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In “You Are Living in the Golden Age of Stupidity” (op-ed, Aug. 30), Lance Morrow notes, “You will have your own list, of course.” I accept his invitation and suggest a few additions:

1. Electing public officials who promise to do the opposite of their statutory duties, like district attorneys who refuse to prosecute “minor” or “nonviolent” crimes, which are in fact gross violations of public safety and civility. Examples include profane graffiti on St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, shoplifting an “allowable” amount (below $1,000) in San Francisco and engaging in arson, looting and destruction of public property across the country in the name of civil rights.

2. School-board and diversity officials who indoctrinate students in pseudointellectual theories targeting white supremacy (e.g., objectivity is a form of oppression) while themselves engaging in racial stereotypes and separatism.

3. Social-media platforms that censor dissenting views in the name of free speech.

And me? I’m guilty of my own stupidity. I root for the New York Mets.

Alan M. Schwartz

Teaneck, N.J.

Mr. Morrow may be on to something regarding stupidity. But he should tell us more about whence this affliction comes. We can consider three classic possibilities: Some are born stupid, some achieve stupidity and some have stupidity thrust upon them.

Scott FitzGibbon

Belmont, Mass.

I would like to add one more element to Mr. Morrow’s “Unified Field Theory of Stupidity”: the demise of debate. I used to engage, via email, in polite yet spirited debates with my leftist friends. Those debates no longer happen. Somehow name-calling replaced logical argument, and if you wanted your long-term friendships to survive, it was better to avoid politics altogether. You realized that because you lost a good friend during the George W. Bush years and another during the Obama administration and, God knows, a couple more with Donald Trump.

If a nation cannot bear the conflict and recriminations generated by a spirited debate of the ideology and proposals of its opposing parties, then insular stupidity is inevitable.

John Knoerle

Shorewood, Wis.

Anyone at any time throughout history could have made observations equivalent to Mr. Morrow’s. I’m sure that a bean counter could show that humans have committed an enormously greater number of stupid, bad things than good things. The bad is unexceptional, even boring.

I encourage Mr. Morrow to help us understand some of the rare good things that have happened throughout history. For example, how has the U.S. succeeded in forging a great, free nation out of immigrants from umpteen different, often warring countries such that people from around the world continue to want to join, even to the point of breaking our laws and taking chances with their lives to get in?

Stephen N. Miller

Encinitas, Calif.