To the editor:

We need all three: education, liberty and democracy. Free people think (education), then speak (liberty) and finally vote (democracy). Thus we govern “us,” ourselves, from the bottom up, without the guiding hands of theocrats and aristocrats. The idea of democracy is that “we the people,” the herd of sheep (common people), elevate ourselves (through education) to think and act (vote) for ourselves without need of shepherds (priests) or dogs (nobility) to guide and guard us. The Enlightenment idea was that enlightened people can govern themselves.

But, what if we become unenlightened, uneducated? Does it still work? Do we lose the right of liberty and the power of democracy? Can the ignorant remain free? If we become stupid, will the shepherds and the dogs return? When we turn our backs on science, reject knowledge, do we also abandon liberty?

Have we funded our public schools and universities? What of burdening our children with collective tuition debt exceeding the entire national credit card debt?

Yet each day we become more dependent upon technology created by the science many politicians attack. Are these doubters of evolution honest; do they really distrust science?

A Shawnee Mission East High School girl, while listening to the Kansas governor tweeted “#heblowsalot,” whatever that means. Using technology based upon a science he’s spurned, the governor watches his people on Facebook and Twitter to know what they say about him.

The tweet, he decrees, was not “respectful.” So the girl is told she must apologize. Are you worried yet?