To the Editor:
Your tepid response to letter writer Mark C. Williams' call (Aug. 18-24, 2016) to suppress opinion — "The Gazette Packet frequently publishes letters with which it disagrees" — missed an opportunity to address a larger issue, namely, the function of letters to the editor in a democratic society as a forum for the free expression of ideas and opinions.
Opinion pages, of which letters to the editor are a subset, are by their very nature vehicles for readers to weigh in on the issues of the day; constrained not by content but by space, decorum, and civility. Like Mr. Williams I, too, take strong exception with Harold Knudsen's apologia for slavery (letter, Aug. 11-17, 2016) but the way to deal with such a viewpoint is not by silencing it but airing it in the marketplace of ideas.
Craig Taylor
Alexandria