible for it is full of sinfulness. Our educational system is capable of great things, and that would include explaining why people did what they did and why they believed what they did in 1861. But this topic includes local parks and roads that bear the name of soldiers that served and gave their lives in places like Korea and Vietnam. They were heroes to many of us but killers to others. You want to take down the recognition we gave them and tell their families we had no business being in those places?

As a Yankee, we faced discrimination while living in the southwest. It made no sense then and it doesn’t now. We have a grandchild who happens to be Rwandan by birth and American by adoption. At 12, he has already been subjected to the fools who would not love him because of the color of his skin. This isn’t something we aren’t close to and know about on a personal level. But eliminating history so that he and his future generations can’t learn from what did happen in the worst days of the confederacy does not accomplish change.

The same as Nazi sympathizers who deny the holocaust happened, we are opening the door to let these claims happen about these other atrocities.

Dr. Seuss was a large part of growing up for kids from the ’60s through today. He had no political agenda. Did he fail to see with a caring mind that some of his work would someday be scrutinized and declared racist and hostile? Most likely he did not.

It is OK that the publisher has decided to no longer print new editions of some of his books. That is if it is the company’s decision. No one has banned his books. Resellers on Amazon are thrilled about it as 9 of the 10 top sellers on Amazon recently are Dr. Seuss books. Some of them are priced at $500 or higher for a children’s book. Do you think the buyers will be destroying them? That is doubtful, but this artificial controversy we are creating is the reason for the increased value of the books.

We have read these books over time to our kids. We weren’t woke (new four letter word) to how judgmental we would find time to be in 2021. Creative writing should receive the same freedoms as other art forms and surely no one can dispute the creativity of Seuss and his illustrators. Were their minds full of hatred and racism?

Of course not, just no one had created the use of woke yet. They were entertaining kids in a new and imaginative way that was intended to be thought provoking, not politically correct. Most of us, (with the exception of elected officials), have made mistakes during our lifetimes. Dr. Seuss was no exception. Please be woke and wear your mask.

— RV