To the editor:

I write to commend the Journal-World’s editorial board for its fine, thoughtful editorial of Aug. 16, “Who’s the real enemy here?” I could not agree more. I only wish that all Kansas members of the Trump party would ponder its timeless warning. The free press is NOT the “enemy of the American people,” and we should all be wary of anyone, especially one seeking or holding high public office, who asserts the dangerous, un-American position that it is.

“If there is freedom, folly will die of its own poison, and the wisdom will survive,” wrote Kansas editor William Allen White in his Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial, “To An Anxious Friend” (Emporia Gazette, July 27, 1922). “That is the history of the [human] race. It is proof of man’s kinship with God. . . . This nation will survive, this state will prosper, the orderly business of life will go forward if only men can speak in whatever way given them to utter what their hearts hold — by voice, by posted card, by letter or by press. Reason never has failed men. Only force and repression have made the wrecks in the world.”

Virgil W. Dean,

Lawrence