Now that Santa is safety ensconced back at the North Pole, for the new year I want to express some of my political hopes. I wish that Colorado progressives would be more progressive, and I wish that Colorado conservatives would be more conservative. What do I mean by that, and how are those aims remotely compatible? Read on!
More progressive progressives
The overriding priority for Colorado progressives is to further bind producers to limit the harm they may do. There is one huge problem with that as a central orientation: Such a strategy is anti-progressive, if by progressive we mean actually fostering human progress.
Don’t get me wrong: There definitely is a place for government to intervene to enforce reasonable contracts, override commitments that do not involve genuine consent and a meeting of the minds, stop firms from turning to force and fraud, enforce reasonable standards regarding safety and the like, and rein in pollution. Progressives are right that, left entirely without guardrails, business leaders sometimes take shortcuts, mistreat employees, and harm consumers and third parties.
But progressives sometimes become so hyper-focused on finding fault with business leaders that they forget that producers drive the engine of our economy and maintain and improve our quality of life. If we enjoy things including food on the table, warm houses in the winter, and transportation to work and hospitals and social events, then we should celebrate the people who make such values possible and seek to preserve their productive freedom.
Yet, as Nash Herman reviews, Colorado under a “progressive” legislature has become increasingly hostile to businesses.
There are some notable exceptions. U.S. Rep. Brittany Pettersen and State Rep. (possibly Senator) Iman Jodeh, among others, have become leaders in the YIMBY movement, seeking to remove barriers to building housing, a major driver of cost of living.
Pettersen even has helped launch a Yimby Caucus “to promote the development of affordable housing across the country.” Sometimes progressives foolishly focus on mandates and subsidies rather than freeing the housing market, but sometimes they get the priorities right. This year, for example, the legislature overrode some local restrictions on accessory dwelling units, an important free-market reform. See my column “Build, Colorado, build” for background.
Governor Jared Polis, never one to shy away from theatrics, recently “took a power saw to 208 old executive orders” after formally repealing them, CPR reports. I haven’t read all those orders, so I’m not sure how much Polis’s action cut bureaucracy. He said some were “redundant, unneeded, [and] outdated,” while some “put extra work on agencies.”
Although Polis’s aim to “save people money” only sometimes corresponds with efforts to increase economic freedom, on the whole he has been about as friendly toward free markets as we could expect from a progressive governor working with a progressive legislature. He did, after all, promote and sign a bill to cut some tax rates. Let’s hope he gets his veto pen warmed up for when new unnecessary regulations come through the legislature.
What I hope for progressives in the coming year is that they double-down on real progress, recognize that economic growth is the foundation of human progress, stop needlessly punishing business leaders, and seek to reform the bad government policies that stand in the way of progress.
More conservative conservatives
A “conservative” who does not believe in and promote the rule of just law is no conservative at all. The violent invasion of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, was one of the most shameful events in our nation’s history. Donald Trump has promised to pardon the perpetrators of that violent assault, including those from Colorado. Every Republican politician and leader in Colorado (and elsewhere) has a moral responsibility, and a responsibility to the U.S. Constitution, to do whatever they can to discourage Trump from issuing those pardons.
Let me state the matter bluntly. If you publicly endorsed Trump, then you have a responsibility to publicly denounce Trump’s stated plans to pardon the perpetrators of January 6. If you fail to do so, then you are a moral coward with no proper title to Republican, conservative, or supporter of law and order.
Whether conserving something is good or bad depends on what that thing is. If you live in a slave society, then seeking to conserve slavery is wrong. In the American context, conservatism at its best means working to conserve the core American values of liberty and justice for all. The most profoundly conservative statement in human history, in this framework, is the Declaration of Independence’s commitment to the principle that all people are created equal in human dignity and therefore all people properly are equal before the law.
I understand the conservative arguments that too rapid immigration stresses existing social institutions, that we can’t let in those who would do us harm, and that immigrants need to assimilate to American norms without losing their cultural flair. But those who demonize immigrants based on race or ethnicity, who strive to deny to others the same freedom that their ancestors had to come to America to build a better life, betray the Declaration’s core value of equality.
While we’re at it, gay and transgender people also have the right to live in freedom and peace. Yet many Colorado “conservatives,” including Dave Williams, the so-called leader of the state GOP, have gone out of their way to demonize LGBTQ people. Yes, reasonable people can talk about policies involving parents’ rights to know what’s going on in public schools, athletic competition categories, and gender-affirming medical treatments for minors. But it is not reasonable to start from the position that LGBTQ people are to be demonized, stripped of their dignity, and denied their basic freedoms.
In short, it seems to me that a great way to begin 2025, whether you are a Colorado progressive or conservative or other, is to reflect on the wisdom of 1776: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed . . .”
Ari Armstrong writes regularly for Complete Colorado and is the author of books about Ayn Rand, Harry Potter, and classical liberalism. He can be reached at ari at ariarmstrong dot com.
