Letters on GOP leaders, endangered species, support for Israel

Not representative of the people

Elected politicians are acting as individuals rather than representatives of the people.

Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., used to be pro-Kansas and very supportive. Today he is strictly anti-Obama rhetoric, and he stooped so low as to sign on with the GOP letter to Iran.

Gov. Sam Brownback refuses to talk of the elephant in the room that he created when he drastically reduced the taxes of businesses and the rich. Rather than reverse that action and be fiscally responsible, he has chosen to financially strangle education, roads and highways, and benefits for the less fortunate. He and his cronies refuse to accept decisions by the judicial system related to education and are rewriting the laws to fit their own agenda.

Secretary of State Kris Kobach loves power and generated a crisis of voter fraud, which he cannot document. The legislative sheep voted for his hidden agenda, apparently without doing any study on their own.

I am truly concerned for the future of Kansas and our country with such leaders. Why did only a small percentage of people vote? Look what you got. Will you vote in the next election? That is, if the powers that be have not taken away that option by then.

Odd-duck screeds

It must strike some citizens as odd that the Endangered Species Act, a conservation law signed in 1973 by President Nixon and seen as valuable by President Reagan, would today be under siege by our new conservatives.

Sedgwick County Commission Chairman Richard Ranzau and a host of far-right organizations see progress being halted and business stunted by having to accommodate animals that have been decimated to near nonexistence. Gov. Sam Brownback is appalled at having to accommodate the job-killing prairie chicken.

Ranzau is aghast at the cost of preserving spotted skunks and other malingerers on the endangered lists and can suggest some that he would delist (March 19 Now Consider This). That people who study animals and have done so for years have evidence to the contrary is just silliness to Ranzau. He does not base his opinions on evidence, just on what he feels to be true.

Is it possible that we may need a bit of humility here? Is it possible that we can live side by side with skunks, prairie chickens and other creatures and be better for it? Could it be that the ecological niche enjoyed by animals may be intertwined with the niche enjoyed by humans?

Maybe the attacks on these animals occur simply because of Nixon’s federal protection, and today’s hatred for all things federal. Maybe blaming stagnant job growth on regulations involving a skunk or prairie chicken might deflect attention from reality, which must be the rationale for these odd-duck screeds.

Why Israel?

The Eagle published a letter fretting over Israel (“Israel under siege,” March 18 Letters to the Editor). This is by no means the first such letter. Such sentiments in the letter, often boiled down to “stand with Israel,” are ubiquitous.

I’m uneasy with such sentiments, not because I necessarily disagree but because I question the reason for it. South Korea is also an American-aligned democracy in an equally precarious geopolitical position. However, I don’t see people proudly declaring that they “stand with South Korea” every time North Korea rattles its saber.

The reason is, of course, theological. South Korea is primarily atheist and Buddhist, and Israel is primarily Jewish. The religious basis of the Israeli state has a built-in appeal to people (dispensationalists) who otherwise couldn’t identify Israel and Iran on a map. Israel and its neighbors are thus not seen as individual, independent actors but cogs in a larger design – a design that I hold to be wholly illusory.

This is dangerous; theology is a terrible basis for foreign policy. Much of the American support for former South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem arose from his staunch Roman Catholicism, and look how that turned out. Not that Israel is Vietnam, but mixing faith and foreign policy never ends well.

This story was originally published March 22, 2015 at 7:05 PM with the headline "Letters on GOP leaders, endangered species, support for Israel."