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Legislators held infrastructure bill hostage

Last week the Republican-led Montana legislators defeated a badly needed infrastructure bill by holding it hostage and demanding Gov. Bullock capitulate on women’s health care. Some of these legislators responsible were four Flathead politicians, M. Regier, Brodehl, Skees and Glimm.

My question to them is why? Our state infrastructure should be a non-partisan issue and we all benefit from well-maintained infrastructure.

In my opinion these four people make bold statements about saving tax dollars and then in a hypocritical manner approve spending close to a million dollars on the special election at the end of May. This, as I see it, is ugly, mean-spirited, partisan politics that does not serve our state well. —Roger Sherman, Whitefish

Who are we?

In THIS country, OUR AMERICA, we have immigrants seeking refuge in churches. We have families, laden with their few belongings, traveling miles through the snow fleeing for safe haven in a neighboring country. There is anxiety and fear among employees of tech companies, doctors, product designers, and engineers, some of whom have been contributing to our society and our technology and our well-being for years. Each day’s news brings reports of bomb threats to Jewish community centers and a sharp increase in anti-Semitism. WHO ARE WE?

Previous immigrants often took generations before their families truly assimilated into our culture. Look at all the “Chinatowns,” the Italian and Irish neighborhoods, and those of many other ethnicities, where immigrants lived together in a place where they could feel comfortable and less “foreign,” where they continued to speak their native language, and where they slowly, but surely, began to finally feel like Americans. My own father, whose grandparents came to a little town in Ohio as Mennonites seeking freedom to practice their religion, spoke German before he spoke English.

WHO ARE WE? If we do not remember who we are, we are lost. It has been the hallmark of history’s most despotic dictators to preach fear and distrust and to single out a group as “the enemy.” We must never forget the words of Voltaire, “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” —Jeanne Welty Southwood, Bigfork

Two-party system is the ‘swamp’

“There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution” —John Adams, 1780.

Given the political machinations now being played out in the “swamp,” it should be obvious to all that Adams “humble apprehensions” were justified. It should be equally obvious that the swamp is a natural consequence and creation of the “division of the republic into two great parties.”

Until this “division” now known as our two-party system is recognized by all as the “greatest political evil under our Constitution,” don’t expect a whole lot of “draining” to go on. Our two great parties don’t just depend on the swamp for their continuing existence; our two great parties are the “swamp”! —Russ Crowder, Marion

Abortion hurts women, and hurts all of us

With 25 years of clinical experience, and scores of patients who have had abortions, I have never met a woman who wasn’t emotionally harmed by it. I thought I knew one who was not harmed by having had an abortion, but when she went through a midlife crisis 40 years after the abortion, the emotional trauma from her abortion came back … She became an emotional wreck, and is deeply troubled to this day… Post-abortive women’s feelings, health, and humanity are ignored in the pro-abortion arguments ... not to mention potential physical complications for the mother including death and sterility.

Maybe she had an abortion at age 16 and didn’t give it another thought because she was told it was a blob of tissue removed when her pregnancy was terminated. In her 20s or 30s, she becomes happily pregnant. She starts researching the stages of baby development and realizes what happened when she had an abortion.

Post-abortion women learn at some point that at conception the unborn child has its own distinctively human genome, separate from the mother — already established gender, hair and eye color. The post-abortive woman recognizes the stage at which her defenseless baby was destroyed.

Killing innocent humans is always wrong, and it hurts us all. If anyone in our human family is considered disposable, it sends the message we are all disposable. As slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” It is imperative we face the reality of the unborn made clear from science and technology, face the damage done to mothers, fathers, grandparents, and declare that legal protection (personhood) begins at conception. It is the only logical and humane stance, the only stance that promotes the dignity and value of every member of our human family. —Annie Bukacek, Bigfork