Reject the smearing of Kris Kobach

It won't surprise many that the Kansas City Star has endorsed Scott Morgan, the liberal Republican from Lawrence, over incumbent Secretary of State Kris Kobach in the August 5 GOP primary.  There are only liberals on the Star's editorial board, so they will pick the more liberal candidate.

However, note the Star's headline in their endorsement of Morgan: "Reject extremism in Kansas’ Aug. 5 primary." Of course, no one should accept extremism. However, the endorsement never got around to defining what they meant by "extremism." In fact, the word was never used again after the headline. The Star merely expressed its opposition to a Kansas law that requires voters to show they are citizens before they can legally vote in Kansas. This is hardly an extreme position. In fact, a March 2014 survey found that 78% of likely voters believe everyone should be required to prove his or her citizenship before being allowed to register to vote. That’s up from 71% a year ago. Just 19% oppose that requirement. The Star is with the 19%, suggesting that they may hold the extreme position with a shrinking minority.

Liberals have been employing the "extremist" smear for decades now. In fact, Ayn Rand wrote an outstanding essay during the early 1960s entitled, "'Extremism,' or the Art of Smearing":

Among the many symptoms of today’s moral bankruptcy, the performance of the so-called “moderates” at the Republican National Convention was the climax, at least to date. It was an attempt to institutionalize smears as an instrument of national policy—to raise those smears from the private gutters of yellow journalism to the public summit of a proposed inclusion in a political party platform. The “moderates” were demanding a repudiation of “extremism” without any definition of that term. 

Further:

This brings us to the deeper implications of the term “extremism.” It is obvious that an uncompromising stand (on anything) is the actual characteristic which that “anti-concept” is designed to damn. It is also obvious that compromise is incompatible with morality. In the field of morality, compromise is surrender to evil. 

There can be no compromise on basic principles. There can be no compromise on moral issues. There can be no compromise on matters of knowledge, of truth, of rational conviction. 

If an uncompromising stand is to be smeared as “extremism,” then that smear is directed at any devotion to values, any loyalty to principles, any profound conviction, any consistency, any steadfastness, any passion, any dedication to an unbreached, inviolate truth—any man of integrity. 

"Man of integrity" would be a good way to describe Kris Kobach. If you agree with that, then reject the smearing of Kobach.