To the editor,

I would like to respond to the "As I See It" column written by Doug Wood in the July issue of The Best Times.

I certainly appreciate Mr Wood's take on our founding fathers as defenders of our freedom. They were indeed committed, and accomplished extraordinary things. Where Mr. Wood and I part is when he states that "it was change they resisted" and "they were all conservatives."

In fact, those who organized and started this revolution had lived under the rules of the British Empire, a parliamentary monarchy, for 150 years. Taxation without representation was something they had lived with all this time. It's change they wanted, and indeed the constitution they developed was not a return to the status quo ante, but contained enormous changes. This is not conservatism, but liberalism.

I'm not deriding conservatism—in fact, I believe it takes a healthy contingent of both conservatives and liberals for a democracy to work. Let's just be honest. Yes, we're in Kansas, a very conservative state; but let's not be guilty of historical revisionism to support our particular ideology.

Frank Strada
Overland Park