Re: Mr. Crawford’s response ("Fomenting Disunity and Hate" Sept. 6-12) to the letter by a group of Democrat politicians (“American Values” Aug. 30.)

You reference “Mr. Trump’s initial response” to the tragic events at Charlottesville. You are correct in defending this well-scripted statement of the President, delivered on Aug. 14. In fact, most “fair-minded persons,” as you say, wish he had left it at that.

Instead, the "American Values" letter refers to the President’s follow-up comments to the press the following day (Aug. 15), in which he talked about “the very fine people” in the group of protesters. While the fine print of the law may not agree, there is no denying that anyone marching alongside people brandishing torches and waving Nazi swastika flags, shouting “Jews will not replace us” and “Blood and Soil,” is implicitly supporting the very neo-Nazis and white supremacists the President initially condemned. They are guilty by association.

Hence, it is legitimate for the Jewish members of the Virginia General Assembly to question the Republican gubernatorial candidate for not openly denouncing the very symbols of genocide that so many brave Americans went overseas to Europe to stamp out during World War II. How did this sea of swastikas and Nazi flags ever wash up on our shining shores? Who are these people who loudly and proudly resurrect Nazi slogans?

We can parse words and choose to only see/hear what we want to see/hear, but there is no denying our great country is deeply divided. And a house divided never stands. As the mother of a child who was the target of racism on the school bus, I take solace in the fact that the boys worked out their differences and, now, years later, the instigator is one of my son’s closest friends!

Maybe we should take a page out of our kids’ playbook and see beyond our skin-deep differences. Perhaps, far be it from us adults being an example to our children, it behooves us to acknowledge, in the words of one of the world’s greatest wordsmiths, William Wordsworth: The child is the father of the man. Let’s put our house in order and put the united back in the “United” States.

Shaila Muralidhar

Great Falls