Commissioners' vote was disappointing

I have always felt pride in the place where I grew up, where we raised our children. But in reading the message from Boundary County commissioners and the exclusionary “resolution” they conceived and signed, I literally cringed with shame that this was coming out of that beloved place.

The government of the United States and its citizens have made terrible human rights missteps in the past: slavery with all of its evils; the segregation afterward that, in effect, declared one color of American as “less” than others; the mistreatment of Native Americans, whose land we appropriated and whose children were snatched away to boarding schools and beaten there for using their own languages; the incarceration of Japanese Americans — the majority of whom were loyal citizens — in concentration camps during World War II, often causing them to lose their homes and their livelihoods; the terrible treatment the American people visited upon veterans returning from Vietnam, arguably the nastiest conflict in which our armed services were every asked to fight.

After each of these, our nation eventually apologized. “We were wrong, we are sorry, we will commit to doing better in the future.” And (paraphrasing Ronald Reagan, who is hardly my hero, but it’s a very good line, “Here we go again!”

It all boils down to prejudice — “prejudging” others for their error in adhering to a religious philosophy that differs from the majority of our own.

ISIS, from which the refugee families (mostly families with children) are desperate to flee to a safe place, a place where they can raise their children in peace, is no more representative of the majority of Islam than the Westborro Baptist Church (whose members chanted dreadful imprecations outside the funeral services of American veterans returning from Afghanistan and Iraq) represents Christianity.

We are fully aware that radical so-called Christians do not represent most who try to live their lives according to the precepts of the Gospel message. Can we not accept by the same token that ISIS and its radical ilk do not cast a philosophical tent over every and all Islamic persons?

It was heartening to see in last week’s Herald the names of those many who also feel that the resolution signed by the county commission was egregious, and that it does not represent the attitudes of all in the community.

PHYLLIS DIRKS

Federal Way, Wash.