Every time Democrats and liberals launch a moral counterattack against the “mean-spiritedness” of even the most modest conservative reforms, Republicans cower, turn, then flee and surrender the moral high ground. When faced with the charge repeated time and again that they represent big business, the rich, and the “greedy”—and that their “cold-hearted” policies hurt poor women, children, and the elderly—Republican resolve collapses.

The process typically works like this. Day one: Republicans denounce, with nervous indignation, the growth of welfare and regulations. Day two: They concede that people in need have a right to government assistance. Day three: They propose to save particular welfare programs through pragmatic reform. Day four: They shake hands with their Democratic partners and declare that a new era of bipartisanship and consensus has finally arrived.

What the mandarins of the conservative establishment do not and cannot understand, given their philosophy, is that conservatives—to the extent that they ever had any interest in defending individual rights and limited government—lost the fight because they never engaged the enemy with the only kind of weapon that could win: a moral argument against the claim that those in “need” have a moral claim on one’s life, liberty, and property. More importantly, mainstream conservatives have never made a philosophic argument for individual rights, limited government, and capitalism on explicitly moral grounds. Ultimately, they are embarrassed by, and have always worked very hard to hide, the fact that capitalism can only be justified if each and every man has a moral right to live and work for his own sake and not as a sacrificial beast of burden to the “needs” of society.

http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2006-fall/decline-fall-american-conservatism.asp

As the United States advances toward socialism by a series of gradual, halting steps, it is not the liberals or the socialists but rather the conservatives who bear the greatest guilt for dragging America down the road to statism. When they are out of power, conservatives often claim to stand for private property, limited government, and capitalism (thereby serving as a brake against the ambitions of the Left), but when they are in power they have a proven record of hastening our descent into socialism (which is fueled by the mutual desires of the Left). Conservatives may posture as supporters of individual rights, limited government, and capitalism; but, in reality, they are morally opposed to these values, and their history is one of actively betraying them.

Show him to me and I’ll vote for him.

Vouchers are crucial — which means a LOT more focus on local school boards and mayor races. Why isn’t that happening? Not glamorous enough. Just as Keynes vs. Mises in the 30s had Keynes winning because of an “active gov’t”, to solve problems, small-gov’t folk need to be solving problems outside of the gov’t.

Like: 50% tax credits (not deductions) for NGOs — and supporting those NGOs in providing social services.

Perhaps a more honest “gov’t as insurance” social contract, with explicit costs and benefits per year. I just got my Social Security info for this year, discussing how benefits have been changed by Congress and can change again. While this is good, it’s also motivating folks to make sure SS doesn’t give less benefits, altho it states that by 2041 the tax collected will only be 75% of benefits paid out.

The rational voters understand that they’re not going to change the system — so they try to game it to give themselves more benefits. How to allow voters to get more benefits with less gov’t, and have those policies get the credit for more benefits, is the tough issue.

Better media, printed. Why aren’t there new pro-conservative newspapers trying to compete with the liberal-big gov’t biased money losers of today?

Changing the idea of gov’t. And the 1776 great idea, shouldn’t be used to stop experimentation with other bold changes (like Tax Loans — the gov’t gives you money today for education, which you repay with taxes plus a surtax) that increase the important free market principle: the user who benefits, pays (or at least pays more than the non-users).

Libs like to say “There’s no such thing as a free lunch” — but everybody has been to a lunch they didn’t have to pay for. Which counts as free to me.

Libs need to convince Christians to be more anti-gov’t, while still being supportive of the poor.

Put down the book and go for a walk, Lex. Then go looking for a politician who’s more of a workhorse and less of a aspirational showpony.

And if you still have time to read didactic campaign tracts, come on up here to Pennsylvania where our highways are still littered with Ron Paul signs.

My time horizon is definitely less than 50 years. I would hope that the renaissance won’t take quite so long, although it took about that long after the Roosevelt ascension to turn the ship.

By talking about government as “leprous”, you shut down the communication your long-term project requires. Convincing people requires something very different – you have to find specific things that people care about and show them yours is the better way. Conservatives aren’t doing that well right now. Vouchers keep getting defeated in referenda and in legislatures. HSA’s haven’t really taken off like they should. Social Security reforms can’t even get on the table. Etc. It might even be good for conservatism if liberals take over for awhile and let the country see what that’s like.

