“All men are created equal,” Thomas Jefferson declared in his notice to England to get lost.

Abraham Lincoln borrowed that phrase of national dedication for his Gettysburg Address in introducing this powerful message: “Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”

Robert Kennedy said in 1964 that, “President Kennedy’s favorite quote was really from Dante, ‘The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in time of moral crisis preserve their neutrality.’” (It wasn’t from Dante’s Inferno but from a similar work.)

Three presidents, three statements for the ages.

And now we are engaged in a great moral crisis of our time — whether this nation, so conceived in liberty, can endure an overt attempt by the neo-Nazis, KKK and white supremacists to remake our country in Hitlerian hate. The neo-Nazis want a return to the death camps, the KKK wants to put blacks “back in their places,” and the white supremacists want a return to lily-white rule.

Will you maintain your neutrality in this great moral crisis? Will you embrace President Trump’s shameful acceptance of this threat to American values? Or will you stand up and be counted to fight this outrage?

JOHN STROBEL

Kootenai County