Tragic deaths reveal a culture of political division, lack of free speech| Opinion

It’s terrorism

The tragedy of the murder of Charlie Kirk is that freedom of speech is being severely threatened. The fact that many people have no clue who Kirk was proves how dangerous it is to speak your own mind. For some people, he had to be silenced because he had the charisma to relate with young people in college and in high school.

He was not trying to proselytize anyone. On the contrary, he welcomed a free and honest debate. He was not afraid of a difference of opinion. He was eager and willing to hash things out using words instead of bullets.

It is a crying shame that some people cannot tolerate members of the next generation being able to think for themselves and then exercise their free choice and their right to vote. It is outrageous how a dogmatic belief can become so passionate that it compels someone to kill a happily married father of two small children without remorse.

Where is the humanity ? An uncivilized act of murder is nothing more than domestic terrorism.

- Steve Shaw, Leawood

Resist hate

Charlie Kirk’s death is absolutely tragic, as were the deaths of Democratic Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband. Kirk leaves behind a wife and two kids. Rep. Hortman and her husband left behind two kids. I guess violence isn’t the answer, is it?

If you pray for Charlie Kirk, you need to pray for the family of Melissa Hortman. If you were saddened by the deaths of Melissa Hortman and her husband, you should be saddened by Charlie Kirk’s death as well and pray for his family.

But prayers aren’t enough. We are living in a culture of hate that I don’t remember experiencing before. We have to resist the hateful rhetoric and the spread of hearsay to support our own feelings. We’ve gotten to where we can’t recognize something as a tragedy if it happened to someone in a political party we don’t support and we don’t want people to think we support that party. That is tragic.

We could not be more divided, and it’s never going to get better unless we work harder to really see and hear people. What are we going to do about this together?

- Suzanne Garrett, Lee’s Summit

True colors

An open letter to Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe:

“Let the good of the people be the supreme law.” Sound familiar? “A true patriot will defend his country from its government,” as attributed to Thomas Jefferson.

When you were elected, many voters bought the car you were selling, thinking it was neither red nor blue but gray — an amalgam of points of view resulting in policy that shuns nobody and serves all. But you pulled a bait and switch. Little did the voters know, you sold us a new car stripped of seat belts and airbags, one that steers only to the right. A remote-controlled vehicle guided by the White House on a course of homage and service to the wealthy, putting the less fortunate increasingly and irretrievably behind in the rearview mirror.

The rich get richer, the hungry hungrier. But you lit the capitol dome in orange to highlight food insecurity. I suggest a new interior lighting scheme for the capitol: red bulbs for those complicit with policy and funding that enrich a very small percentage of the population in flagrant disregard for the real needs of the common man.

- Tony D. Cook, Fayette, Missouri

No honor

Donald Trump and his cronies will do whatever it takes to stay in power, including maneuvers to remove Missouri Rep. Emanuel Cleaver from his job and replace him with a flunky who will do as they direct. I’m embarrassed and ashamed that Gov. Mike Kehoe is conspiring to redraw the map in Missouri in a clearly racist move.

The Rev. Cleaver is a man of honor (one of only three ordained ministers in the House), so they must and will get rid of him. How shameful.

- James Mercer, Kansas City

Covered what?

The first sentence of Kansas House Speaker Dan Hawkins’ guest commentary “Why is Kelly putting Kansans’ SNAP benefits at risk?” is:

“The old adage, ‘The cover-up is worse than the crime,’ is commonly associated with the Watergate scandal and the eventual downfall of President Richard Nixon.”

When I read it, I thought, “Why in the world is he bringing up the Jeffrey Epstein case here?”

- Robert O’Rourke, Leavenworth

Health insurance

We are facing a public health crisis with direct economic consequences. Nearly 40% of residents at the facility I work for are living with diagnosed hypertension — a major risk factor for heart attacks and strokes. Their life expectancy is lower than the rest of Kansas, where we have only one physician for every 1,800 residents. These health challenges have downstream effects on our workforce participation, education outcomes and ballooning health care costs.

In a 2022 community survey, nearly half of respondents cited access to health care as one of their top three barriers to health. That’s not just a medical issue — it’s an economic warning sign. When people can’t access care, chronic conditions go unmanaged. That means higher emergency-room costs, higher Medicaid spending, lost productivity and deeper cycles of poverty.

As a health care provider, I can do only so much in the exam room. We need a strong, publicly funded health infrastructure to deliver wraparound services that improve outcomes and reduce long-term costs. That means investing in community health workers, health education programs and chronic disease prevention initiatives, all of which help reduce expensive hospital visits and support a healthier, more economically stable population.

Health investments are essential infrastructure.

- Stephanie Moss, Kansas City

Vaccine crisis

Multiple recent pieces in The Star point out the danger our nation is facing. As a physician, I was a board member of the Metropolitan Medical Society of Kansas City for 10 years, and members of the Kansas City Health Department attended every meeting and presented reports on their policies and activities. A collegial relationship existed between the groups.

I was appalled when it was announced that Florida will end all vaccine mandates and align its health care goals with those of U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Clearly, there was no input from any reputable medical society.

Where were these people when polio and smallpox were eradicated by widespread vaccination?

Without the benefit of vaccination, the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 infected 1 in 3 people, accounting for roughly 500 million infections worldwide and 50 million deaths or more. Vaccinations are a cornerstone of public health. The elimination of $500 million for development of mRNA vaccines, which saved countless lives in the COVID-19 pandemic, may coincide with Kennedy’s agenda, but it is a danger to our country.

We can only hope that science will trump the pervasive “alternative facts.”

- Douglas B. Bogart, Jacksonville, Florida