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Letter to the editor

Response to Polk County Democrat Chairman Andy Millard’s letter

 

“Doing What’s Best For Our Children”, I was struck as I always am at how he and so many push fear and disinformation, rather than thinking critically with facts. We hear all the emotional narratives—like people being racist if they don’t agree with radical viewpoints such as allowing people to illegally enter our country, or that America is an evil nation. And now, we are expected by Millard to simply believe that mask mandates and quarantines of the healthy to be “in the best interest of our children and families, without any facts at all.
The simple facts are, the overwhelming majority of children and families are against these assaults on our personal liberties and health which Mr. Milllard also wants to cancel. If one really investigates the facts, you find that all peer reviewed studies and even the NIH has said that masks offer negligible help, are harmful in many ways, and should NOT be put on children who are least affected by a virus. All this seems lost on a liberal narrative that says up is down, wrong is right, men are women, and everyone should do as we say.
Those of us who speak before our Polk County Commission and School Board never speak out or specifically bash certain groups, like liberals. We work very hard to give studies and information directly to our governing bodies and refute fake news and propaganda. Our debate is with them and the misinformation they are being asked to follow. And all the members in the county commission and school board know this to be true, even if they choose to believe otherwise.

Mr. Millard, however, wants you to believe that “Democrats want to keep politics out of our schools” But he then goes on to bash the “small, angry, unreasonable and unwarranted group” of conservative patriots, saying that we are not the majority. Meanwhile, there were 180 of us, and 30 of them at the school board rally on Monday, and several of them were from out of our county. There were doctors from Charlotte and other places who were brought in to a previous school board meetings to speak about what we in Polk County should citizens should be mandated to do.
The only accurate thing in his letter was the statement, “this is not about personal liberty”. No, he and other extreme liberals do NOT stand for our personal liberty, our Constitution, or even our country—that is very clear. I would strongly urge that both sides come together for a town hall debate of the facts. And as our majority Christian, conservative community always states, it is “Faith Not Fear” that will set us free.

Lee Emerson
Mill Spring