Dear Howard Harder and Dale Hedman,

I thank you for your responses to my series on Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. I respect the even-handed tone of your letters, a trait that seems to be disappearing from humans’ written correspondence.

I cannot add much to the points made by Mr. Hedman, other than the observation that I received little in the way of feedback about my Clinton columns. I gather most of the Cd’A Press readers agreed with my assessments. In contrast, my criticisms of Mr. Trump brought forth many negative comments, principally that I was piling on to Donald…even before I issued my Clinton skewer!

Perhaps the Trump supporters could have waited for my articles on Clinton before explaining to me that I was (a) a Democrat (which I am not), and (b) biased against Donald (which I am not).

In these six articles, the skewers into Donald and Hillary were of equal length and sharpness.

My goal was to raise the level of debate about these two candidates. To that end, I hope I succeeded, even if I am not quite as popular in my neighborhood and my community as I was before I wrote the pieces. Nonetheless, my wife and I are still giving our annual block party for the neighborhood. …And I thank the Cd’A Press for its courage to publish contentious journalism.

In relation to Mr. Harder’s letter, your analogy of the hammers is fair. There is a great deal of difference between a person who has routinely stepped over society’s thresholds of codes of ethics and the Rule of Law (Clinton, as listed in Mr. Hedman’s letter and in my articles), in contrast to a person who has not (as far as we know, Trump, with some disturbing incidents, explained shortly).

Mr. Harder, as regards to Hillary, I made the point above clear in my third piece. That is the reason I wrote at some length on how important it is for our leaders to honor and respect the codes of ethics and the Rule of Law. My articles on Hillary declared she violated these mores. I did not accuse Donald of routinely tramping these foundations of our republic, perhaps because I do not know as much about Donald as I know about Hillary, or perhaps because Donald has stayed away from these temptations of power.

Space limitations prevented me from going into other areas of the candidates’ behavior, such as the Clinton Foundation (that Mr. Harder mentioned) and Trump’s reneging on business contracts in Atlantic City and his mistreatment of Polish workers during the construction of Trump Towers. My articles were restricted by keeping them within the confines imposed by the format of a newspaper.

Nonetheless, I trust my articles emphasized that we citizens must place adherence to ethics and the Rule of Law above any other considerations. In this regard, I declared I could not side with Clinton. Because of Trump’s never-ending, reckless assertions, I also stated I could not side with him.

I wrote this series with the hope that I would engender thought and debate among our citizenry about this presidential race. The debate is contentious, but it is healthy. It has simulated long-dormant debates about the horse we Americans will ride into our future America.

For Mr. Harder, I would like to think if you had picked-up on my references to ethics and law, and my skewering Clinton forthwith, you would have changed some of the suppositions in your letter about my tack hammer treatment of Clinton. I thought these ideas, and Hillary’s violation of them, had me apply a sledge hammer to both candidates.

That said, there will always a difference of people’s perspectives about these issues. Pro or con, the comments from both of you were welcome. I wish more letters to the editor were as even tempered and well-written as yours.

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Uyless Black is a resident of Coeur d'Alene.