Dear Editor:
Letters such as the one written by Robert Lewis in the Sept. 20 edition of the East Tennessean would serve the conservative cause better if they did not engage in the logical fallacy called “black and white thinking.” In this fallacy, people argue that if an apple isn’t white, it must be black. Robert Lewis argues that if a person doesn’t love this wonderful country of ours and the president, then they must hate both.
A thoughtful conservative, like a thoughtful liberal, is going to take a more nuanced view.
Every country and every president have both good and bad in them, and a true patriot is going to work to encourage what is good and fight against what is bad.
What Robert Lewis sees as liberal bias I see as honestly acknowledging mistakes our leaders have made, and I find this preferable to blind adulation. It does not help to call people who disagree names. A good conservative writer in the East Tennessean would be welcome.
-Rick Norwood, Department of Mathematics

Author