What has happened to America, our great and beautiful country that has given the world the ideals of liberty, freedom and human decency enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution?

With the history of slavery overcome by Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment our black fellow citizens had still to endure a long journey of oppression and racial discrimination until they finally achieved equal rights as American citizens.

The election of Barack Obama as the first African-American president has proven to us and the world that this country is capable to live up to its ideals and promises.

But our present era of legitimate political dissent has now degenerated into vulgar name-calling, irrational emotional outbursts, insults and expressions of disrespect for our president.

We and an astonished world are witnessing displays of political signs and posters at town hall meetings and mass rallies with images of swastikas and hammer and sickles, an Obama face with a Hitlerian mustache, accusing Obama to be a Nazi, Marxist and Communist, all at the same time.

Having experienced as a child and young adult, for 12 years each, Nazis and Communists in Germany firsthand, I can assure my fellow Americans Obama is neither Nazi nor Communist — he is a great American.

That’s why I voted — as a Republican — for President Barack Obama.

Klaus D. Kuck, Lewiston