Admiring those who don’t agree

To the editor:

Being a Democrat does not prevent me from admiring the contributions of people who identified elsewhere.

Great contributions were made by some Republicans, such as Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Bob Lafollette, Jackie Robinson, Margaret Chase Smith, and Muriel Siebert, a stockbroker who was the first woman to hold a seat on the New York Stock Exchange.

They also were made by socialists such as Frank Baum (who gave us “The Wizard of Oz”), Mark Twain, Margaret Sanger (the founder of Planned Parenthood who went to prison and overseas exile for supporting the right of women to use contraceptives), and Helen Keller (who triumphed over her combined inability to see, hear and speak, and become a prominent political activist). 

Also Albert Einstein, Dorothy Day (American founder of the Catholic Worker Movement and soon to be recognized by the Roman Catholic Church as a saint), and the founders of the Kibbutz movement that led to the creation of Israel, including Joseph Trumpeldor, who died in 1920 defending an early Jewish settlement in a hostile part of Palestine.

ALAN SAKS

CORRECTION: Dorothy Day is the American founder of the Catholic Worker Movement. A letter to the editor in the April 27 edition of the paper stated a different name.