The governor of Florida calls Florida the “Freedom State”. That would seem to be a joke if he wasn’t so serious about it.

It seems that the Republican party has been hijacked by the extreme right, i.e. they want their freedoms, such as, the freedom to own as many guns as they deem necessary with no restrictions, like background checks or any kind of control whatsoever. They say over and over again that people kill people not guns, so, why not background checks?

They want the (freedom) to discriminate when it comes to serving people they may not agree with due to religious grounds.

They want the (freedom) to restrict what our children can read or learn about in any way, to control what parts of our history can be taught in our schools, to restrict people of color the right to vote, the (freedom) to lie to voters with impunity from consequences, the (freedom) to practice any religion other than theirs even the (freedom) of a woman to control her own body.

They make it quite clear that there is no freedom to realize at an early age that you’re a boy who likes boys or a girl physically but a boy mentally. To them these are simply abominations and are meant to be eliminated from our society, even though these people have always been present in our society and always will be.

So my question to a reasonable conservative, if there is one out there, is: why do you support a party of autocracy and suppression of any and all freedoms that don’t conform to their narrow views?

Larry Benson

Enumclaw