To the Editor:

The recent protests outside U.S. Representative Jim Renacci's Wadsworth office on May 7 are an example of our guaranteed freedom of speech. But the "demand" by some of the protesters, mostly from left leaning organizations, that Renacci have an open town hall meeting is a pretty obvious attempt to further their rancor.

After last week's attack on New Jersey Representative MacAurthur at a town hall meeting by local constituents, why would any Republican want to provide another platform for the left's vicious attacks? Civility has all but evaporated with those who are carrying the torch for everything anti-Republican. We see it in the streets, on college campuses and now town hall meetings. These individuals have shot themselves in the foot, for no politician from either party would want to allow a free-for-all at any meeting. The meetings are, of course, covered by various media, and the results are posted on You Tube and other sites. In the case of MacAurthur, the most vitriolic and aggressive "comments" came from a local health care worker. He took over the meeting for over 10 minutes, never missing a beat, with an angry spew that sounded all too scripted after a while. Not a word was missed, not a break in the attack was made and he offered nothing to back up his claims of personal and family injury, but used them to rile up the other like-minded people at the meeting. He ridiculed MacAurthur with every slanderous word in the book. To MacAurthur's credit, he stood there and took it, never once offering a word in retaliation, even when the man used the left tested words like, "That orange haired baffoon" and "People are going to die" in his probably scripted howl over the new health care bill.

So, I applaud Renacci's decision to go one-on-one with any constituent. There should be civility at town meetings, not protest rallies. That man and several others cared little for the others there who wanted answers to their questions. Their goals were to disrupt the meeting, and use ridicule and slander against the Senator, goals right from the playbook of the radical socialist, Saul Alinsky.

David Lanara

Montville Township