A year after the insurrection, Sen. Jerry Moran could stand on principle and safeguard our nation

The Kansas Reflector welcomes opinion pieces from writers who share our goal of widening the conversation about how public policies affect the day-to-day lives of people throughout our state. David Norlin is a retired Cloud County Community College teacher, where he was department chairman of Communications/English, specializing in media.

Dear Sen. Moran,

I address you not as Jerry, but as SENATOR Moran. You are a Kansan, but in your position, you are more than just “Jerry,” the personal connection you have long, and commendably, cultivated. Your newsletter constantly mentions people you speak with on your Kansas visits. Those connections can serve you well.

Jan. 6, 2022, however, was not just any day. You are not just Plainville-grown and Fort Hays State and University of Kansas-educated Jerry; you are SENATOR Moran, with all the power that implies.

I can only assume, and hope, that you listened, uninterrupted and reflective, unshaped by commentators, colleagues or staff members, to President Joe Biden’s address to the country on Thursday. I hope his appeal resonated.

If you are to fulfill your oath and vote for all people in this country — not just the most strident shouters, funders or voters (slavishly adherent to self-interest and the party line) — you need a course change.

Kansas’ other senator is a lost cause, a man who has demonstrated over and over his imperviousness to fact and reason, and who voted not to certify the last election’s results. To your credit, you at least did that.

It is that strain of conscience I appeal to. For the most part, you have merely echoed that party line for Kansas and the country. There is little in the grand scheme that has distinguished you from the pack. Most of your statements are predictable, ideological, and — all due respect — unremarkable.

Political commentator, and former director of the Robert J. Dole Institute for Public Service and Public Policy, Burdett Loomis said a few months before his death that you are the only member of the Republican Kansas delegation offering some hope for reason and conscience (he wrote about it here). Will you live up to that, or fail us and the country whose constitution you swore to uphold?

We are at the precipice of an America gone over the cliff, an America where violence substitutes for the vote, where sheer rage and firepower overcome reasoned discussion and unity. After last Jan. 6, at least eight Kansans now face charges for bringing violence to the Capitol, threatening you, among others.

This at a time when climate chaos, the end of easy energy, the breakdown of institutions, and the need for sweeping change and de-growth demands leaders of vision. The present virus of aberrant amnesia continues to condemn us to worse suffering. Only with insightful and courageous leadership will we survive, let alone thrive. You are positioned to be that leader.

This is the put up or shut up moment. Will you fulfill the image of leader and voice of the people you have so carefully cultivated? Will you be a uniter, not a divider? Or will you simply fall into line, becoming yet another tired ideological voice of a party now forever branded by fealty to a failed tyrant?

The needed course change starts with support of the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act.

Only the ballot can overcome the power of the bullet. Yet your party has had neither courage nor conviction to support it. When the party fears the vote, the party fears Democracy itself. Sad, sad.

Kansas is seldom mentioned in the national press, except for fawning references to red slippers, wicked witches, wizards, and wheat. The South has even stolen our reputation for tornadoes. That any mere politician could have an effect on the nation as a whole is laughable to them. We are so predictable that we’re as much a footnote to history as Mississippi.

You could change that.

My appeal to you, however, is not for fame, but for conscience. For decency. For democracy. Listen to the president, if not to me. We can no longer stand for a not-so-luminous past, reinforced by political parties and protective armor.

You could win an election and lose not just a state, but a country and a world. You could lose an election and by example, make it a better world than any would have imagined on Jan. 6, 2022. Or you could win on both counts.

All of our actions speak volumes. But your actions — and words — are a bullhorn, senator. Even soft-spoken statements from you speak louder than any other regular Kansan. There’s no avoiding the implications of your voice for all creatures on the planet.

Do the right thing. Not just for Kansas. Our country needs you!

Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.