Dear Ann Coulter,

I couldn’t help but notice your commentary on soccer right before the United States vs. Germany World Cup match yesterday. I stared at my screen in wide-eyed disbelief after a coworker sent me a link to something I was sure The Onion was behind. It shouldn’t have been much of a shock when I saw your name pinned to it, but all the same, I raised a hearty “hear hear” when my roommate called you a scourge on society last night.

Since you couldn’t be bothered to research the topic of your ignorance (the level of which is astounding and unmatched, by the way), I thought I’d help you out. My father always taught me to help those less fortunate than I, and since you seem bereft of reason, compassion and Google, I’m going to go ahead and consider this my civic duty.

This country wasn’t built on shutting out foreign concepts. Luckily, it’s still hardly affected by your hate-mongering blather. Unless, of course, you’re the world’s greatest satirist. If that’s the case and you have a huge “JUST KIDDING” announcement to make, good for you. You had literally everyone fooled.

For now, I’m going to assume you’re actually serious, though.

Does soccer have some mishaps? Of course it does. Everything in the world does (see: your entire career), but if you bothered to take a closer look, you’d see that soccer does more good than your xenophobic sense of “moral decay.”

Take Luma Mufleh and the Fugees Family — a soccer and education-focused nonprofit dedicated to children survivors of war. These kids come from over 24 countries torn apart by war. They are of different backgrounds and different religions, yet through soccer, they’re able to take those differences off the table and find a sense of unity and camaraderie. The Fugees take the predisposed animosity between cultures and forge something stronger with a central activity: soccer.

And Didier Drogba — the man who singlehandedly stopped a civil war in the Ivory Coast during the 2006 World Cup. He used his influence to ask for a ceasefire in the locker room. That’s right. He stopped a war. That minor detail must have slipped your mind.

Of course, there’s the smaller scale stuff. Here in Portland, we have this little thing called the Timbers Army. It’s the independent supporters group that’s technically unaffiliated with our MLS team, but use it as a platform to do great work in the community. Blood drives, building soccer fields in lower-income parts of town, more inclusive playgrounds for area children, name it. Sure, they’re great fans, but the work they do is greater and Portland’s a better place for having them.

Consider this: before the World Cup, it was estimated that 60 percent of humanity would tune in for even a few minutes. That directly translates to water cooler talk, casual conversations at the pub or in line at the supermarket. For me in 2010, it meant connecting with Germans in their native tongue crowded around a TV at a Las Vegas KOA.

The World Cup is a way to connect with other people. It’s a major cornerstone of human interaction. I could take a simple soccer ball anywhere in the world this second and engage in a pickup game with most anyone, language barrier be damned. Outside of food and water, I can’t think of another physical object that would spark that sort of connection. It’s not my fault that 60 percent of humanity wants nothing to do with you.

Just because you don’t understand or like something (ie. the traffic you hit this morning, people with a non-conservative bone in their bodies, kittens, etc.) doesn’t make it a piece of moral decay. It just makes you bitter, ignorant and impervious to the good in the world. And I’m sorry that that’s the closed-minded world you live in.

If you still choose to believe that these are examples of moral decay, that’s fine. The soccer community doesn’t want you anyway.