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Protecting
Freedom in the Last Best Place
By Don Doig
I am a Montana resident, born and raised here, and one of the things I value
about Montana is the traditional independence and live-and-let-live lifestyle
that the residents have always shown. Of course, over several generations of
federal largess, federal control, mass media influence, wrong-headed public
school experience, and in-migration from urban centers, that predisposition
toward valuing freedom has been diluted. Still, Montana
continues to be among the most independent of the states. In ways beyond the
pristine rivers, peaks, valleys, and wilderness areas, this truly is the
"last best place".
With the inagural issue of this newspaper, we hope to contribute to the
preservation and enhancement of the best features of the social environment
of this region, and the state as a whole. Our framework for analysis is
traditional American freedom and liberty. How this traditional freedom came to
be, how it used to be viewed, how it was diminished historically, and how it can
still work for us today.
We will ask hard questions about how political power actually works in America
today, how the struggle between liberty and power has played out over the
centuries of the American experience, how it affects the lives of real people in
today's Montana.
We will be up front about this: We value freedom and liberty. We value the
traditional protections for the rights of the people built into the
Constitution and Bill of Rights. We question the idea that political power can
be a force for good. We would like to see a federal government greatly
diminished in size, influence, and power. Enormously diminished. We believe that
government is best which governs least. We do not accept that the
Constitution is a flexible, living, breathing document. We think it sets forth
rigid limitations on the power and scope of the federal government, and
that those limitations have been illegally subverted, especially since the Civil
War.
We favor property rights and free enterprise and oppose subsidies. We favor
diversity, religious freedom, tolerance and freedom of expression.
And we would also like to see a major decrease in the size and power of the
Montana state government, and a curtailment of local power as well.
Political power, what very little can be justified, is best devolved to the
local and county level. Voluntary and cooperative efforts are far preferable
to coercive and divisive political mandates.
We envision a coalition of people coming together to support the protection and
restoration of liberty in Montana and across the nation. We will not
always agree on all issues, but we can agree on the broad proposition that
Americans and Montanans ought to be free of oppressive government power.
Don Doig