May 24, 2013

  • The following letter was in the May 18, 2013 edition of the Wichita Eagle.

    READ CONSTITUTION

    There have been a large number of inaccurate or misleading positions in The Eagle and other media recently that contribute to ignorance in our community.

    One is the position of some separation-of-church-and-state zealots that only one provision of the First Amendment should be considered, with no regard for the other provisions. Banning references to God or religious holidays would violate the First Amendment and its intent. The founding documents include references to “nature’s God,” “their Creator” and “divine Providence.” Clearly, the founders who wrote and approved these documents had no problem recognizing God.

    Another common misconception involves the term “democracy.” The Constitution actually states in Article IV that “the United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of government.” I did not find any such reference to democracy and certainly no mention of using polling to justify support for a legislative proposal or policy.

    Finally, there is the assumption that earlier Kansas court decisions on school funding settle that the courts are the authority on amount of dollars for our public schools. But the “make suitable provision” portion of the Kansas Constitution allows multiple sources of revenue for school funding, such as bond issue money approved locally.

    Bob Wine, Wichita

    *****

    This is my rebuttal which was published in the Eagle on May 22, 2013

    NOT IGNORANT

    After reading Bob Wine’s letter to the editor, I may be one of those people he thinks of as being ignorant of the constitution. However, when he then refers to ‘nature’s god’, ‘their creator’ and ‘divine providence‘ he is culling these from the Declaration of Independence, not the constitution. The Declaration of Independence is not the basis of our government, or our laws.

    Legislatures of the late 18th century did not have the benefit of polls. However, in many areas there were newspapers that provided a venue for public discourse, and such discourse may well have provided insight into the popular mood of the public at large. Personally, I would like legislators to be aware of polls as part of their individual assessment, regardless of how they ended up voting. That, to me, is superior to lobbyists influencing legislative votes and corporations writing our legislative bills, ala AT&T

    Finally, this question. If a bond is proposed to help school funding in a specific community, and that bond proposal is rejected by the people, shall we just say: “Sorry Constitution. We gave it our best try.”

    John R. Maxwell, Wichita

    *****

    There is an opinion in this morning’s paper.

    “One of the best stories after the tornado in Oklahoma was of the teacher who said she started praying out loud to her students, even though she knew she wasn’t supposed to. Isn’t it amazing how your soul knows whom to turn to?”

    My response is that one shouldn’t pray to their students, rather their god. But that is merely nitpicking. The fact is that there would have bee others who prayed - some died, some were injured, some lost their friends and family members, many their houses and most of their worldly possessions.

    Religions began when forces of life and nature were too immense, and too over-powering; defying explanation. Being hopeless and hapless forces us to look outside of our own inadequacies in desperation. That doesn’t mean there is a god or gods, or any recourse or resource to be found, just that we know things are beyond our control.

    If there were a god who created everything, that god would have produced all the dynamic forces that we evidence in hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, and the like. Those forces would be beyond the intervention of said god.