Suddenly, racists are everywhere in America. According to President Carter, who apparently knows a lot, scores of thousands of racists assembled last weekend in Washington and elsewhere to vent their diabolic rage against the President on the grounds of his race. In today's enlightened America, we just can't seem to get past this stumbling stone. With political opposition now officially branded as hate speech, we should soon enough see the end of anyone daring to protest any policy of the present Administration. After all, who wants to be seen as a racist?

Racists, mainly. Most true racists are not nearly so circumspect about concealing their real motives when they vilify a member of another race. They're racist and proud, and they typically say it loud. Perhaps the new racists who are spewing their hate speech into the political atmosphere are just timid? Or unskilled in the art?

Well, if opposition to the President be racism, make the most of it. I don't think those whose honest objections to Administration policies lead them to protest loudly are, in the main, racist. Unless being a progressive is a racial group previously unrecognized. We note that the people making these ludicrous charges are leaders of various sorts - journalists, Congressmen, even a past president. Either we have a really great educational system, which has managed to turn out some people with truly remarkable skills of discernment, or a lot of adults who should know better are just stupid.

Mr. Carter is the worst offender, because, like our sitting President, he claims to be a Christian. Christians are supposed to judge with right judgment, and not just from the hip. But that hasn't hindered Mr. Carter. He probably thinks it's just the Christian thing to do to presume to know the hearts of scores of thousands, perhaps millions, of Americans, whether or not he can cite any real facts to support his claims. Maybe he's just doing "research" for another "book"? At least the media which have been covering Mr. Carter's numerous allegations and bald assertions of baseless fact haven't been chiding him for being a Christian. Or, maybe, because of the complete inconsistency of Mr. Carter's charges with anything even remotely corresponding to Biblical morality, they've decided that he couldn't possibly be a follower of Christ.

The tongue is a deadly fire, indeed. We may not be able to prevent the scorched earth comments of the terminally knuckle-headed, but at least their stupidity is a good warning to the rest of us: make sure to get grace in gear before you engage your tongue.

T. M. Moore