In a recent letter [Cargie and Saganich diatribes foster intolerance, Viewpoints, Jan. 24], Rick Pickren criticized my response to a rant from Greg Saganich in which Saganich defined patriotism as slavishly adoring the president and suggested that anyone who criticized the president was a traitor to this country. Mr. Pickren stated that my letter was emblematic of the type of “intolerance” that “pervades all public discourse today.”
Embedded in Mr. Pickren’s argument is the idea that intolerance is always wrong, but I disagree. I will not, for example, blandly tolerate the noxious simplisms that Greg Saganich offered. Any milder rebuke of his letter by me could have been deemed by some to be a partial condonement of his drivel. I certainly could not leave that impression, especially after he so ostentatiously cloaked himself in the mantle of being a member of the Illinois Air National Guard in which I also served. Sometimes an insult is the only proper response to the insulting. Remember too what Sigmund Freud observed: “The first human being who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization.”
Tom Cargie
River Forest