Protest Over Sign Is Threat to Liberty

Gary Shaw would not be having problems with his neighbors or the Sheriff’s Department over his allegedly obscene sign if, instead of a deputy sheriff’s, the name on the sign was Saddam Hussein’s.

What we have here is folks in a typically right-wing neighborhood getting upset because someone is criticizing the forces of governmental authority. I don’t hear of any problems with the numerous anti-Saddam or anti-Iraq bumper stickers, T-shirts, etc., that use far more explicit language than Shaw’s perfectly legal comment to a cop.

That Deputy Dist. Atty. Bradford E. Stone can attempt to make the connection between the unquestionably physical danger posed to the general public by yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater with Shaw’s right to publicly say things we don’t like shows just how far the Reagan-Bush mind-set has gone to destroy civil liberties and individual thought.

MICHAEL DAVIDSON, Studio City