NEWS BLOG (WSAU) This is a follow-up to my blog from last Friday:  http://wsau.com/blogs/post/cconley/2012/oct/12/opinion-letter-editor/   Sometimes you stay and fight. Sometimes you don’t.

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Could you blame German Jews for leaving the country after Adolph Hitler came to power? (Remember, Hitler’s NSDAP party won elections in 1930.) Would you have stayed after Kristallnacht? The death camps hadn’t started yet…

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I know a gay family that lives in Central Wisconsin. One morning they awoke to homophobic graffiti scrawled on their house. They put their home up for sale and moved to a different neighborhood. Should they have stayed as an act of defiance? Or is there a higher value on having peace-of-mind where you live?

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Now consider someone who’s a political activist. They’ve worked for months supporting a candidate, investing their heart and soul. They’re emotionally invested. Their candidate loses. Should they move away?

I think most peoples’ answers to the three scenarios – the answers that would be in the mainstream – are: yes, of course; maybe; and absolutely not.

I bring this up as a follow-up to last Friday’s news blog. A letter-to-the-editor in the Wausau Daily Herald claims that a local teacher moved to Minnesota, in part, because Pat Snyder discussed her salary on-air. The teacher in question has posted a comment on the Daily Herald’s web site. She moved away because our community “no longer values teachers”. She claims to live on a lower salary in a small apartment in Minnesota.

Whether this is a rational decision is open for debate. I’m mildly concerned that someone who’d make a decision that’s at the margin of normal was teaching our children. I’ve lived in very liberal areas (the Hamptons on Long Island) and very conservative areas (central New Hampshire) – not once did I think ‘I’m not living here because these people are out-of-step with me politically.’ There’s something noble about standing your ground when there are political differences of opinion. There’s something a little off-kilter about running away.

Chris Conley
10/15/12