Editor, Gazette-Journal:

So, the big threat to America is Diversity, Equality, Inclusion (DEI)?

DEI is a guiding principle to ensure all Americans have equal rights and opportunities. That sounds like an American value in line with what the founding fathers wrote. That sounds like a Christian value to me.

The second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence begins with the sentences: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The founding fathers did not write, “all white men” or all “white Christian men.” They wrote “all men.”

Trump began his anti-DEI campaign during his first administration and has picked it up full steam. The campaign is part of his racist agenda.

Remember Charlottesville and his comment about marchers chanting “Jews will not replace us?” He said, there were “very fine people on both sides.” There are no anti-Semite “fine people.”

Trump has instituted a policy of indiscriminately rounding up brown and black people, many here legally, and denying them due process of law. He thought nothing of separating small children from their parents and putting parents in separate concentration camps.

Never has German theologian Martin Niemoller’s poem been more poignant:

“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”

David Cariens
Irvington, Va.