I hope that your family takes time to celebrate with dad on his special day. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of my own father. Even though he’s been gone more than 10 years, I appreciate the role model he was to our family. A hard working farmer, he was totally outnumbered with a wife and three daughters. He taught us a lot of things and provided the opportunity for us to attend college. He even took the time to be a 4-H community club leader for many years. He was a wonderful caregiver to my mother for the 30 years that she lived with the challenges of Parkinson’s disease.

It is so refreshing to see fathers who have become more involved with their families beyond the role of breadwinner. I saw it in my husband, John, and now in our son and son-in-law, Adam and Art. Taking the time to develop and nurture relationships with children pays off big in the end. Children with active fathers develop skills they can carry into adulthood. Self-esteem soars when dads are active participants in their children’s lives. Children come with their own unique personalities, temperaments and developmental timetables and dads are an essential link to a child’s well-being.

As we celebrate Dads for all that they do or have done, it is important to be mindful of the influence they have on positive youth development. Summer often provides additional opportunities for families to spend time together. Family vacations and backyard barbeques are perfect events for family bonding and creating happy memories. However, Dads who do not live in the home do have to be more intentional about creating and taking advantage of opportunities to spend time together. With blended families, scheduling and personality conflicts between adults can create barriers.

A gradual cultural shift of permissiveness toward single parenting can sometimes give an impression that fathers don’t really matter. Nothing could be further from the truth. Fathers play an important role in the development of their children and families. Studies show that children with involved fathers are more successful in school, more ambitious, more self-confident with their identity, self-protective and self-reliant, less likely to drop out of school and less susceptible to peer pressure.

So take time to celebrate Dad this Father’s Day!

Donna Krug is the Family and Consumer Science Agent and District Director with K-State Research and Extension – Cottonwood District. You may reach her at: (620)793-1910 or [email protected]

“34 million hours of cross-partisan Thanksgiving dinner discourse were lost in 2016 owing to partisan effects,” according to research published in the June issue of the journal Science.

Emotional political partisanship that has escalated this last year-and-a-half caused politically split families to cut short their Thanksgiving dinners by 30 to 50 minutes, according to researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles and Washington State University.

This heightened acrimony and polarization of the Western political system, and the current levels of personal anger expressed in public media is very apparent to the Chinese who follow world events. It is a climate that most of my colleagues in China simply cannot understand. How can we live with a system that keeps everyone’s emotions on edge and results in daily strife in workplace and home?

This cultural difference goes back over 2000 years. Western cultures evolved from ancient Greek traditions. When there were opposing ideas, both advocates came to a public forum and both argued their case. The audience would vote and one would win. The loser would go away defeated.

Asian culture goes back to a Confucian tradition. Society operated under a set of rules establishing relationships; children obeyed parents and wives obeyed husbands, similar to Western customs. But when there were larger opposing ideas for public discussion, both parties could politely argue their case. Then a decision would be made that found a “middle way.” The result would be some accommodation of both side’s viewpoints. And no one went away having “lost face.”

To a Western teacher in China, it can be frustrating getting Chinese students to discuss an issue and come to one conclusion. They will often bring up: “Well, on one side such-and-such, but then on the other side there are other advantages and disadvantages too.”

The Asian languages are loaded with terms conveying respect, as in “lau” found both in elderly person “lau ren” and teacher “lau shi.”

Westerners are predisposed to assert “I have my rights!” But “rights” is rather hard to translate to an equivalent in Chinese. They would state: “I have my responsibilities.” And when navigating a population with four to five times more people, going-with-the-flow works. Demanding your right-of-way causes gridlock.

Similar to Americans on Thanksgiving, Asian families come together at the New Year’s Spring Festival. They may differ on social and political policies. But rarely will a political argument ensue. Asian cultures take a long view, and family comes first. Each person weighs their obligations as a descendant of ancestors long dead, but who worked hard to maintain the family lineage. And each person is responsible for doing their best today for their future family yet unborn.

In Asia, continuity and reliability is highly valued. If the government is doing its job—repairing the roads, providing electricity, maintaining schools, etc.—then an average person can get on with life with little concern for political debate.

I was teaching in China last fall when the People’s National Congress was in session in October. While all of the media followed it in the news, I was surprised by how little the general public watched it on television. In the United States, such an event—such as our Republican or Democratic Conventions—would have garnered large audiences.
But a few weeks later, everyone came into the university offices with smiles on their faces.

“Why is everyone happy?” I asked.

“All university professors are getting a 20,000 yuan raise next year (about US$3000),” they replied.

