Author Archives: Dwight D. Sutherland, Jr.
Paul Wilson: Race Card Trifecta
The racial animosity sweepstakes by local Democratic officials in conjunction with the Kansas City Star continues unabated… On February 14 twenty-two people were shot outside Union Station at the Kansas City Chief’s Super Bowl Victory Parade. One died and 15 … Continue reading
Dwight: ‘Has Anyone Here Seen My Old Friend Bobby?’
“All right, we are two nations.” – John Dos Passos A couple of months back, I had the distinct pleasure of spending the evening with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. He was in Kansas City for a conference … Continue reading
Dwight: War Is The Health of The State
Or, everything’s up to date in Kansas City (still)… Randolph Bourne was a radical journalist who was active during the time of the First World War. The phrase I used as a title to this post is from an … Continue reading
Dwight: More Racial Arson From The Kansas City Star
The Kansas City Star has a long, dishonorable tradition of race baiting… Following the lead of its founder – the bush league Citizen Kane known as William Rockhill Nelson – for three generations the Star delighted in patronizing the black … Continue reading
Dwight: Back To The Future
One of the most terrifying aspects of life in a totalitarian society is the way the State demands that loyalty to the regime and its ideology takes precedence over all other human bonds… In Stalin’s Soviet Union the government … Continue reading
Dwight: The Strange Death of Liberal America
The title of this post is a take-off on a book that was published in 1935 by George Dangerfield, “The Strange Death of Liberal England: 1910-1914.” A classic of political history, it describes how the Liberal Party in Great Britain … Continue reading
Dwight: ‘Forgotten Tales of Kansas City’
Flashback time… This book was published 10 years ago, but I only read it recently. I think every native Kansas Citian would enjoy it, as well as any adopted Kansas Citian who intends to learn more about their hometown. Each … Continue reading
Dwight: Redistricting Follies Much Ado About Nothing
One of the most overused bits of conventional political wisdom is….. That the decline in the number of seriously contested congressional races is a very bad thing. This is because overwhelmingly Republican or Democratic districts allow each party’s nominees to ignore … Continue reading
Dwight: January 6…That’s An Insurrection?
I read an amazing book over Christmas, “The Irish Civil War” by Timothy Pat Coogan and George Morrison… It does a masterful job of exploring how the present-day Irish Republic threw off British rule 100 years ago. It also illuminates … Continue reading
Sutherland: The 2020 Presidential Election; The Big Lie That Isn’t
The debate whether the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election was fairly conducted has been so bitterly and so viciously waged that it’s hard to see how the truth will ever come out… (It may take 50 or 60 years if the … Continue reading
Dwight: ‘Good Riddance’ *** Pastor Bob Checks Out
“I come to bury Pastor Bob, not to praise him.” “The evil that men do live after them.” (With apologies to William Shakespeare) I generally subscribe to the maxim “de mortuis nil nisi bonum” – concerning the dead, … Continue reading
Dwight: Déjà vu All Over Again
On the night of February 27, 1933, the Reichstag in Berlin, where the German parliament met, was set ablaze… Four weeks earlier Adolph Hitler’s Nationalist Socialist (Nazi) Party had formed a minority government at the request of President Paul Von … Continue reading
Dwight: The Coddling of the American Mind or…
How Good Intentions & Bad Ideas Are setting Up a Generation for Failure Of all the non-fiction books I’ve read on politics and social policy this one is at the same time both one of the most satisfying and yet … Continue reading
Hearne: Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Social Justice Yard Sign
They ubiquitous, they’re banal, they’re annoying… Perhaps you’ve seen ’em. If you live in the burbs – Brookside, Prairie Village, Mission Hills, Leawood, Platte City or Parkville -I think you know what I’m talking about. Those ubiquitous, post George Floyd, post riots, post … Continue reading
Sutherland: Useful Idiots – KC Edition – Mainstream Coalition Meets BLM
Mission Hills’ blow-dried Elmer Gantry, The Right Reverend Robert Meneilly, I first met Russell “Rusty” Leffel 40 plus years ago… A fellow Kansas City lawyer, he had graduated from KU Law four years before me. We were both active in … Continue reading
Sutherland: ‘The Necessary Murder’ — Nelson-Atkins vs KC Cops
“So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don’t even know that fire is hot.” George Orwell The English poet W.H. Auden went to Spain in 1937 at the outbreak of the civil … Continue reading
Sutherland: Why Not to Rename J.C. Nichols Fountain (Especially Without a Public Vote)
Flashback, anyone? Three years back KCC scribe Dwight Sutherland saddled up to put former Star staffer Steve Kraske in his place for suggesting Kansas City take Country Club Plaza developer J.C. Nichols name off the iconic fountain just east of the … Continue reading
Sutherland: The Definitive Craig Glazer Sendoff
I’ve spent some time thinking about the “was Craig Glazer really ‘Harley’” mystery… And I’ve come down finally on the “no” side of that argument after talking with several people who knew Craig well. First of all, the evidence for the … Continue reading
Sutherland: The Worst Feeling In The World
In June of 1967, I was a fourteen year old, living with my parents in Overland Park… We were watching the Kansas City Athletics baseball team on television one Friday evening when someone called from the Leawood Police Department. My dad … Continue reading
Sutherland: KC Mayor Funk’s Wife Gloria Unleashes
G-L-O-R-I-A… Hearne asked me to review Gloria Squitiro‘s new book “May Cause Drowsiness and Blurred Vision.” It’s the first volume of the memoirs by the wife of Mark Funkhauser (hereinafter “Funk”), the Mayor of Kansas City, Missouri from 2007 to … Continue reading