We need to cling to our core values

Americans are idealistic people. We set high standards for ourselves and hold firmly to ideals that we believe are true. Even though we don't always live up to these ideals, our core values upon which America was founded remain constant.

These core values are: liberty, self-government, equality, individualism, diversity and unity. Because these are abstract values, we each apply them to situations exemplifying how we interpret them. In doing so, we often invade another American's liberty by judging them based on our interpretation of America's core values. This results in a divisive society.

Our core values fall under being a humanitarian society — concerned with or seeking to promote human welfare. Our current social climate has deteriorated into a selfcentered, divisive society fostering conflict. We have many issues to resolve but the caustic rhetoric being slung about will not resolve them. We need to return to our core values to recover America before it destroys itself.

During presidential elections, politicians and their followers often violate these values by shouting hateful rhetoric about people with whom they disagree. We should support our core values, not what some politician shouts attempting to stimulate our emotions to vote for them.

The message is to be more humanitarian in nature and allow all citizens to experience the freedoms of America while ignoring caustic, self-promoting rhetoric from narcissist leadership.

Richard C. Hall, Norman