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Friday, August 21st, 2015

The Kansas Experiment

Author:     CHRIS SUELLENTROP
Source:     The New York Times Magazine
Publication Date:     AUG. 5, 2015
 Link: The Kansas Experiment
Stephan:   If you read SR regularly you know that I am following a number of Red and Blue value states studying their social policies and comparing their social outcome results. Here is an interesting essay on one of those states, Kansas, that pulls back the curtain on the thinking of grass roots Republicans there in a way I have not previously seen. It is not polemic merely human, and that is what makes it interesting -- and, to me, rather sad.
The author’s uncle, Gene Suellentrop, a six-year Republican member of the Kansas House of Representatives (and an ally of Gov. Sam Brownback). Credit: Holly Andres/The New York Times

The author’s uncle, Gene Suellentrop, a six-year Republican member of the Kansas House of Representatives (and an ally of Gov. Sam Brownback).
Credit: Holly Andres/The New York Times

When I think of my uncle Gene, I think of a man who, late into the night at a particularly boisterous family wedding, would flatten his palms against the dance floor, extend his body parallel to the ground and then begin to undulate his legs and torso in a move known as the worm. Or I think of how, even later that same evening, he would agitate for a midnight meal at a diner in west Wichita, Kan., called the Golden Bell. Or of how, in his more abstemious workaday life, he left the family business — a small bank based in Colwich, a town of about 1,000 people in south-central Kansas, where he […]

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