I asked why. They described how professors were being lured away from university positions by the growing commercial industries, and this was a government strategy to keep universities strong. There were also nationwide raises for high school teachers and medical and health workers for the same reason.

In these last five months after returning to America, I have seen how our only recourse for teachers to get higher pay and better classroom support was to go on strike. We have a political system that operates by confrontation, as if it is the only way a system can operate. We now live in daily strife.

But if a government does its job and meets its responsibilities, a population can thrive in peace.

John Richard Schrock is a professor at Emporia State University.

[What’s better than a job that is indoor work for the upcoming two winters, safe and warm and with inside reserved parking and hundreds of lobbyists wanting the chance to buy you lunch or dinner? And, where even if you’re not invited to dinner, if a lobbyist sees you alone at a watering hole, a sharp lobbyist will probably offer to pay for your drinks from across the room.

Does it get much better than that? We didn’t think so.

Well, of the 125 House seats to be filled in the upcoming election cycle, 27 Republicans and 21 Democrats can start planning for that job…without a major-party opponent for re-election.

That’s no need for wearying door-to-door campaigning, probably not a lot of money being spent on signs and letters to voters. It’s just one short of a free ride into office.

Who gets those free rides?

Here’s the list:

Republicans
Michael Houser, Columbus, Richard Proehl, Parsons, Kent L. Thompson, Iola, Mark Schreiber, Emporia, Francis Awerkamp, St. Marys, John Eplee, Atchison, Lonnie Clark, Junction City, Dave Baker, Council Grove, Diana Dierks, Salina, Les Mason, McPherson, Eric L. Smith, Burlington, Kristey Williams, Augusta, Steve Huebert, Valley Center, Emil Bergquist, Park City (has a Libertarian opponent for general election), Joe Seiwert, Pretty Prairie, Brenda Landwehr, Wichita, Bill Pannbacker, Washington, Steven Johnson, Assaria, Troy Waymaster, Bunker Hill, Tory Marie Arnberger, Great Bend, Boyd Orr, Fowler, Kyle Hoffman, Coldwater, Leonard Mastroni, La Crosse, Don Hineman, Dighton, Bradley Ralph, Dodge City, Russ Jennings, Lakin, and Shannon Francis, Liberal.

Democrats
Eileen Horn, Lawrence, Jerry Stogsdill, Prairie Village, Jarrod Ousley, Merriam, Louis Ruiz, Kansas City, Pam Curtis, Kansas City, Tom Burroughs, Kansas City (has a Libertarian opponent for general election), Valdenia Winn, Kansas City, Broderick Henderson, Kansas City, Stan Frownfelter, Kansas City, Barbara Ballard, Lawrence, Jim Gartner, Topeka, John Alcala, Topeka, Vic “T-Bone” Miller, Topeka, Sydney Carlin, Manhattan (has a Libertarian opponent for general election), Gail Finney, Wichita, Elizabeth Bishop, Wichita, John Carmichael, Wichita, Tom Sawyer, Wichita, Brandon Whipple, Wichita, Jason Probst, Hutchinson, and Ponka-We Victors, Wichita.

Yes, there are a few races with Libertarian legislative candidates, which were selected at the party’s convention this spring. The Libertarians approved a total of six candidates, who will appear just on the November general election ballot, but those Libertarians, for all the hands-off government that they campaign about (oh, and generally legalization of marijuana), they usually wind up with less than 10 percent of the vote, which still leaves the Free Ride 48 in pretty comfortable shape.

Now, while those Free Ride candidates don’t have much in the way of opposition, the smart ones campaign as though they had an opponent, so their voters feel that their votes are valuable and cherished by the unopposed.

Yes, there will be some door-to-dooring, and it probably doesn’t hurt to have a sign or two up in prominent locations, so their constituents feel that their votes are important.

And in recent House campaigns some candidates have spent tens of thousands of dollars on campaigns, just so their constituents feel valued. They attend the parades, and without an opponent breathing down their neck, tend to toss a little better-than-expected candy to voters’ children and grandchildren.

Never hurts to be a little extra-nice…might mean that two years from now, they’ll be unopposed again. There are some House members who haven’t had a political opponent in several election cycles.

But that means they must fairly represent their district and do their duties well enough that nobody else is going to pony up the $120 in fees to get on the ballot to challenge them.

The Free Ride 48? Most of them earned the title by good work for their constituents…

Syndicated by Hawver News Company LLC of Topeka; Martin Hawver is publisher of Hawver’s Capitol Report—to learn more about this nonpartisan statewide political news service, visit the website at www.hawvernews.com