Letters on Confederate flag, ACA lawsuit, ISIS

Flag debate is a distraction

We are losing touch with the real racial problems we have in our nation with all this concentration on the Confederate flag. By all means, take the flag down and put it away. But don’t think for a minute that will solve our systemic problem of racial inequality. Racial prejudice will still exist with or without that flag.

White privilege must be admitted and addressed to begin the honest and real work of racial reconciliation. Dwelling only on ridding ourselves of public displays of the Confederate flag is a distraction much more than a solution.

Raise white flag

No more whistling “Dixie.” No more gray pants. No more rebel yells. Any woman with “belle” in any part of her name will have to change her name. Anyone named “Dixiebelle” will be arrested.

This is the logical extension of banning the Confederate battle flag from Wichita’s Veterans Memorial Park. We need more tolerance, not less. I don’t like old people but I put up with them. The same with firecrackers illegally shot off in the city, and some Supreme Court decisions.

If you sit back when people go after a group’s cultural identity, don’t expect help when they go after yours.

And if the decision comes down to permanently remove the Confederate flag from the park, we might as well raise a white one in its place.

Cynical lawsuit

A letter writer tried to make the case that because of the Obamacare decision, “words no longer have meaning” (June 30 Letters to the Editor). The writer did this with words that, according to him, have no meaning.

The case should never have reached the U.S. Supreme Court because, at most, it was based on a drafting error or a typo that would limit subsidies only to people signed up through state exchanges. Everyone in Congress knew that the intent was to have insurance coverage for as many people as possible. Even Chief Justice John Roberts argued the bill would be implausible if people couldn’t get subsidies through the federal exchange, which covered 34 states. That was clearly never the intent of the bill.

The only precedent at stake in this cynical lawsuit was the fact that millions of working poor might have lost their health care coverage. Anyone wanting that is full of “jiggery-pokery.”

ISIS a cancer

It’s incredible that Western democracies allow the Islamic State to bring the fight to our soil. The financial, human and social cost will grow like a cancer if the fight isn’t fought on its territory.

Civility is being threatened worldwide. Homegrown terrorist agents will increase to an “uncontrollable” level. Western democracies possess the moral right and the power, but do nothing as the human cost mounts and becomes unbearable. What is the endgame?

This story was originally published July 8, 2015 at 7:05 PM with the headline "Letters on Confederate flag, ACA lawsuit, ISIS."