Every day I am offended by the crass and vulgar terms that President Trump uses in reference to those he regards as critics and enemies; e.g. "lunatic Leftists," "deranged scumbags." His relentless flow of dehumanizing rhetoric has become so normalized in our public discourse that there is scant reaction to his racism, misogyny, and vulgarity.  However they might have spoken in private, no prior President has ever used such crude and demeaning speech in public.

As a Quaker, I inherit a long legacy of using respectful terms of address. At a time of transition in English language usage, the
earliest Quakers refused to use the then plural form "you" — known as the "royal you" — when speaking to royalty, aristocrats, or magistrates.

They used the prevailing singular form "thee" and "thou".  When they did so in front of magistrates as a personal witness to equality, their jail time was more severe.

Over time the Quaker habit of "plain speech" — the use of thee, thou, and thy — has faded although it was still practiced by all four of my grandparents.

Such speech became an oddity — a part of regarding Quakers as the "peculiar people."  Yet at its core plain speech was an assertion of the equality of all persons in the eyes of God.

We are celebrating the 250th Anniversary of another such assertion, our Declaration of Independence. The formal copy of Jefferson's text was written out with a quill pen by my Quaker ancestor, Timothy Matlack. I feel that I have a special stake in full observance of the Declaration's fundamental premise that all persons are of equal worth whose dignity should be respected. Alas, President Trump profanes this sacred premise in his public speech every day.

James Matlack lives in Camden