Conservatives won working and middle class with long game

Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority played a long and successful game to insert evangelical Christian priorities into Republican politics. Barry Thumma AP

The long plan

In the 1970s, conservatives hit on two talking points to unite them: school choice and abortion. They seem like unrelated issues, but that’s not the point.

In 1979, Jerry Falwell and his ilk founded the Moral Majority political organization and decided the fate of our country: It took them billions of dollars and decades to do it, but they succeeded in buying the Supreme Court with a long-term plan to clear the way for unlimited anonymous political spending. Now they can sit back to watch the unraveling of our country from their front-row seats.

The politicians and wealthy “conservatives” don’t actually care about education or abortion — those issues were picked specifically to organize evangelical Christians.

The point of the movement was and is to create a base of working- and middle-class folks who will fight for the billionaire class. It worked.

- Jess Piper, Hopkins, Missouri

Stadium reality

Every artist’s rendering of the proposed new downtown Royals stadium shows the stands full of people with crowds milling around inside and outside.

In reality, this would happen only during three occasions:

▪ Opening Day

▪ The All-Star Game

▪ The playoffs

Since our tightwad owner is unwilling to spend the money to obtain enough playoff quality players to make the playoffs, the most we can hope for is 10,000 to 13,000 fans in the new stadium on weekends, even fewer for weekday games.

How about drawing a realistic picture of what the stadium will look like with so few fans in attendance?

- Dick Davenport, Lee’s Summit

Police respect

After reading that some Shawnee City Council members objected to the city’s police doing outreach at KC PrideFest, my response was, “Good lord, what next?” (Dec. 15, 1A, “Emails show Shawnee Council upset with police recruiting at KC PrideFest”)

I was the grand marshal at KC PrideFest 2022 and was thrilled to see the positive police presence at the parade. I personally spoke to officers and thanked them for their participation, recruiting or not. What a positive image it was for all the young attendees. It showed respect for every resident of the metropolitan area.

We can never forget the violence against the LGBTQ community across this country and abroad. I say to those Shawnee Council members: Walk a mile in my shoes, because for the past 43 years, I have been out, loud and proud of my LGBTQ community and all our straight allies.

Then you might get the point.

- Lea Hopkins, Leawood

Parental voices

As we enter a new school semester, I continue to read about school policy decisions being made under the guise of parents’ choice, freedom or rights. This path needs to include increased opportunities for parents to share in these decisions. As a parent of school-age children, I find it increasingly difficult to voice my views meaningfully, and harder to gauge the opinions and priorities of those in my school community.

Our districts need additional platforms for robust discussions to assess the goals of the whole community. Without these discussions and data collection from families, leaders are not held accountable to making decisions based on the community’s priorities, and we are left without the opportunity to find compromise.

The only occasion for shared public input is school board meetings, which have become increasingly abrasive and unwelcoming. In addition to this, public comments are limited to a brief for-or-against explanation of a specific topic. These comments don’t start conversations, allow for questions or require any basis in facts. Often, supportive evidence for claims or expert testimony are missing in these meetings.

How can anyone make the case for parents’ choice without documented data to back them up?

- Jennifer Wilson, Prairie Village

Young cared

The news of Robert Stephan’s passing brought back a wonderful memory of how quickly Bob would take on anyone for the sake of a victim. (Jan. 3, KansasCity.com, “Robert Stephan, former longtime Kansas attorney general, dies at 89”)

Years ago, my mother wound up in a hellish nursing home. She had no insurance, so the hospital sent her to the home two days after she fell and broke her hip.

It was an abandoned barracks on the old Smoky Hill Air Base in Salina, Kansas. There were no screens on the windows, no sheets on the bed and no nurse in sight.

I passed a dozen elderly patients sitting, some tied to their chairs, at a bare table with a bowl of slop in front of them. When I found my mother, she was sobbing and thrashing in pain. No medication had been sent with her, and there was none at the facility.

I called for an ambulance and called Bobby Stephan, the attorney general in Topeka. He knew a friend of ours, and we had met him. I described what I had just witnessed. Bob informed the Kansas Highway Patrol. The home was shut down, and all the patients were transported to real nursing facilities.

So, you see, Bobby Stephan was a real hero in my book.

- Judy L. Young, Wichita

A bad sign

Republican members of the House of Representatives had two months to prepare to choose their leadership. Despite all this time, a speaker was not chosen until 15 votes had been taken.

Our country has so much more that needs to be done. Not being able to agree on the election of a House speaker does not bode well for us.

- Dennis Way, Roeland Park

This story was originally published January 8, 2023 at 5:00 AM.