Dear Editor,

Sometimes you don’t appreciate what you have until it’s gone. When asked what form of government is best, Ben Franklin replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.” The events that have unfolded on the national stage in the past week should force all patriotic Americans to ask themselves whether we will be able to keep ours if we stay on the perilous path on which we have recently embarked, which is predicated on fear, intolerance and intimidation.

The issues we confront as a nation and as a global community are extremely complex. There are thoughtful, intelligent, fact-based positions to be taken on various sides of most of these issues, and we all have a civic duty to seek to articulate these positions as coherently as possible.

But the modus operandi of the Trump administration and its strategists, who blithely propagate what are widely recognized to be outright falsehoods in order to advance their political agenda, are corrosive and deeply destructive to the health of our republic. To the extent that Trump has a political philosophy, it does not seem to be one that is recognizably American.

The moment we abandon the values that have made our republic “exceptional,” the terrorists have won. Let’s all hope that moment has not yet arrived. If there ever was a time to put nation before party, it is now.

Todd Gooch

Danville