As Election Day draws closer, politicians are turning their attention to people rather than policies, and the news coming out of Washington DC is dominated by the latest polls, especially since the heated Trump vs Biden debate.
This alienates people like me who see candidates as a necessary evil to bring about positive change in state and federal laws, who, once elected, often break their promises or prove unable to navigate legislative and bureaucratic hurdles.
The most successful leaders have a strong ideological foundation that guides the thousands of unknown decisions they will make during their term in office. This is rare today. Most politicians are only focused on getting power, not what they can do with it once they have it.
Coming of age in the 1980s, I was pampered by strong conservative leaders, a term few, even Republicans, can define today.
What do conservatives everywhere want?
What does “conservative” stand for anymore? Some want to cut taxes, others want to fight conservatives. Trump supporters support high tariffs, free marketers want to keep them low. America Firsters want to bring all the troops home, while internationalists feel the need for intervention.
Reagan’s “three-legged stool” brought together defense, social and economic conservatives, but today its legs are in pieces.
The 1980s turned out to be the exception, not the rule, and conservatives have always disagreed about the definition of the term.
William F. Buckley framed it as an act against liberalism, “crying ‘Stop’ in the face of history.” Half a century ago, G. K. Chesterton didn’t so much define the term as identify the actions it demanded.
“All conservatism is based on the idea that if you leave things as they are, they will stay as they are. But this is not so. If you leave things as they are, you leave them to the torrent of change. If you leave a white pillar as it is, it will soon become a black pillar. If you want to keep it especially white, you will always have to repaint it; that is, you will always have to revolutionize it.” [Orthodoxy, 1908]
We are in a place where there isn’t much to “save.”
Conservatism requires deliberate, active work: we must evaluate countless proposed changes every day, promote the few good ones, and destroy the bad ones.
Reagan said, “Freedom is a fragile thing, lasting only one generation before it is gone. Freedom is not something that can be inherited; it must be constantly fought for and defended by each generation. For freedom is given only once to a people. And no people in the history of the world who have known freedom and lost it have ever known freedom again.”
Reagan was a prophet. Today, conservatives spend a lot of time telling younger generations what freedom once was. We talk about the freedoms we lost and how best to restore them.
There is no need for conservatism when there is so little left to defend. Our southern border is destroyed, violent crime terrorizes our greatest cities, and our military is everywhere but winning nowhere.
Let’s start by restoring freedom and constitutional order.
The national debt is $34.8 trillion, more than 120% of GDP. Unfunded liabilities are estimated at $217 trillion.
Nearly a quarter of American children live with one parent and no other adults — by far the highest rate in the world. Marriage rates in the U.S. are at an all-time low, despite loosening a millennia-old definition, as are birth rates.
Only 47% of Americans are “very satisfied” with their lives, and only 19% are satisfied with the direction of the country. The situation is… not good.
Who wants to preserve any of the above? Our goal today must not be preservation, but a desperate effort to restore freedom, family and constitutional order.
The right must abandon the old conservation goals. The time for restoration is now.
Mesa resident John Gabriel is editor-in-chief of Ricochet.com and a contributor to The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com. X, formerly Twitter: Exjon.
