To the editor:
During his June 19, town hall meeting in Ellinwood, U.S. Senator Roger Marshall extracted a round of applause from the audience as he decried the “radical and liberal agenda” of his political opponents. Radical means large changes from tradition. Liberal means acting however one wants to.
Over 50 court cases, including the 6 to 3 conservative majority U.S. Supreme Court, and former President Trump’s own Attorney General Barr all determined that President Biden’s election victory was fair and legal. Despite this unprecedented validation of a Presidential election, an audience member said they thought the opposite. Marshall did not explain how or why he thought his own knowledge of law, and power of judgment was superior to that of all of these judges serving in our court system, but he said, “Personally I believe ...” that the courts were wrong.
For this audience member and any of us who may be tempted to think the same, Marshall’s message was to simply say, “Personally I believe.” His message was to substitute cable news media, talk radio and social media posts for our court system’s standard of the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Ending trust in the court systems instituted by our U.S. and state constitutions is an extremely radical act. Deciding we as individuals are empowered to reject court decisions is an extremely liberal notion.
Marshall told the audience that the Republican party is making voting easier and cheating harder.
On Jun. 18, 2018, a U.S. District Court ruled against then Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s voter registration law. In court, Kobach stated 43 noncitizens registered to vote and 11 of them voted since 2000. Between 2013 and 2016 more than 35,000 Kansas residents were unable to register to vote due to the voter registration law. The law resulted in over 3,000 residents not voting for each illegal vote cast. Kobach’s plan to use driver’s license renewals for registration failed. His plan to verify citizenship for registration through the Office of Vital Statistics failed. His department’s online notification of registration status failed. His vision of a seamless system failed.
Marshall stating his party is making voting easier while it actually makes it harder is an extremely radical act. That a legislature or secretary of state should prevent 35,000 people from registering to prevent 11 illegal votes is an extremely liberal notion.
An audience member asked Marshall to provide them information about critical race theory so they could be well informed about CRT and fight the teaching of CRT in our schools. Marshall told the audience member that is what they needed to do. He did not inform the audience member that CRT is not taught in our public schools. He then said we need to elect local non-partisan positions like school board members based on political ideology, that we need to hire superintendents based on political ideology and there are teachers who do not have the ideology that he thinks they should have.
Marshall calling on us to end our long-standing tradition of keeping political party bosses and the political propaganda industry out of our local elections is an extremely radical act. Stating that his judgment of a person’s political ideology should determine who teaches our children an extremely liberal notion.
Just one more stop on one more day of the Marshall radical and liberal messaging campaign.
John Sturn
Ellinwood
