Republican Reformation, Part I: Defeating Defeatism

The elections are over, and save for some gritty recounts, especially between Franken and Coleman in Minnesota, the results are clear. Stewing over them is pointless; what conservatives must do now is analyze why they failed, how they can mitigate the failure, and how they can avoid more failure in the future. All together, that's at least two years worth of material to cover (probably four years), and one can only hope the Republican party will use this time wisely.

One response to failure is defeatism: conservative ideals are sound, but the populace is thick-headed and deluded by the persuasive non-truths of our opponents. Worse still, society has gone beyond the point of redemption. The family and local institutions have crumbled, and the next generation will be more fragmented and government dependent than ever before. Moreover, the education system is controlled by the Left; it pollutes posterity with socialist propaganda even though such ideas lack historical examples of lasting functionality. If the war is lost in the schools and homes, then victory in politics will be ephemeral. Our debt is so large that we cannot delude ourselves into thinking it will ever be paid off, and demographics seem to ensure entitlement-caused insolvency.

These thoughts are largely truthful, but they are not productive. Their result is unchivalrous conduct: people talk of moving to the country and defending their families, not unworthy goals, but ones which turn the rearguard action of conservatism into a rout. That endangers the survival of the whole movement, which is by no means finished, even if faded.

A sense of history is important at times like these. Society, as Burke wrote, is ". . . a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born. Each contract of each particular state is but a clause in the great primeval contract of eternal society." We do dishonor to mankind as a whole--past, present, and future--if we flee before all hope is lost, perhaps even when all hope is lost.

We are paying for the unworthy conduct of many we elected. With our hands tied by a two-party system and the false assurances of those we chose, we may think ourselves absolved. Whether we were innocent or inseparably duplicitous is inconsequential--we will be punished either way. The last Byzantine ruler may have been competent and honest (I do not know if he was), but the sins of his antecedents doomed the ancient polity before he took the throne. In the end, dying in battle was the best tribute to his ancestors and a striking testimony for his descendants.

Now is not the time to abandon the Republican Party. Now is the time to volunteer and fill its ranks with lost fervor. It is in times of persecution that one purifies.