Although I'd always heard about it, it had never happened to me. Until it did.

A dispiriting truth now well-known is that Trump haters happily and without sound reason fling personally destructive character smears.

Doubtless, some who falsely hurl horrible epithets do so with the dirty hope of ending conversations. No one wants to be identified as a bigot. And some innocent persons, fearing such negative social branding, retreat into silence rather than contest ideas. 

Totalitarians love quiescence; it makes undemocratic domination easier.

Recently, a person I know but with whom I have little in common, politically, challenged my defending "white supremacists'" free speech rights, but criticizing NFL players' national anthem kneeling. The obvious and sickening implication was that I somehow sympathized with the content of noxious speech.

Rather than marshalling exonerative evidence, I'll simply borrow a line from Hitchens: "That which has been asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."

Understanding the difference between one's speech rights during private as opposed to company time is crucial here. Support for the rights of any given voice, though, does not indicate sympathy for thoughts it might reflect.

Persons who would seriously examine bigotry and expunge it from our shared American culture must acknowledge that some differences of opinion are legitimate. No one "owns" the issues involved, nor is it reasonable to arbitrarily denounce as 'haters' all who see matters somewhat differently.