Steven Covey author of the “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” set up as one of the habits, to put first things first. First things first was the title of his next book. Without a doubt the Republican party must begin to rebuild itself, so should the Democrat party but I will not get into that. To rebuild we must borrow Covey’s second habit “begin with the end in mind.” What do we want the party to look like and how will it serve the nation and the people. Conservatism is the obvious place to start but what is conservatism? Book publisher Henry Regnery once said, “Conservatism is not a fixed and immutable body of dogma, and conservatives inherit from Burke a talent for re-expressing their convictions to fit the times.”  There was a time when conservatism was in ascendancy and may have peaked with President Reagan. When once asked to define conservatism, the father of modern conservative thought, William F. Buckley responded “Conservatism aims to maintain in working order the loyalties of the community to perceived truths and also to those truths which in their judgment have earned universal recognition. Now this leaves room, of course, for deposition, and there is deposition — the Civil War being the most monstrous account. But it also urges a kind of loyalty that breeds a devotion to those ideals sufficient to surmount the current crisis. When the Soviet Union challenged America and our set of loyalties, it did so at gunpoint. It became necessary at a certain point to show them our clenched fist and advise them that we were not going to deal lightly with our primal commitment to preserve those loyalties. That’s the most general definition of conservatism.”

Where to go from here? The truths Buckley referred have been twisted and turned until they are unrecognizable. When Buckley and Regnery where speaking the main enemies were the Soviet Union and China. There was a clear distinction between Western and Communist governments. After the Berlin wall came down and the east opened, and then the Soviet Union itself ceased to exist, many people still remembered the horror stories that had emerged. before that we were told by Solzhenitsyn of the type of system existed. It has been more then a generation since the fall of the Soviet Union and China has developed a hybrid system that fooled the west for years. The left proceeded during this time to convince the world that the old communist systems were not that bad, that socialism was an answer to all the problems that exist. 

As we said, one of the things the left likes to claim is that they alone can solve the problems of race and are the only party that believes in equality. This is an area the Republicans have tied to reject but have done a bad job. While highlighting the number of minorities who have switched to the Republican party they fail to say why. The liberal left continues to tout the need for a central government role in all aspects of life and try to bribe minorities to stay by promising monetary support across the board. What is less likely to be shown is that minority business ownership and the number of minorities in the middle class has grown to a point that it is approaching equality with the white population. When this began to become apparent in the Trump administration politicians and news media brough to light concepts of white privilege, white supremacy, and critical race theory. The Republican party backed away from discussing this and in some ways encouraged the belief in this line of thinking.

The main tactic of the left is to convince people to stop thinking and to just accept group think. The end state we must strive for is that the individual counts and will not be lost in the drive for collective thinking. A main tenet of conservatism has been prosperity. For many years now there has been a strong push to villainize the wealthy and the idea that all problems with the poor derives from too few people having too much money. Economic inequality is a buzz phrase of the left. This is usually followed by the statement that the rich must pay their fair share, with no one saying what a fair share is.

Beginning with the end in mind lets look at convincing the people that there is nothing wrong with wealth and building wealth. That the individual is responsible for their own welfare and that the purpose of government is to ensure there is no roadblock to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but it does come from the government.