One thing (the only thing, really) that I like about your favorite Congressman is that he’s willing to think big about the future. Most politicians have no thoughts past the next election.

Although at first glance Ron Paul seems to be a great candidate, he has no awareness of how civilization is actually preserved. The oil market isn’t precisely a free market either. Paul seems utterly ignorant of Islam, nor does he seem to be aware of the place of the United States in Western civilization. An effective military needs to have an active presence worldwide.

However much I like the romantic image of citizen militias, I think that peculiar American romance is an (understandable) idiosyncracy of being founded by rebels on the outskirts of a large empire of liberty, protected by geography and distance. The world today is very different from the 18th century, and especially in the area of national defense this requires a different policy. What exactly this policy should be I am not sure, but neither McCain’s nor Ron Paul’s approaches seem sustainable. We can easily afford the military we have now. Instead of arguing for trading our guns for more butter at home, as Ron Paul has disingenuously implied during his campaign (not very “libertarian” to me), and constantly sending anti-military messages, a more mature approach is needed that tries to combine the safeguarding of individual liberty at home and a hawkish, vigilant and powerful military at strategic locations throughout the world.

We don’t face a choice between:

1) An evil fascist Empire.

2) The Republic of 1789.

Neither one of those exists nor can exist at present. Instead, what we face is an untamable big government in possession of an ill-directed large military (comprised of the finest of what the West has to offer), torn between nation building, “democracy” building (who knew we were a democracy?), humanitarian goals, securing oil supplies, eliminating Islamic criminals, and facing large, growing and unpredictable militaries like China’s, with lack of support for the various goals depending on which party happens to be in power every 4 years. Not a very effective way of operating.

With oil prices at $120, neither the Ummah nor China very friendly inclined towards the United States, a Europe self-destructing faster than during the world wars, socialism, racial and cultural divisions ever-increasing at home, and a conservatism completely lost after the big government, pro-immigration experiments of Bush, the time seems ripe for the galvanization of a new conservative movement.

I am talking about a 25-50 year project, to build a New Model Conservative Coalition.

I am not talking about the 2008 election.

I have said repeatedly on this blog that 2008 is at best damage control. If Sen. McCain wins it will be a miracle. I prefer him to the others, though I do not ardently like him as a politician. But that is never the question. It is always the lesser bad. He is that by miles over either Sen. Obama or Sen. Clinton.

Which opponents have what power to block every move in what chess game?

Clarity, sir. Clarity, please.

It is far too early to say whose base will be energized in November.

Events, dear boy, events.

It is a long way until the election.

“…His solutions are at best simplistic and at worst morally wrong….”

How about that.

I am halfway through his book, and I am not seeing that at all.

All I know about the guy is what I am reading in this book.

He is pre-1955 Taft-style small-c conservative, from what I can see. Not a bad starting point.

I think he is naive about what it would mean to withdraw the US military from the entire rest of the world. That is a major problem.

But reimposing constitutional limitations on the Federal government is good idea.

I wish you had flattered Ron Paul in your first sentence. I then could have saved my self several minutes of contiguous heart beats by hitting the “Back” button.

Will there never come a day with Libertarians will grow a pair?

http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2006-fall/decline-fall-american-conservatism.asp

Even Thomas Jefferson called in the Marines to put down the Barbary pirates.. Freedom of the seas is an American national interest that must be maintained, but I’m thinking we need to find a way to get furriners to help pay for it.. Perhaps that’s what devaluing the currency does? Stop buying our dollars and we stop defending your access to the sea lanes…

Absolutely the last thing we need is for all the politicians to get together, come to an agreement, stop fighting and start “governing” in the fashion that “policy experts” have agreed on.

Isn’t this a little like, well, the Common Market EU?

It may sound clinched had it not been noted for the significance of who said this. This is from the mouth of the very person who promotes the Asian values that were in vogue just a decade ago, and whose Singapore’s foreign policy has been not openly offending China.

Apparently Mr Zakaria missed the bus.

As to building a new movement – isn’t there a blueprint out there on how the original conservative movement was built – by later Justice White I think, when he was at the US Chamber of Commerce. Just remember it is a 50 year project.

Back to basics.

How exactly is the first question we need to start to answer.

Suggestions are welcome.