Retailer’s Display of Communist Flag

* As a Vietnamese American, I am deeply saddened by the Vietnamese community’s response to the Westminster store owner who chose to display a Vietnamese flag and picture of Ho Chi Minh (Jan. 22).

Although I do not support his view, I firmly believe in his constitutional right to express it. Unlike the liberties available in the United States, the Communist party in Vietnam represses political speech and only permits state-endorsed points of view.

Many Vietnamese Americans left Vietnam. It is unfortunate that many of us flee repression in one country only to be the perpetrators of it in another.

HUNG VU

Garden Grove

* The pain is real, the anger understandable, the insensitivity certainly reprehensible.

Nevertheless, we fled a country where we were not allowed to think or to express ourselves freely. Yet in the land that gives us what we look for, we in turn do not allow others to think differently from us.

In the name of social order, dictators and autocrats seek to establish conformity and keep the status quo, to their advantage. Emotions are used to justify the means.

A politically mature community is one that allows all opinions to be expressed freely and peacefully and does not resort to the mob mentality to suppress others’ thinking, no matter how unpopular it is.

We’re still a long way from moral superiority.

HAI NGUYEN

Westminster

* On behalf of my brother veterans who can no longer speak, having paid the ultimate price to preserve our freedom, I would ask those who in the name of free speech support the Little Saigon shopkeeper who displayed a picture of Ho Chi Minh, while blatantly flying the Communist flag in his video store, not to confuse free speech with treason, giving aid and comfort to the enemy and inciting a riot.

The Communists are very adept in creating unrest, then using our laws to further their cause.

Make no mistake! The Communist ideology still calls for bringing the entire world under the red flag.

JERRY MAZENKO

Garden Grove