6 hours Ago By ROGER KOOPMAN
In case you hadn’t noticed, Montana is a heavy whine-producing state. The vintners are many, from the Marxist professors and ranting radicals brought onto our campuses, to the farmers, corporate welfarists and chamber of commerce types, looking to government for special favors, subsidies and protections from competition. Montanans are intoxicating our politics with cases of expensive whine.
Witness the “Republican” legislature’s latest budget bill (HB 2) that imposes on us an 18 percent increase in future spending. Another session where, thanks to the unholy alliance between Democrats and liberal Republicans, whining wins and freedom loses. We’ve made sots of our legislators, and a Medicaid welfarists of our Republican governor.
Roger Koopman When Bernie Sanders and “AOC” arrived in Missoula in their private jet receipt was a lesson in choreographed whining. They lectured us on the evils of wealth-producing and environmental-polluting capitalism, while decrying the “oligarchy” of a democratically-elected president, who is actually trying to get a handle on federal spending — including the billions of tax-funded largess going to their radical friends. Like all authoritarian elitists, Sanders and Cortez preach the gospel of envy and hatred, as true believers that everything good in society flows from government, and everything bad is the result of individual action by people who are entirely too free.
Ambling through the crowd of 2,500 at Bozeman’s April 19 Hate Trump Rally, the whining signs and banners darkened the sky. Not a lot of love there —mostly profanity and hate. Spooky, really.
Group-think to the extreme, while the frequent chant from the microphone was, “This is what democracy looks like!” A better chant might have been, “This is what Marxism looks like!” Unlimited government taxing and spending — while branding and slandering anyone who might try to bring spending under control. Cynicism, skepticism, fear and human distrust were all around me, aimed at anyone with a different point of view. That’s the message that rings out these days, and there is a chilling, spirit-killing aspect to it that is increasingly reflected in the politics of both parties, not just the Democrats.
Take, for example, the Government Solutions Caucus, a gang of rogue Republicans who promote a Big Government agenda that mirrors the Democrat’s belief in “salvation by politics, paid for by the blood of taxpayers.” Got a problem? Government has an answer. Repent of your self-reliance and look to the “generosity” of politicians instead! Politicians like Llew Jones, leader of the GSC, whose latest “solution” is a general spending bill that creates a collection of slush fund accounts designed to make it much easier to spend much more of our money without a vote.
Later they will then brag about the spending, as if it was their money they are giving away, not ours. Beware of politicians who encourage us to be shameless whiners, competing for our particular slice of other people’s earnings. They do it because they think we will be grateful on Election Day, after they’re plundered our fellow citizen to deliver us our goods.
But it’s time we prove them wrong. Real Americans — and real Montanans — are not whiners. We don’t need paternalistic politicians telling us how much we require their help.
Freedom is quite enough. That’s all we require of them, along with a healthy measure of respect for our constitutional rights, our personal property and the liberty to be left alone. So let’s put our whine bottles down, and drink heartily from the fruit of freedom instead — nourishment for the soul that never runs dry.
Roger Koopman is president of Montana Conservative Alliance. He served four years in the Montana House of Representatives and eight years as a Montana Public Service commissioner. He operated a Bozeman small business for 37 years.
Catch the latest in Opinion Get opinion pieces, letters and editorials sent directly to your inbox weekly!.
