Let me start by saying this: Political yard signs are stupid.

Campaign volunteers are eager to put them up, but they lose interest after the election, and the rest of us have to face the sight of a dejected loser driving around on Veterans Day, pulling up his or her own signs, wondering where they went wrong.

It’s just sad.

But guess what? Political signs are political speech, the exact same speech guaranteed in the First Amendment of the Constitution, the supreme law of the land.

Yard signs might be stupid, but freedom of speech is not, and you would think that everyone could agree on that.

But you would be wrong.

Betta Stothart, one of “three moms” from Falmouth who were caught tearing down Trump-Pence signs near midnight on Oct. 15, said that denying a neighbor his right to speech was an act of conscience.

Stothart told the Portland Press Herald that the group was offended by the number of Trump signs on Route 1, and she wanted to do something about it: “It felt to me like there was a small group of people really trying to impose their political ideology on the community.”

So an even smaller group of people waited until late at night and imposed their political views on the community. Ahh, democracy.

Stothart went much deeper into her reasoning in an op-ed that was published in The Washington Post on Tuesday.

The afternoon before the plot had been hatched was the day that the world heard Donald Trump, in his own words, brag about how he could assault women because “when you are a star, they let you do it.”

Stothart had her own story about sexual harassment. In her case, a powerful man tried to leverage his financial relationship with Stothart’s employer to force her to have a sexual relationship with him.

“I wanted to punish Trump and anyone who could support him,” she wrote. “Especially now, knowing what we know about his treatment of women.”

The column is a classic example of how you can be totally right and still so wrong. It’s not as much what she did (yard signs are stupid), but her pride in doing it that’s telling.

Humility is history. No one is ever wrong anymore.

I see this kind of thought mostly on the political right, because – because of course I do. That’s how I’m wired.

When Gov. LePage says that background checks are a secret plan to confiscate guns, or the minimum wage is the moral equivalent of murder, he’s making it clear that there is only one right answer. His.

You don’t just disagree with him, you are out to hurt people. End of story.

It’s harder to see the hypocrisy when it’s on your side, but some things are so blatant that they can’t be ignored.

Tearing down a sign is not a form of protesting its message – it’s denying the author’s right to speak. The only acceptable response to a sign you don’t like is putting up your own sign. Saying that your disapproval of Trump justifies silencing his supporters means that no one should ever be allowed to speak but you.

I don’t want to defend Donald Trump. I don’t want to stand up for the people who want him to be president. I don’t want to be silent about his history of abuse. I don’t want to give comfort to the millions of men who have demeaned and degraded women.

But if somebody wants to put up a bunch of stupid, pointless yard signs on a strip of grass by Route 1, the Constitution says, “Let them.”

It’s one of the ways in which we at least go through the motions of having a society where people freely express themselves and resolve differences without violence.

Attacking those traditions undermines our democracy, and when you keep doing that you can’t expect it to work.

Stothart has a court date after the election. I hope she gets a civics lesson.

Listen to Press Herald podcasts at www.pressherald.com/podcast.

Greg Kesich is the editorial page editor. He can be contacted at:

gkesich@pressherald.com

Twitter: @gregkesich

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