"What is conservatism?" That question can only be answered with a concrete articulation of the political order we are trying to conserve and the clear identification of the threats to its existence. We must conserve this American nation with its constitutional form of government and commitment to ordered liberty. But that is precisely where we as a country keep falling out with one another. We struggle to find consensus about what America really is anymore. As a result, we seem unable to articulate what ideas and institutions we should defend. The central task of the conservative is to overcome this tremendous difficulty by illuminating for Americans that the best guarantee for their future happiness is in the freedom and responsibility of the Founders’ Constitution. And this will further require that conservative thought and practice lead America to renewed national purpose amidst severe divisions, which the coronavirus crisis has only intensified.
We are stuck with defending our constitutional order against an antagonistic world, much of which aches for an existence without America. For the conservative statesman, this requires the articulation of our national objectives whose goal is nothing less than the protection of our republican, constitutional life. Key objectives include achieving our national security in a fading unipolar moment, the recovery of self-government and congressional deliberation, confronting endless debt—itself a sign of indiscipline—and, once again, articulating the inherent goodness of middle-class existence with work, family, and faith as its elements. But that will require politics. Republican government presupposes politics as the pursuit of persons who are guided by reason to certain public ends. We remain in debate and conversation because the nation and its constitutional framework, undergirded by the “laws of nature and of nature’s God,” directs our loyalty and our friendship.
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