Vandals posted “hateful rhetoric” about President Donald Trump on a Virginia house owned by Housing Secretary Ben Carson.

In response, Carson is urging Americans to avoid the emotional conflicts caused by the far-left effort to tear down Confederate-era memorials.

Racist “hatred and bigotry unfortunately still exists in our country and we must all continue to fight it, but let’s use the right tools,” such as “people taking the high road,” he wrote.

Reconciliation “is the likely outcome if we just learn to be neighborly and to get to know each other,” Carson wrote in an August 16 post on his Facebook page.

In the post, he wrote:

Our home in Virginia along with that of a neighbor was vandalized by people who also wrote hateful rhetoric about President Trump. We were out of town, but other kind, embarrassed neighbors cleaned up most of the mess before we returned.

Before the vandalization of his Virginia home, he and his wife had bought a house in rural Maryland, Carson said. He continued:

Several years ago we bought a farm in rural Maryland. One of the neighbors immediately put up a Confederate flag. A friend of ours who is an African-American three-star general was coming to visit and immediately turned around concluding that he was in the wrong place. Interestingly, all the other neighbors immediately put up American flags shaming the other neighbor who [later] took down the Confederate flag. [Just like in the Virginia vandalization] less than kind behavior was met by people taking the high road. We could all learn from these examples. Hatred and bigotry unfortunately still exists in our country and we must all continue to fight it, but let’s use the right tools. By the way, that neighbor who put up the Confederate flag subsequently became friendly. That is the likely outcome if we just learn to be neighborly and to get to know each other.

On August 12, Carson commended Trump’s criticism of the white-power fascists and the progressive street fighters for brawling in Charlottesville. He wrote:

Let us pray for those killed and injured during the unrest in Charlottesville today, but also for our nation as it is being severely threatened by hatred and bigotry on all sides. I am pleased that the President overtly disavowed any relationship with white supremacists. We should all reject the forces of division on all sides of the political spectrum. There are radical terrorists in the world who want to destroy us and are coming dangerously close to acquiring the means to accomplish their goals. We must present a strong and united front in the future. If America is going to survive, we must not yield to the forces of evil. Remember what our money says: “In God We Trust.” Let’s act accordingly.

On August 13, just as Democrats slammed Trump for criticizing both brawling political factions, Carson wrote on Facebook:

It is sad watching the political pundits arguing about whether President Trump went far enough in condemning the instigators of the violence in Charlottesville . The point of my previous post is that we are falling into the trap of fighting ourselves when we have a much bigger enemy who is reveling in the state of confusion and discord that exist in our country. It makes their job of destroying us that much easier. Are we going to wake up or we going to participate in our own distraction?

Read it all here.