Since the Bush era many people have felt our great nation was in an unchangeable decline. Though most of those who thought so were leftist and believed so for the wrong reason, their basic assumptions that thing are going to get worse before they get better was and remains correct. For the near future our economy will lag, our jobs will continue to migrate overseas, our borders will remain porous, our standing in the world will decline, the national zeitgiest of independence will continue to be subsumed by the gigantous called social democracy, and Obama will most likely be a two term president. To state such is not to bemoan our great crop our Republican hopefuls, nor is it to condemn our nations future, but rather it is to acknowledge that conservativism is a political movement in exile.
Like the biblical Israelites in Exodus, our nation is in the wilderness. As our country goes further and further off the path of classical liberalism – limited government and individual rights, the arguments we make of return fall on ever increasingly deaf ears. Whether actively like the OWS Potemkin villagers or tacitly like many erstwhile moderates, our kinsmen and co-nationals have doubled down on the cradle to grave entitlement state. That this stumbling foray into soft socialism will eventually lead to catastrophe is no consolation. That history will vindicate traditional American values does not ameliorate the current woes and coming storm. It does however necessitate a time of preparation.
Conservatives, being such, must conserve as much as possible of the traditional classical liberal values our nation was founded upon. But in the face of the juggernaut of the state, rear guard action is not enough. Rather, in this time of turmoil conservatives must plant the seeds of their and the nations re-ascendancy.
In part, this has already begun. Conservative think tanks have created a growing web of institutes and organizations that function effectively as a para-university. Students are exposed, in greater number today, to broad spectrum conservative thought and theory, than ever before. Alas, it is not enough, for the majority of young adults go through academia unenlightened. To address this, two actions should be taken.
First these efforts must be redoubled. Conservative institutes of learning should be established at universities and funds to support academic chairs should be created to propagate a de-politicized education at the collegiate level. Action analogous to these are underway in the Jewish community which, in an effort to counter institutional anti-Israel bias, has begun to fund Israel and Zionist history focused chairs at universities across the nation. Embedding itself in academia is precisely how the Left indoctrinated a generation of Americans away from individual freedoms to identity politics and blame-the-West-first-ism. This is a strategic move the larger conservative movement need take as well.
Moreover, conservatives should take a page from America’s ethnic communities. Whether to Ireland, Israel, Armenia, India, Greece, or Africa, there are many heritage tours which expose ethnic Americans to their cultures ancestral homelands. These tours encourage participants to plug into the ancient histories and modern developments of their co-ethnics. Some of them even attempt to preach to their American brethren so that they will lobby Washington favorably for them.
The West’s ancestral homeland is at the very least 2/3rds European. To paraphrase Pope Benedict XVI it was the philosophy of ancient Greece, the Roman rule of law, and the monotheistic morality out of Jerusalem that are the pillars of Western civilization. Conservatives should raise funds to send college students, young adults, and opinion leaders on Western Civilization heritage tours. These tours need not be limited to the Greco-Roman world, nor the nation that birthed the magna carta, but can include a whole host of nations. From the contemporary rise of the modern Right in Europe to the economically sound and amazing Soviet recovery stories of much of Eastern Europe, to the school choice success that is the Netherlands, to the severely limited monarchs of the old Lithuanian-Polish Commonwealth. Europe, the West’s ancestral homeland, is filled with a rich past and present of limited government, battles against socialism, and the pursuit of individual freedoms. Conservatives need to expose America’s future leaders to them.
Conservatives must also take a page from their brethren in the Evangelical movement. For far too many conservatives being correct is more important than being popular. This smug moral superiority does their ideas and movement disservice by unnecessarily limiting those with whom they can convince and convert. Evangelicals have an ideologically solid grounding which gives them a confidence without conceit that has let them spread around the world an empowering ideological message. Conservatives must, in form, be more like this religious movement and spread the conservative gospel. From a secular political perspective the individual souls of our fellow Americans may not be in danger, but the long term survival of our national values are.
Second we must communicate to our conservative leaders and elected officials that they must not be complicit in the upward growth of government and its inevitable effect – the downward swing for America. They must follow a path of obstruction, saying to our nation from the mountain tops that this is not the right way. If conservatives ally with liberals to get the inevitably small handouts they offer, they will loose the moral high ground. More importantly, they will lack the ability to lead the nation out of its turmoil. When the nation tires of the endless growth of government and the shrinkage of our national potential they must have somewhere to turn to, and it must be conservative.
If conservatives break ranks, the current crisis and coming storm will continue to get worse. Bi-partisanship on Democratic terms means becoming part of the problem by feeding the beast that is big government. If Democrats would at the very least put growing the tax base on the table conservatives could discuss consider raising taxes by eliminating loopholes. However, historically the Democratic leadership is more concerned with scoring points than real reform. Conservatives, often accused of marching lock step, must do so on the fiscal, monetary, and taxation front.
That the nation is going through a historically rough time is a given. That it will continue for sometime and that this will be coupled with a second Obama term is an unfortunate probability. The nation has raised the ante by continuing to bet on government expansion. Conservatives must make ready for when our nation looses the bet it will turn to them for guidance. Conservatives need to be prepared both by maintaining the moral high ground and by laying the foundation of the conservative and American re-ascendancy.
