Frazier’s First Amendment rights

Recently conservatives and Trump supporters have come under attack for exerting our rights under both the Virginia and United States Constitutions. Our First Amendment rights to free speech, the right to assemble, and the right to protest peacefully are being targeted country wide. Unfortunately citizens of Rappahannock County are not immune from those attacks.

While I do not always side with Rappahannock Board of Supervisors member Ron Frazier, I am deeply troubled that he is being unjustly accused of exercising his First Amendment rights by a group of Rappahannock liberals who happen to disagree with his politics, and who are asking that he be censured by the Board of Supervisors.

The freedoms protected by the State and Federal Constitutions extend to every American regardless of their point of view, their politics, their religion or color of their skin. Mr. Frazier was one of thousands of people who joined a peaceful political rally showing support for President Trump. To extend blame to them, and to Mr. Frazier for the riot that followed is nothing short of Orwellian. Both the right and the left have properly and widely condemned those that broke into the Capitol building on January 6th..

The press is filled these days with hateful and leftist talk of deprogramming, re-educating, or reprogramming American citizens so that they will think “correctly” and act “properly.” Such talk is nothing more than a direct assault on those who happen to have a different point of view than those who spew such nonsense or because they simply voted for someone other than Joe Biden.

The guarantees of free speech, the right to assemble and protest peacefully need to be protected, and the place to start is right here in Rappahannock County, and with the Board of Supervisors, who should stop this stupidity by showing no support for these accusations against our citizens whose beliefs may differ from their attackers.

Audrey Regnery Washington