No Ordinary Year

Many people have predicted that the movement that flared up across the continent last year will make a big impact this year.  It will only do so, however, if we change some of our tactics.

This has all happened before.  Most of the parallels that I have heard others note are between 2010 and 1994.  It would be wonderful if 2010 were to play out that way -- and it might.  However, the conservatives of the 104th Congress were defeated in 1995 in a major public relations battle with President Clinton over the budget, and this not only derailed the "Republican Revolution" (and apparently left the conservative members of Congress stunned and confused for the next several election cycles, unwilling or unable to stand for small-government conservative reform) but resulted in Clinton's reelection in 1996.

For the four years following the budget battle, GOP congressional majorities were not only unable to meaningfully reduce government (or even reduce government growth), but somehow were only able to mount a meager defense against the initiatives of Clinton and the Democrats.  For those who do not remember (and with no disrespect intended to those conservative leaders who did everything they believed they could -- political success can be tricky, which is actually the point of this post), that defense was weak, inept, and an embarassment for conservatives.  (Additionally, for those who do not remember, it was for an alternative to this that Republicans turned to the "compassionate conservatism" of the future President Bush -- they just wanted a leader who would stop losing!)

There are many lessons to learn from the way 1995 and 1996 unfolded for congressional conservatives, but two of the larger lessons are the following:

1) Passion is not enough.

We had passion for advancing conservatism in 1994 and 1995, but that did not ensure that we were properly organized (or otherwise prepared) to counter the flurry of attack ads that Democrats ran on television in the December of 1995.  It did not prevent the congressional conservatives (or the "Dittohead Caucus," as some of the GOP freshmen had called themselves) from becoming politically shellshocked.  It did not allow the rest of us, the ordinary conservatives of America, to help those congressional conservatives to recover their senses and return to Washington with renewed confidence, determination, and purpose.

Something certainly can and should come of all of the passion for conservative reform in America right now, but getting excited about the "revolution" that we supposedly have scheduled for this fall is not a plan at all -- and if it is used in lieu of a plan, it will fail.

2) Never stop teaching conservatism.

Even people with strong conservative tendencies do not necessarily know what they need to know in order to be reliable, effective conservatives.  In 1994, quite a few American voters seemed to have had the right idea, but we quickly learned that they were not so familiar with the collected wisdom of conservatism that they could not be misled by liberal arguments and accusations.  (By the end of 1995, Republicans had remarkable difficulty just in convincing Americans that it is not a disaster for "nonessential" government workers to be furloughed while the President and Congress continued to debate the budget.)

I am convinced that even quite a few self-described conservatives do not yet know as much as the success of the conservative movement depends on them knowing.  Will we put a little thought into this now, making preparations for challenges that we, as conservatives, will almost certainly face if conservatives take control of Congress this year, or will we wait until liberal groups have discredited us with defamatory television advertisements?

Hopefully, most conservatives will find the right answer to this question to be obvious.  As far as conservative strategy is concerned, we must not let 2010 be just an ordinary year.

165 Sub-Points

I want to avoid any misunderstanding concerning the content of the Twelve Points.  The particular misunderstanding that I have in mind is a reasonable one, but I still think that those who do not yet understand my goal in writing the Twelve Points deserve to have that information brought to their attention.

The Twelve Points has/have layers upon layers of meaning built into the structure of the document, in addition to the words themselves.  (That's what happens when you spend a year and a half to write a 5-page document.)  The name "The Twelve Points" has understandably caused many people to believe that the twelve named points, as listed here, are the main ideas of this document.  That is not so.  It is true that the content is grouped into twelve categories, but as I wrote the Twelve Points, the document moved more and more away from expressing a formula of twelve larger concepts and in the direction of drawing as much attention as possible to the little details.  Most of the statements on conservatism that I saw circulated in 2009 focused on either those larger, master principles or on a proposed platform for use in the next election or two.  As I wrote the Twelve Points, though, I came to realize that it is in those details that the conservative movement shows the most confusion and faces the greatest dangers; it is in the understanding of those details that we have the greatest need for improvement.  It is easy for a candidate to claim to believe in general freedom, to support the free market, and to favor federalism and the Constitution (and the honest interpretation of it), for example.  From experience, we have found it to be a bit more difficult than that to decide what an alleged conservative understands those ideas to mean.  Does he understand the right to freedom to extend even to acts (or omissions) that he dislikes, provided that they do not intrude on the equal rights of others?  (Then, in interpreting that, how well can he tell the difference between a genuine right and a counterfeit right?)  Does his understanding of the Constitution actually bear some resemblence to its written content, or does he just view it as a philosophical repository for whatever he thinks is right?  Does he understand the free market well enough to recognize economic fallacies and confidently resist pressure and deception?  Does he recognize that for the most part, the constitutional rights of the accused are intended for the protection of the innocent, and that they can only protect the innocent if they are applied uniformly to the accused?  Isn't a conservative (in the sense that he or she identifies with the conservative "side," though not necessarily in the sense of actually knowing, understanding, and appreciating what it is that we believe ought to be "conserved," restored, and carefully improved) who really only has the "gist of it" unprepared to stand up for it?

As I recognized this, and as I collected and catalogued the best conservative ideas that could be stated in this format, I began to view the Twelve Points less as twelve distinct concepts and more as 165 sub-points of a single, coherent philosophy, organized into twelve larger themes.  As a result, it is a mistake to simply read the twelve bold-faced headings, ignoring the 165 sub-points that give them certainty and substance.  Using the Twelve Points, we can make these ideas common knowledge in the conservative community.  In the way that so many self-described conservatives now adopt the themes and slogans of the conservative movement, they will be able to adopt a greater portion of the conservative philosophy than is currently readily available to them.  Once this happens, we will gain not only from the reduction in the portion of conservatives who do not understand conservatism -- we will find also that we have gained the ability to organize around ideas more complex and meaningful than the sound bites now used, and we will better serve the philosophy of conservatism and the United States of America as a result of it.