Letter to the Editor: Failing Berglund’s Litmus Test for Community Purity

This is in response to Mr. William Berglund’s letter in the April 5 edition of the Pulse. As one of “those” transplanted Illinois residents who moved to Sturgeon Bay because of its intoxicating beauty and charm, I am relieved that I don’t pass Mr. Berglund’s litmus test for purity in the community.

As the erstwhile head of the Door County Republican Party, Mr. Berglund takes umbrage with anybody who moved here from the greater Chicago area and brought with them, apparently, liberal or progressive ideas that run contrary to his own narrow and provincial ones. In his view, we recent additions to the city (if 11 years and counting constitutes “recent”) migrated here to escape “the policies of the Democrat (sic) Party that has ruled Illinois for many years.”

Aside from the fact that there is no such political organization as the “Democrat Party” (unless Mr. Berglund is waxing nostalgic for the good old days of “Tailgunner” Joe McCarthy, who coined the term as a partisan slur back in the Great Old ’50s), he is also out-of-touch as to what is going on in Illinois politics. It is hardly a one party state, as Mr. Berglund would have Wisconsin be. Several recent governors – good, bad, and corrupt – hail from the Republican side of the political divide, and have contributed in their own indelible ways to the fiscal problems of the Prairie State.

As to whether Mr. Berglund truly believes that the actions of the Republican Party in the state and county are both benign and politically ecumenical, preserving Wisconsin in general and Door County in particular as the “fun, pretty place that so far has not succumbed” to shady politics, he hasn’t been paying attention to what’s been going on in his own back yard.

Mike Orlock

Sturgeon Bay, Wis.