Shelter Island Reporter editorial: Agreeing to disagree

Reporter editorials have praised Representative Lee Zeldin (R-Shirley), the Island’s representative in Congress, for his strong voice on local issues that can make a difference.

He has been unwavering in opposing helicopter noise strafing the Island and other East End communities, making our case with the Federal Aviation Administration. On Common Core educational standards he’s been even better, introducing the Zeldin amendment that ensures no school district is penalized for opting out of the one-size-fits-all curriculum imposed on educators.

We applaud him again for standing his ground and raising his voice on these issues. We can’t, however, agree with him when it comes to American foreign policy or guns.

Mr. Zeldin has pitched his tent squarely in the far right wing camp of his party. Some say there’s no other place for a Republican to settle these days, but they’re wrong. Congressman Peter King (R-Seaford) has a long record of conservative positions, yet knows when ideas are not just wrong, but crazy.

Mr. Zeldin had been in favor of letting people on U.S. terrorist watch lists buy weapons. After a deafening public outcry, he took cover, sponsoring a bill that would allow those people to get guns if they’re not stopped by a court order. This was in opposition to Mr. King’s legislative initiative preventing those sales automatically.

It’s not the first time Mr. Zeldin got into lockstep with the gun lobby. As John Henry, a former Times Review staffer, wrote in an opinion piece recently, “Consider his stand on the SAFE Act, the landmark legislation enacted in Albany soon after the 2012 Newtown, Connecticut massacre, that expanded the state’s ban on assault weapons and contained measures to keep guns away from the mentally ill.”

Mr. Zeldin was a state senator when the bill passed by a two-to-one margin with eight of nine GOP senators voting in favor of passage. Serving at the time in the military reserve, Mr. Zeldin didn’t vote, but was firmly against restricting assault weapons.

Mr. Henry noted that Mr. Zeldin “opposed the law because it didn’t strike ‘the proper balance’ between targeting illegal guns and those who use them, and preserving Second Amendment protections for law-abiding gun owners.”

Proper balance? We’ve seen tap dancing around an issue before, but this is Fred Astaire-worthy.

When it comes to diplomacy, it appears that Mr. Zeldin thinks it’s a dirty word. As Reporter columnist Karl Grossman has pointed out, Mr. Zeldin trashes the nuclear arms treaty with Iran at every opportunity, reminding anyone who will listen that the Iran is our enemy. But an undeniable truth of foreign affairs is that you don’t have to negotiate with your friends.

Remember President Reagan taking the legendary “walk in the woods” with Premier Gorbachev of the Soviet Union? Hammering out a deal with what appears to be an implacable enemy changes history for the better.

We can agree to disagree with some of Mr. Zeldin’s positions, especially one that he voiced in January: “The one-percenters we all should be most concerned about are the ones who disagree with me …”