I am astonished that a reputable newspaper such as The Sun News would print a letter such as the one “Lincoln myth again perpetuated,” written by John Fisher of Myrtle Beach and contained in your Nov. 12 edition. Fisher seems agitated because a new motion picture is about to be released about Lincoln -- one which presumably will not subscribe to Fisher’s belief that Lincoln should be lumped in with Hitler, Stalin and Osama bin Laden.

Among the asinine allegations in his letter is Fisher’s suggestion that Lincoln and Karl Marx were pen pals. History shows us that Karl Marx wrote Lincoln congratulating him on his re-election and his having freed the slaves (a point of view that apparently offends Fisher). Marx’s letter was in the context of contrasting the difference between white Americans being able to choose their employer while slaves were held in captivity to deliver labor.

Lincoln never wrote to Marx. U.S. Ambassador to England Charles Adams wrote Marx (who was living in London) a benign response at Lincoln’s instruction in which Adams essentially said the civil war wasn’t about propaganda, but about fundamental rights written into the articles underpinning the United States. There are still people like Fisher out there wandering lost in the bulrushes of bigotry, but it does little for the reputation of a newspaper such as The Sun News to act as a megaphone for them.

The writer lives in Georgetown.