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.

On Unity

We, the conservatives, are not divided because each conservative faction believes so much, so strongly, so assertively, that we cannot possibly stand together.  We are divided because the ties of principle, which have held us together, have now dissolved.  We are divided because we now can have no confidence that other conservatives believe what we do, in the wake of the failure of many alleged conservatives to stand up for those beliefs and put them into effect.

Most of what is stated by the Twelve Points has been said before, at some point, but memories have faded, and most of us have “joined the program already in progress.”  We have to affirm, from time to time, that this really is what we believe, or we will wander too far away from it.

We have factions in practice, right now, but the conservative philosophy itself is still fairly united.  Most of the real conservatives who I know (which does not include those who arbitrarily categorize themselves without really knowing what they are talking about) hold many uniting beliefs.  When they ignore some of these principles, it is not necessarily because they actually disagree with them -- the principles still appeal to them.  Sometimes, I am convinced, they abandon some of the principles because those principles have assumed a lower profile and fallen out of circulation.

We can restore the ties that helped to hold the movement together!  These principles are right, of course.  By reviewing and remembering them now, we will restore what conservatives had in common, thereby contributing significantly to the reunification of the conservative movement.

Other guidance

In addition to the Twelve Points (which are my priority, of course, for the near future), I would eventually like to compile a similar statement on the temperament of a solid conservative.  The following is an example of the kind of point that it would make:

"Ultra-hyperbole is not conservative."

Origin of the Twelve Points

At this point, readers may wonder who is behind this project, where the Twelve Points came from, and who their author is.  This post is the answer to these questions.

I am Karl Born, the author of the Twelve Points.  I wrote the Twelve Points and created this blog, though there were many people along the way whose help has been indispensible.

I wrote the Twelve Points because at some point in 2007, I realized that the current level of philosophical confusion in the conservative movement (which I believe was no better then than it is now) might be helped by the right kind of statement of principles.  This statement would need to cut through this fog, resonate with all conservatives, refresh their (/our) memory of conservative ideas and philosophy, and help newer conservatives to gain (from the beginning) a firm grasp of the breadth and depth of the conservative objectives and principles.

It also occurred to me that widespread conservative affirmation of such a summary of conservative philosophy could help to heal and reunite the conservative movement.  In the years leading up to this, the conservatives most concerned with freedom, the Constitution, the rule of law, and related issues concerning the size and cost of government were given reason to question how much weight, if any, many conservatives actually gave to these principles.  (For this reason, some of these freedom enthusiasts no longer even call themselves conservatives, even though individual liberty and its constitutional protections are unambiguously a conservative principle.  What could be less conservative than for Americans to abandon this fortunate heritage of liberty?)  This was not the only important division in the conservative community; there were others.

To me, however, each of these divisions appeared to have resulted from a similar cause: constituencies of conservatives were violating the principles most important to the others, even where I would have expected the principles to appeal to the very groups violating them, and even though the conservative principles work best in concert.  If all conservatives were to review and reaffirm all of these principles at once, refreshing their own dedication to those principles, couldn't that help to pull these conservative groups back together?  A superficial, ceremonial reunion would be useless, but if conservatives from all of these factions would willingly, earnestly, and publicly reaffirm their sincere support of these principles, I do think that they would make a point of actually keeping those principles.

As a sophomore at Indiana University - Bloomington in 2001, I began to organize a conservative student organization, Grand Old Cause, which eventually adopted the statement of principles shown in the picture: the Seven Points.  Later (back in 2007), I realized that the Seven Points would not quite provide the certainty and substance that the larger conservative movement needed, and I gradually began to consider writing a new Seven Points-like statement on conservatism.

In March 2008, I finally decided to follow through and write a first draft of the Twelve Points.  Once I had done this, I wanted to be sure that I had not missed anything essential, so I tracked down and read every conservative book and every existing conservative statement of principles that I could find.  (As I researched, edited, and drafted the Twelve Points, the "Sharon Statement" of Young Americans for Freedom was an important influence on both the style and the substance.)

It was a long time before I was satisfied with what I had written, but in Indianapolis, during the afternoon of July 2, 2009, I made the final changes and completed the Twelve Points.

The only thing left to do was spread the word.  If you like the Twelve Points -- and I have no doubt that you will, once you read them -- I hope that you will join me in this final part of the project.

If you want to help, e-mail me at the12points@gmail.com or simply send people here on your own!

All the Pure, Concentrated Conservatism That Five Pages Can Hold

Even if conservatives become confused only as to the details of the philosophy, a good deal of damage can be done. In practice, every policy concerns the specific application of certain principles, and getting the details right often makes the difference between wise or unwise, just or unjust, and constitutional or unconstitutional.

Current events-oriented television and radio shows generally do not discuss the "big picture" of conservative philosophy and ideas. They focus on recent news (and usually news that would, in some way, excite or outrage the audience).

Unless and until a new conservative both 1) realizes just how much excellent conservative books could contribute to his or her understanding of conservatism and 2) actually reads a good number of those books, where will he find accessible, high-quality information on the conservative philosophy? How complete will his understanding of conservatism be?

Then, once a conservative has developed a strong understanding of conservatism, he or she will occasionally need to refresh his (or her) memory. Is re-reading each of those books the best way to do this?

No five-page document could communicate all of this information. The Twelve Points, however, are a highly-detailed, highly-concentrated five page summary of conservative thought. They can go where no book (or library full of books) can go.

The Twelve Points will jump-start new conservatives' philosophical educations and refresh the memory of more seasoned conservatives. They will clear away conservative philosophical confusion and restore the strained ties holding the movement together.

In short, this is as much pure, concentrated conservatism as five pages can possibly hold. Popular conservatism needs this now more than ever. In order to return conservative ideas and thought to popular conservatism, read the Twelve Points and spread the word!

Why the Twelve Points Are Needed -- Regrettable Slogan Version

"It is time for Conservatism to take its vitamins."

(For better versions of "Why the Twelve Points Are Needed," try the "Short Version" or the "Very Short Version." You can also read the Twelve Points themselves.)