But he went way out in the weeds with his assertions ("The problem with progressives,'' June 20) about what progressives — certainly the pragmatic variety here at Growth & Justice — actually think and stand for.

It is just preposterous to assert that progressives as represented by Growth & Justice are mounting a "dangerous challenge to constitutionally limited government,'' or that progressivism is ultimately about "total control'' or totalitarianism. We also strenuously object to his claim that we are "immune to restraint'' or that we represent a "politics of arrogance and willful ignorance of economic realities.''

No matter how widely he wanders to gather his libertarian proof points, Westover always gets around to the same dark world view: Our state and national governments essentially are illegitimate and are using the "police power of the state'' to transfer money from one set of people to another set of people.

He manages to link Growth & Justice with a nefarious cabal of statist confiscators including Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, agnostic Lutherans, DFL Senate Majority Leader Larry Pogemiller and stalwart Republican Minnesota governors such as Harold Stassen, Al Quie and Arne Carlson — some of the leaders being honored by the event that sparked his latest broadside.

Here's a fundamental point Westover keeps missing: There's all the difference in the world between undemocratic governments under brutal dictators and democratic governments, like our own, that are responsive to the will of the people and largely a force for good. We've fought wars over this difference in legitimacy. And our governments, "of the people, by the people and for the people,'' should be a point of pride for Americans and Minnesotans.

Contrary to Westover's hyperbole, here's a little more information about what Growth & Justice actually believes: We cut taxes too much in the last decade. Because of a wrongheaded no-new-taxes orthodoxy, we invested too little in public education, transportation (and bridges), health care and environmental protections. We think the overall size of our state and local public sector during Republican Gov. Arne Carlson's administrations in the 1990s was about right, and typical of a Minnesota formula for success for more than 30 years, when our economic growth was more robust than it is now.

In today's dollars, a 1990s-sized public sector for Minnesota would be a couple billion dollars more now than then, on a base of about $35 billion. But that's a mere 1 or 2 percentage points more in the Price of Government, which is the official Minnesota Finance Department measure of total revenue as a percentage of total income. The difference between a 16 percent Price of Government in fiscal year 2008 and 17.5 percent in 1998 probably does not strike most reasonable people as the difference between "constitutionally limited government'' and jack-booted, Mussolini-style totalitarianism.

Westover selectively quotes Pogemiller to wrongly suggest that progressives think the government can spend all your money better than you can, but leaves out Pogemiller's larger point at a community meeting in March that "no matter how rich you are, you can't build a freeway system by yourself ... (or) a public educational system by yourself.''

He also misses the main point of our event at the GOP convention. A progressive orientation toward governing, which invests in human capital so more people have an opportunity to prosper, has been an admirable and distinctively Minnesota trait exemplified in all major parties.

Examples abound throughout our history of Republicans' embrace of both progressive reform and good-government accountability: Gov. Harold Stassen's early backing of civil rights in the 1930s and civil service reform that cleaned up serious corruption in state employment; Gov. Al Quie's practical and humane compromise in raising income taxes to address a budget crisis, and his lifetime of service on behalf of prison inmates and judicial quality; Gov. Arne Carlson's fiscal discipline coupled with visionary planning and wise investment in the MinnesotaCare program, providing health care for working families.

Private enterprise and governments both have great capacity to improve life. There are ideologues at the extremes who think one or the other ought to reign supreme, but that does not represent the Growth & Justice position. Nor does it accurately reflect the mainstream Minnesota view that our good life results from a balance between good government and a vigorous free market.