The ‘Conservative Case for WARD’ Isn’t Conservative

The Gallatin Valley Sentinel’s “Conservative Case for WARD” opens with a dirty trick. It defines conservatism as “to keep in a safe or sound state,” and then implies that any act of restriction—like rationing water—is therefore conservative.

That trick isn’t just rhetorical; it’s making a core philosophical mistake. The Sentinel confuses conservatism as a system of thought about human nature and power with the mere preservation of the status quo.

George F. Will, one of America’s clearest conservative thinkers, captured this error perfectly:

“When conservatism ceases to be a disposition toward limited government and becomes instead a factional defense of the status quo or an expression of cultural resentment, it ceases to be conservative and becomes something else entirely.”

— George F. Will, National Affairs, 2019

That is precisely what the Sentinel has done. As I argued in my last piece, their real motive appears to be halting construction across the Gallatin Valley. They correctly intuit that WARD would advance that goal, at least within city limits. In that sense, their stance is a form of rent-seeking—asking the local government to enforce restrictions that serve their aesthetic, cultural, or financial preferences at the expense of the general public.

The irony is hard to miss: invoking “conservatism” to justify using government power to control other people’s property is the very opposite of conservative thought. It’s an act of intellectual camouflage—marshaling the cultural identity of conservatism for ends none of its progenitors would recognize.

Wearing Conservatism as a Halloween Skin Suit

Conservatism, rightly understood, begins with a restrained view of human nature and, consequently, power. Every policy carries trade-offs and unintended consequences. Humans are ignorant, limited, and jealous of power over things they can not control. Therefore, we should be careful not to use the government to impose an abstract goal (uneconomic housing or stopping all construction) on the embedded wisdom of our cultural institutions.

Conservatism is not the defense of everything old or familiar, but of the enduring institutions that keep ambition in check—private property, voluntary exchange, and constitutional government. It is the politics of limits to government-powered good intentions.

Because humans are limited, fallible, and self-interested, free Western societies build systems that channel those imperfections towards the common good. We call this arrangement of private property rights, entrepreneurship, and freely moving prices free markets. Markets embody the wisdom of our ancestral institutions. They are systems of distributed humility: no central planner knows enough to allocate resources, so individuals use prices to signal scarcity and abundance. Through that bottom-up coordination, order arises from freedom.

WARD disrupts that spontaneous order with command. It replaces the knowledge of the many with the judgment of a few, declaring: build uneconomic housing or lose access to the city’s water. It’s the planner’s conceit, dressed up as prudence.

That’s why Will describes conservatism as a sensibility “disposed against the rearrangement of the state in accordance with a preconceived design.” Conservatism resists grand plans precisely because knowledge is scattered—and no one is wise enough to wield power without abuse.

By that standard, the Sentinel’s case for WARD is not conservative at all. It is progressivism: the belief that good intentions can replace our institutional birthright, that the planner’s vision can trump the market’s signals for more supply with a wiser arrangement.

Hubris

Even after conceding that Bozeman faces no true water crisis and that affordability mandates don’t increase affordability, the Sentinel still supports WARD—because it might slow growth.

That is not the virtue of prudence in public policy. It is the factional defense of the status quo that Will warned against—the politics of resentment and nostalgia masquerading as virtue, while acting in vice.

Conservatism does not mean opposing change; it means guiding change through the institutions that make ordered liberty possible. To wield water policy as a weapon against profits is not conservatism.Subscribe

A Genuine Conservative Response

A genuinely conservative approach to Bozeman’s growth would begin with confidence in our western institutions, not hubris. It would start with the belief that free citizens, secure in their property and accountable to market demand, will better care for our resources than any central planner. They will discover, through trial and error, how much to build, what to create, and where to make it.

Real conservatism would seek to protect the mechanisms of prosperity—free exchange, stable rules, and limited government.

The Sentinel’s anti-growth stance, in George Will’s words, has become “something else entirely.”

Because the essence of conservatism isn’t saying “no” to change, it’s saying “no” to the illusion that power and good intentions can replace the wisdom of our civilizational heritage. It is standing astride the progressive vision that government can perfect humanity and yelling, “Stop!”