What’s in a town motto?

In Alamogordo, New Mexico (pop.: 36,000) an Islamophobic trainwreck on the front page of the local paper, the second-most viewed and the most emailed article today:

Can a ‘good Muslim’ be a ‘good American?’

The Daily News recently carried two letters of extreme interest to the future of our country. One carried the title “Being Politically Correct Is Not Correct” and the other was titled “Lunatic Muslims Should be Rounded Up in Camps.”

We must disregard all this garbage as to whether it is politically correct, whether it is called religious or racial profiling, or our president and Washington politicians’ attempts not to refer to Muslims as terrorists.

I am sure this is not what some would call politically correct, but the real question is: “Is it the truth?” If it is, what are Americans going to do about it?

The penultimate paragraph of the editorial: “Therefore, after much study and deliberation, perhaps we should be very suspicious of all muslims in this country.”

According to Wikipedia, Alamogordo’s town motto is “The friendliest place on Earth.” Talk about false pride. Reminds me of the moral of a great Mark Twain story “The Man who Corrupted Hadleyburg“:

…it is easy to corrupt those who have never had their resolve tested.

Or as Twain put it so much better:

Why, you simple creatures, the weakest of all weak things is a virtue which has not been tested in the fire.