To the editor:

What has happened to our very livable “moderate Kansas”? Proudly founded as a free state and, for the years I have been here since the end of World War II in 1945, it has been a very fair moderate state that produced Dwight Eisenhower who knowingly told us to be politically vigilant and guard against the rising power of the “military-industrial complex.”

As a state we have remained “moderate Kansas” with both Republican and Democrat leadership, a state neither far right nor left and a good mix of wealthy, middle class workers and working poor — always helping those who, through no fault of their own, could not help themselves. Now it seems we have become a state in turmoil and radical discontent.

How has this affected your lives? The very idea of removing, under extraordinary circumstances, the voting rights of most very poor, many elderly and those simply to disgusted to vote should be waving a big red flag. Declaring war on all moderate Republicans who have long been the backbone of the party here in Kansas should also alarm us.

Turning “liberal,” a word used positively by Eisenhower himself, into a expletive and the domination of the judiciary by executive and legislative branches should reawaken even those planning not to go to the polls and exercise the only power they have left to change these circumstances in a state we all love. It’s all the chance you have to be heard or prepare for worse.