Right to be heard

Re: “Tussle over closed door ends visit to Rohrabacher’s office” [News, Feb. 15]: My wife and I and two of our friends drove to Dana Rohrabacher’s Huntington Beach office yesterday hoping to at least speak with a staffer. We were among the 100-plus citizens who gathered on the sidewalk outside his office. I recognized many other former teachers and military veterans that I knew.

Rohrabacher, who was not there, was afterward quoted in the Register as referring to us as “a mob” engaging in “political thuggery, pure and simple.” This characterization is patently false and disrespectful. Aside from the one minor incident involving the unintentional bumping of a child with the office door and a staffer shaken up by the door being forcefully opened after being unlocked, the assembled people were totally peaceful and respectful. Most likely, even these accidental happenings would not have occurred if a staffer had agreed to hear our views.

We were told by a staffer that Rohrabacher has no public forums scheduled, that we could not even go to his office without an appointment, that he was not taking appointments at that time and that we would be arrested if we did not immediately get off of private property.

We are citizens, not servants, and we can’t be represented if we’re not heard.

— Thomas J. Osborne, Laguna Beach

Not what they seem

Those of the liberal alt-left who visited Rep. Dana Rohrabacher’s office on Valentine’s Day are nothing more than the minions of former President Obama’s latest foray into community organizing. Taking a page from Saul Alinsky, Obama is going to try to bring America down one conservative representative at a time. Shouting and disruption is but one tactic in their arsenal. Apparently, not having all the seats in California is a sign of failure.

Let’s put all the cards on the table and look at this deck and its crooked dealers. The dividers of the “Indivisible” movement want to push anyone who holds to traditional American values and beliefs, who isn’t fully committed to their ideology, into the sea. These are the children of the “tolerant, diverse, nonjudgemental, understanding, inclusive, self-esteem” generation. These are the loud, indecent, angry, violent, intolerant ivory tower progressives whose love of ideology drives them to hate their less savvy neighbors. Welcome, very seriously, to George Orwell’s “1984.”

— David S. Whitley, Irvine

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