In “Onward from the election,’’ Laurence H. Tribe writes that he remains “deeply perplexed by how to empathize with those whose needs, priorities, and attitudes differ dramatically from my own without becoming complicit in the evil that those other priorities and values might yield.’’

With empathy, he would see that, although their patriotism values differ, their religious values differ, and their Bill of Rights values differ, their values, attitudes, and priorities are not evil. If President Trump were to act on some of his campaign promises and evil policies prevailed, then Tribe could, as he writes, be prepared to “use all my legal skills to fight that evil.’’

Until then, allow for the fact that good people can have different attitudes about what to value. To assume that evil results from those differences is bigotry.

Iris Kaufman

Peabody