"Responsibly Defining Our Priorities"

[Please Note:  The following is a city of Parsons resident Public Mind article on the subject of Responsibly Defining Our Priorities, submitted 04/23/2023 to our local newspaper, the Parsons Sun, for use in the Sun's Opinion section . . . and inserted immediately after the below posting are "links" to scanned copies of the other writings therein made reference to.    And while the Sun chose not to publish the below article concerning School Security, . . . page 4 of the Opinion section of the Sun's Weekend, Saturday-Sunday, April 29-30, 2023 edition, . . . does include a lengthy For Kansas Reflector, 7.25" x 8," center-page,  pro-WOKE, pro-Medicaid Expansion, pro-Environmental Activists, pro-ESG legislation, anti-Fossil Fuel, anti-MAGA (Make America Great Again), anti-Republican legislature, etc., editorial titled, "In their paroxysms against 'woke' culture, state legislators wound our health and environment."]

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(Submitted to but not published in the Parsons Sun)

"Responsibly defining our priorities"

To the Sun:

Page 4—the Opinion section—of the Sun’s Weekend, Saturday-Sunday, April 22-23, 2023 edition includes an approximate 700 word article titled, “A new franchise name should be a priority for the Kansas City Chiefs this offseason.”  A For Kansas Reflector writing by Michael Esau, reportedly a communications coordinator and indigenous solidarity organizer at the Coalition to Dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery. Wherein the author states in part, “I work with the Coalition to Dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery, a movement of people working to repair the harm done by Christians to indigenous people.”

Now there’s a truly citizen-responsible and otherwise most fitting “priority” we can all enthusiastically rally around—i.e., “a new franchise name for the Kansas City Chiefs!”

On the other hand, the Sun could have chosen to use above said center-page print space to publish one or more local Public Mind articles—such as any one of my three recently submitted and Sun-declined similar-in-content articles on the subject of “responsible commonsense protection” of our school children and other education systems staff.  That is, protection from atrocities such as the recent March 27, 2023 mass murder of three young students and three adults at a Nashville, Tennessee school; the horrific massacre carried out on May 24, 2022 at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, where nineteen students and two teachers lost their lives; and the unthinkable others prior thereto.

Or, in lieu of a “new franchise name for the K.C. Chiefs,” the same print space could have been used to highlight fact-based information regarding other “priority” concerns, such as our out-of-control and unsustainable National Debt, now exceeding $31.7 Trillion; our unsecured U.S. border/illegal aliens crisis; wide-spreading crime; the death and other suffering from illegal drugs; and our nation’s ever worsening economic woes; etc.

But then again, there’s that good old team-spirited less stressful “feel good” that can come from being a part of a “priority” movement to at long last change the name of a sports franchise!   That opportunity to, for example, detach from any rational consideration that those “Gun-Free Zone” signs at our schools and elsewhere are but irresponsible “magnets” for attacks by evil-doers—those same demented individuals who time and again demonstrate that they could not care less about laws, ordinances, rules, regulations, policies, signage, and other shalt-nots.

Yes, folks, when it comes to what views to include in the Opinion section of a local newspaper; or how to best protect our educational institutions from mass murder; and how to otherwise most effectively protect and preserve the individual-liberty sustaining foundation blocks of our precious and ever-under-assault U.S. Constitutional Republic; etc.—it’s just a matter of responsibly defining our priorities!  —William James Moore Parsons, KS 04/23/2023.

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"Links" to articles referenced in above posting:

"Commonsense Security for Schools"

"A New Name for KC Chiefs"