To the Editors:
It’s tough to be on the losing side of a vote. It hurts. We want to lash out. We are sure that we are the sensible ones and that the opposition must have deceived the voters, might even be corrupt.
It takes moral courage to accept the decision, to recognize that the personal attacks and the bitterness they express do more harm to our sense of community than any town meeting decision, no matter how it turned out.
As a starting point we could try to understand that the arguments on our side have a better chance of being heard if we show that we show respect for the motives of the other side; that the writer of an opinion column has a right to his opinion, even when we disagree, and that the moderator of a town meeting who is enforcing the rules is not doing so out of bias.
We are still a small town. We do not have a Tammany-like political machine. The members of our town boards, who spend many hours of volunteer time serving us, have the same motives that we have — to do what is best for our the community. They are our neighbors.
Louise Herot