To the Editor:

I reply to the explanation Mr. Curt Stager offers for posting a “Hate Has No Home Here” sign near Moody Pond: Mr. Stager, dispassionate observers don’t care about exculpatory justifications you posit for putting up and maintaining your sign. They care only about what the sign actually conveys, by plain language and inference.

They see the sign and its reference to “hate.” Like all thinking persons, they glumly acknowledge that hate exists in this world. It’s there somewhere, with someone. They then see that you’re declaring yourself a person free of hate.

Well then, they think, who are the unsavory characters this vain fellow contemns as those having hate? They then note the sign’s several languages, arranged in undeniable association with today’s topical political issues of immigration and border security.

Aha, they say. This proud fellow tells us the hateful ones be those in disagreement with him on the subjects of immigration and border security.

That, Mr. Curt Stager, proud fellow, is anyone’s honest practical interpretation of your sign.

You present a direct and unwarranted imputation of hate, under guise of some fanciful profession of love. You can descant all you wish about Thoreau and diversity and psychological reflections, but that doesn’t change the fact that there’s not a shred of love or welcome issuing from your sign.

For had you wanted that, your sign would have said – directly — you love immigrants. Or pizza. Or the Enterprise.

But it doesn’t. It doesn’t because no expression of love or welcome can impute the hate you truly desire to put on political opponents.

The idea that your political sign is “welcoming” is preposterous, and would tax the credulity of a child. Nevertheless you assert it, and that’s too bad. For it shows that in calculating to delude others, you’ve succeeded only in deluding yourself.

John Edelberg

Saranac Lake