I remember hearing about “the Ugly American.” It was described to me as an American traveler who, having travelled to a country where the money exchange rate vastly in favor of the dollar, the American becomes a snob.

But now, one does not have to travel to a foreign country to see and experience the Ugly American. One only has to read the blogs of the Internet, for example, the Free Republic which recently posted and allowed to remain posted for days, racist comments about the Obama family. I’m talking about really ugly American language here.

It seems to me that Republicans (and I mention Republicans here because the Free Republic is a Republican blog) being the party of family values ought to shut down such blogs. In my opinion, family values include extolling all family values — things like honesty, civics, good citizenship, as well as other “moral values.”

I believe that you can’t be the party of family values if your only family value is who can marry whom or who can sleep with whom. It’s an all or nothing kind of value, and in the final analysis it seems that it’s a Republican lip service, not a real thing.

Michael Arnold

Bremerton