Joel Lipton, 10 years old at the time, wrote to Peanuts cartoonist Charles Schulz.

Fast-forward to this past February, when Lipton and his wife were cleaning out their closet.

[…]

“Dear Joel,” the letter reads. “I think it is more difficult these days to define what makes a good citizen then it has ever been before. Certainly all any of us can do is follow our own conscience and retain faith in our democracy. Sometimes it is the very people who cry out the loudest in favor of getting back to what they call ‘American Virtues’ who lack this faith in our country. I believe that our greatest strength lies always in the protection of our smallest minorities. Sincerely yours, Charles M. Schulz.”

“I’m sure it went way over my head as a kid, what he said in the letter,” Lipton tells me. “But I think now, in the time we’re living in politically, in this country… what he said about the people who hide behind American virtues, and about protecting our smallest minorities, I knew that could speak to a lot of people. To see that this came from this man, 50 years ago, and how important those words are today.”

Lipton posted the letter on Facebook, and before he knew it, it spread widely. At press time, it’s been shared over 12,000 times.

One of the many people who came across the letter is Jean Schulz, widow of Charles “Sparky” Schulz. “I continually find comic strips that could have been written for today’s audience,” Jean wrote upon learning of the letter.

Source: Charles Schulz’s Letter About Democracy, Discovered 50 Years Later | KQED