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On the bottom half of the Missoulian opinion page of Jan. 14 were two guest columns: “Disagreeing with results of ‘conservative index’ isn’t basis for attack” and “Disparaging guest column was ill-informed.” These articles, written respectively by Gallatin County Rep. Roger Koopman and Rob Natelson, president of Montana Conservatives, of which Koopman is a board member, strongly dissent with an (Jan. 6) opinion written by former opinion editor Steve Woodruff. Strong words are used to describe Woodruff’s apparent philosophical change as now a “special interest mouthpiece,” a “left-wing propagandist” with an “over-the-top tirade.” Both authors believe that Woodruff either hadn’t read or gave a left-of-center (i.e., a liberal) interpretation of the results of a survey by Montana Conservatives for legislative opinions.

While these thoughts could be true, my thoughts are that nowhere in the current legislative hysteria or in these heart-felt articles do we hear or read of basic premises, not labels, from which voters might do their reasoning. Premises, as written by the founders, include thoughts of human nature, its love of power (said to be natural and insatiable) and fear of governmental power growing incrementally out-of-bounds by legislative fiat.

I am a “liberal,” a classical liberal, that is, a meaning that has changed 180 degrees from its inception in England in the 1800s. Liberalism, then, posed these questions of any specific political measure to be considered: Does it tend to diminish or to increase the government’s coercive power over the individual? Does it tend to narrow the range of that power or to widen it? Does it tend to diminish compulsory cooperation or to increase it? Does it tend to enlarge the area of conduct in which the individual is free to do as he pleases or does it enlarge the area in which he must do as governmental agents please? If these questions could be answered in the first part in the affirmative, then the measure was a liberal measure. How times, and labels, change!

I am a “conservative,” because I conserve. Anyone raised during the Great Depression of the ’30s, in which the unemployment rate approached 45 percent in a big city in Indiana, will remember shouted commands: “Turn off that light; Don’t let that faucet drip; Put on an extra sweater if you’re cold.”

Basic premises from which to do further political reasoning are essential. Then ask politicians, what is government (organized legal force)? Do we need government? (Yes, but for the same reason it must be limited). If so, how much? How can it be contained?

Stu Pritchard lives in Philipsburg.

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