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Editor's Note

A version of this editorial first appeared in the Aug. 18 edition of The Inquirer and Mirror, of Nantucket. It is republished with permission and modified for our local readership.

In the summer of 1943, as World War II raged, E.B. White wrote a small piece in the Notes and Comment section of the New Yorker magazine on the meaning of democracy. One item on his list of things that described democracy was a letter to the editor.

We could not agree more. It is as true today as it was back in 1943 that the letters to the editor section of the opinion pages is the marketplace of ideas. The very act of putting your thoughts in logical and readable order, keeping civil while you disagree and signing your name to it somehow pushes letter-writers above the social media fray of angry opinions.

Recent letters to the editor are like a cross-section of Berkshire concerns: a police chief flagging the need to invest in our youth; comments on the new contours of the annual Josh Billings RunAground; reader reactions to Eagle columnists commentaries; impassioned discussion of a residential tax exemption proposal in Stockbridge; praise for a Shakespeare in the Park production at The Common in Pittsfield.

The coming days opinion pages could very well have a series of letters arguing the opposite sides of all these issues. That is the whole point. Everyone gets their say. Nobody has to agree with us. Everybody, however, has to make their argument in a civil manner and sign their name to it.

And officials might be well served if they read the letters as the voice of the people. The controversial North Street redesign, the debate over where to house Berkshire women inmates, the localized effects of economic and political uncertainty all have been addressed thoroughly this summer in letters to the editor. Meanwhile, a massive influx of letters pertaining to a heated election season show a healthy share of Berkshire voters are engaged with these pivotal races that will shape the countys future. It also demonstrates a citizenry ready and willing to take up that great democratic tradition of civilly convincing their neighbors in the public square. Our leaders ought to be listening to those voices especially those seeking election or reelection to public office.

One type of letter is a reminder that life in a small community can often be different than life in other places: the letter of thanks. These simple thank-you notes for somebody who has helped the writer out in one way or another, often in some small way that did not seem small to the writer, are a reminder of how one should act and that life is not always about rabid political arguments.

E.B. White wrote his essay almost eight decades ago. It is easy enough to say it was a different time, but it is a helpful reminder of how we might still see ourselves reflected in the idea of democracy.

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time, he wrote. It is the feeling of privacy in the voting booths, the feeling of communion in the libraries, the feeling of vitality everywhere. Democracy is a letter to the editor. Democracy is the score at the beginning of the ninth. It is an idea which hasnt been disproved yet, a song the words of which have not gone bad.

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Our Opinion: Letters to the editor are democracy in action - Berkshire Eagle