Letter to the Editor

Dear Editor,

In last week’s Sundance Times (March 21), the Editor, in the column “Our View” first defines a conservative as someone who stands on his or her own two feet, who contributes to society, who earns his or her own living and who is fully independent, relying only on his or her own hard work. The author then points out that in Wyoming, because we have historically let energy companies pay for our government services, individuals, in fact, have reaped many benefits for which they have not worked.

The fact is that the members of any functioning society both provide benefit to the whole society and receive benefit from the whole society. The question is whether our giving and our receiving ledgers are about equal.

As I see it, one of a conservative’s concerns is the suspicion that there are freeloaders, and that the policies of liberals make it easy for the freeloaders to cheat those who work hard. The conservative probably sees income inequality as the natural, perhaps even good, result of people’s differing abilities and ambitions.

Liberals, just as surely as conservatives, believe people should stand on their own two feet, work hard and contribute to society. It’s just that we also believe there are two unfortunate facts of life that make it imperative that government – thankfully in America’s case, democratically elected government – step in to make adjustments.

First, there are people whose natural abilities are such that their best effort will not be good enough to ensure their own wellbeing.

Second, there are other people who will game the system to their own advantage and to the detriment of others.

As a liberal, I am less worried about the freeloader than I am about the fat cat, the executive who enjoys a multimillion-dollar contract while paying his workers too little to live on.

To Representative Lindholm I would say that not every Wyomingite calls him or herself a conservative and that we who call ourselves liberal also pay our bills; it’s just that we are more than willing to help pay the bills of our less fortunate brothers as well.

Ernie Reinhold