CONSERVATIVE BLOC OF STATE LEGISLATORS SHOWS ITS MUSCLE

In the summer of 1973, a small, bipartisan group of state legislators from a dozen or so states met to form a national organization of their colleagues. At the time, the long-dominant National Council of State Legislators was the entrenched group, unchallenged in its influence over state lawmakers. With the formation that summer of the American Legislative Exchange Council, that group would receive a healthy dose of competition.

The story of this competition is one index of a changing cultural and political ethos in America. From those humble beginnings 22 summers ago, the still bipartisan ALEC has grown to where its annual meeting, held last week in San Diego, attracted more lawmakers and other meeting guests -- more than 3,000 -- than attended the NCSL meeting held weeks before in Milwaukee. This is analogous to the freshman orientation held for incoming members of the U.S. Congress. For years this orientation had been held at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. After last fall's election, however, a competing orientation held by the conservative Heritage Foundation attracted so many of the incoming freshmen that sponsors of the Harvard session cancelled it.

The NCSL has long been in the grip of the sort of Big Government liberals whose response to every problem America faces is "Show us a problem, we'll create a new bureaucracy." This mindset continues today within what some still call the mainstream group of state lawmakers.

From the start, ALEC was different, even proudly and aggressively so. Not for them, the building of more and ever-larger bureaucracies. Not for them, government as the first and last solution to every problem we face. Not for them, ever larger governments burdening their people with ever higher taxes.

ALEC was and is -- first, last and always -- about freedom. The ALEC agenda includes mainstream issues:

An aggressive and unapologetic defense of free enterprise, or what former HUD Secretary Jack Kemp (an ALEC luncheon speaker last week) calls "democratic capitalism, or entrepreneurial free enterprise." Support for the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding gun owners. A vibrant defense of property rights and a commonsense approach to environmental issues that emphasizes their indispensable role in protecting environmental quality. Support for privatization -- the selling off to private interests -- of state-run operations to improve efficiency and services to consumers. Fiscal responsibility and low taxes to permit the private economy to flourish and all citizens to achieve their dreams. The restoration of a proper balance between the federal and state governments. Limited government of the kind our Founding Fathers envisioned when they wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

With these agenda items, it should surprise no one that ALEC's highest award is the Thomas Jefferson Freedom Award. Since the inception of the award in 1990, recipients have included former President Ronald Reagan, Secretary Kemp, Michigan Gov. John Engler and former Education Secretary Bill Bennett. This year's awardee was Speaker Newt Gingrich, who dazzled the huge crowd, assembled to hear him at Saturday night's concluding banquet, in an hour-long address nationally televised, as were many conference events, on C-SPAN.

For the role ALEC is playing in restoring the principles of limited constitutional government, Mr. Jefferson would surely be proud.