Is There a Way Forward for Conservatives?
What now? As we begin four more years with Mr.
Obama at the helm, those of us who have strong misgivings about the direction he is taking our country must stop useless grousing and wishful thinking that our country is simply in the midst of a normal political cycle and "our side will win the next round".
The reelection of Mr.
Obama was not the result of a "poor" Republican candidate, political shenanigans or election cycles.
It was the fruit of undeniable demographic shifts and a fragmented national culture wounded by one hundred years of bad public policy experiments and relentless attacks on our country's history & core virtues.
To miss these facts is to miss the point completely.
If an opportunity still exists to reorient our country based on our Founding Principals and the cultural & moral strengths that facilitated our rapid rise to preeminence in the world, we must do more to reverse our present course than overturning bad policy and weeding out the rascals, important as those actions are.
We must rebuild a unified national culture and do the rigorous intellectual work required to foster new ideas capable of capturing the public's imagination and fundamentally reforming our public institutions, as Wayne Leighton & Edward Lopez persuasively argue in Madmen, Intellectuals & Academic Scribblers (Stanford Economics and Finance, November 2012).
Rebuilding a cohesive national culture, unified by the virtues that were present at our founding, may take several generations and it cannot be accomplished by political action alone.
This does not mean that we shouldn't get started.
Re-engendering a love of constitutional government, individual liberty, personal responsibility, education, shared sacrifice, a strong work ethic, perseverance, fortitude, civility, manners, etc.
in our cultural DNA will require each one of us to dedicate ourselves to re-teaching our children, and then helping them teach our grandchildren, the abiding virtues that formed the character of the men & women who built this great country.
We must apply ourselves to this work every day, in every family and we must never again delegate this responsibility to public institutions.
Although this important work must occur primarily at the individual and family level, Yuval Levin, in a recent post on National Review Online, makes an excellent case that we can simultaneously take steps to advance our cause in the political arena by offering an agenda "that champions the constitutional system and its underlying worldview" and fundamenally reforms the failed ideas of the welfare state by promoting new ideas that will give "everyone a chance to benefit from and participate in our dynamic economy rather than shielding them from it.
" (Levin's entire post can be read here: http://www.
nationalreview.
com/corner/338366/obama-s-second-inaugural-yuval-levin#more The task ahead will not be easy and the results will not be quick, but we must all offer our best effort or bear the shame of having let the greatest country in the history of the world slip away on our watch.
Obama at the helm, those of us who have strong misgivings about the direction he is taking our country must stop useless grousing and wishful thinking that our country is simply in the midst of a normal political cycle and "our side will win the next round".
The reelection of Mr.
Obama was not the result of a "poor" Republican candidate, political shenanigans or election cycles.
It was the fruit of undeniable demographic shifts and a fragmented national culture wounded by one hundred years of bad public policy experiments and relentless attacks on our country's history & core virtues.
To miss these facts is to miss the point completely.
If an opportunity still exists to reorient our country based on our Founding Principals and the cultural & moral strengths that facilitated our rapid rise to preeminence in the world, we must do more to reverse our present course than overturning bad policy and weeding out the rascals, important as those actions are.
We must rebuild a unified national culture and do the rigorous intellectual work required to foster new ideas capable of capturing the public's imagination and fundamentally reforming our public institutions, as Wayne Leighton & Edward Lopez persuasively argue in Madmen, Intellectuals & Academic Scribblers (Stanford Economics and Finance, November 2012).
Rebuilding a cohesive national culture, unified by the virtues that were present at our founding, may take several generations and it cannot be accomplished by political action alone.
This does not mean that we shouldn't get started.
Re-engendering a love of constitutional government, individual liberty, personal responsibility, education, shared sacrifice, a strong work ethic, perseverance, fortitude, civility, manners, etc.
in our cultural DNA will require each one of us to dedicate ourselves to re-teaching our children, and then helping them teach our grandchildren, the abiding virtues that formed the character of the men & women who built this great country.
We must apply ourselves to this work every day, in every family and we must never again delegate this responsibility to public institutions.
Although this important work must occur primarily at the individual and family level, Yuval Levin, in a recent post on National Review Online, makes an excellent case that we can simultaneously take steps to advance our cause in the political arena by offering an agenda "that champions the constitutional system and its underlying worldview" and fundamenally reforms the failed ideas of the welfare state by promoting new ideas that will give "everyone a chance to benefit from and participate in our dynamic economy rather than shielding them from it.
" (Levin's entire post can be read here: http://www.
nationalreview.
com/corner/338366/obama-s-second-inaugural-yuval-levin#more The task ahead will not be easy and the results will not be quick, but we must all offer our best effort or bear the shame of having let the greatest country in the history of the world slip away on our watch.
