It hurt.

To read, let alone publish the words of a local man who utterly hates his president wasn't easy. The writer referred to President Obama as the "thing in the White House." He called the president a traitor - a conclusion the writer is, alas, not alone in having reached. He did not call Obama a terrible president or an incompetent leader; he dehumanized the president of the United States by calling him a "thing."

It hurt to publish those words, but denying the writer a few column inches of cheap newspaper space to express himself would have hurt more.

Was our decision to publish his opinion influenced by the fact that he identified himself as a veteran who saw active duty in Vietnam, who experienced first hand the devastating effects of incompetent or self-serving leadership? Perhaps. If anybody has earned the right to speak or write inflammatorily, it is someone who has put his life on the line for those of us who peck away peacefully at keyboards in newsrooms across this great land of ours. We owe him and every other veteran more than our gratitude; we owe them our lifestyle, if not our very lives.

But all Americans have a constitutionally guaranteed right to say what's on their mind, whether or not we agree with what they say or how they say it. Sometimes there is a fine line between hate speech and ascerbic verbiage, and we admit we don't always know precisely where that line exists. We only know that the volume and intensity tends to peak around election time.

That's a reminder of how fortunate each and every one of us is. To live in a country that not only allows the freedom of expression but encourages it - through the ability to select our leaders and then write letters to the editor about how stupid those who disagree with us must be - is more than an innate right. It's a gift; a gift that was paid for by every veteran who has ever served this country.