I don't know Brent Regan and have never met the man. That doesn't stop me from feeling sorry while he's under attack by the always righteous thought police though.

This is the same group of folks who relish describing every aspect of human endeavor in racial terms ... the first Black president, the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice, the first, second, third Black, Hispanic, Asian, et. to attain some lofty goal in life.

They're the first people who casually drop the fact of how many (insert your own ethnic group) friends they have. Every form I fill out wants to know about race; the census wants to gather as much racial information as possible. But let someone outside the liberal elite circle make any comment, no matter how innocuous, referring to race, or even one of the sacred words that sometimes describes race, and the elite thought police come to the forefront to prove how racially sensitive and enlightened they are.

They will determine what you meant and how you think. They will demand apologies for the offense that they feel was committed against THEM and their precious sensitivities. They will determine that Mr. Obama is black, even though he is actually 50 percent white and 50 percent black. How on earth does saying that Mr. Obama is black, which is how he chooses to define his race, and scary, which is not exactly a racial inference, become some kind of evil racial slur?

It becomes a racial slur because they SAY it's a racial slur. It becomes a racial issue because this bunch of pompous elites DECIDES that it's a racial issue. They think that they're the experts regarding what's racist and what's not because a large part of their existence is dedicated to looking for the hidden racists living amongst us. (I doubt they approach solving the issues of black poverty, out of wedlock childbirth, high school dropout rates, and black unemployment with the same fervor.) Whether or not Mr. Obama is black doesn't require a whole lot of debate, and whether or not he's scary really depends on if you're a believer in free market capitalism, or a believer in European style socialism. The comment wasn't that he was scary because he's black, but that's what the elites say Mr. Regan really meant. Sort of like all of those who say that the only reason anyone passionately disagrees with the president is because they're really closet racists.

They take a man's simple remarks, which are not offensive in the least (unless of course you're an Obama supporter), and then convolute them into a statement on the man's competence, intellect, and ability to perform his job. When Mr. Regan defends himself and puts forward a reasoned argument for fighting back against his accusers, his words are again twisted and used to prove what's really in his heart.

You probably have shaken your head in amazement in the past when you studied the Salem witch trials. Here's a perfect example of how fear and ignorance can be turned into power by those who know how to play the game. Human nature hasn't changed; the race police have found that there's power in making examples out of those they deem unfit. Ferret out all those terrible closet racists for us - don't let us forget that it's the accusation that's important - and that being accused equates to a guilt.

I am not offended by Mr. Regan's quip in the least. I am totally offended by the high and mighty effete snobs who don't leave home without a full deck of race cards in their pockets. Tomas D. Torquemada would be proud of you.

Tom Wilkinson is a Post Falls resident.