THE PILLARS OF CONSERVATISM

Alfred S. Regnery¹

Conservatism has, over the past fifty years or so, become the dominant political philosophy in the United States. Any newspaper or magazine article, any television news or background report, or anything else having to do with politics more often than not will mention the word conservative. Politically, almost every Republican candidate running for office—whether for the county clerk or president of the United States—will establish his position in the political spectrum relative to how conservative he is. Even Democrats, particularly in the South and West, distinguish between members of their party as more or less conservative, albeit less commonly than twenty years ago. Similarly, in economic policy, tax policy, foreign affairs, social issues, and the culture more generally, the “conservative” position provides a common measuring stick.

This conservative primacy in American politics and culture didn’t just happen. It is the result of decades of hard work by those who are often referred to as “the conservative movement”—the great body of organizations, committees, political activists, politicians, think tanks, periodicals, talk-show hosts, bloggers, and the rest who are actively involved in conservative politics.

Although conservatism as we know it today is relatively new, emerging on the scene only after World War II and becoming a political force only in the 1960s, it is based on ideas that are as old as Western civilization. Its basic tenets—the intellectual foundations on which this movement has been built—stretch back to antiquity, were further developed during the Middle Ages and in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England, and were ultimately formulated into a coherent political philosophy at the time of the founding of the United States. In fact, in a real sense, conservatism is Western civilization.

There are four fundamental concepts that serve as the four pillars of modern conservatism.

THE FIRST PILLAR: LIBERTY

Conservatives believe that individuals possess the right to life, liberty, property, and freedom from the restrictions of arbitrary force. They exercise these rights through the use of their natural free will. That means the ability to follow your own dreams, to do what you want to do—so long as you don’t harm others—and to reap the rewards. Above all, it means freedom from oppression by government and the protection by government against oppression. It means political liberty, the freedom to speak your mind and advocate any political position that suits your fancy. It means religious liberty to worship as you please. It also means the liberty not to have to do any of those things.²

Liberty also means economic liberty, the freedom to allocate resources by the free play of supply and demand and the free market system that follows from it; it means the freedom to own property and to use it accordingly.³

Conservatism embraces the notion that the pursuit of virtue is central to human existence, and that liberty is an essential component of the pursuit of virtue. Virtue is a necessary element in the pursuit of freedom—it ensures that freedom will be pursued for the common good—and when freedom is abused and must be controlled, virtue provides a standard for restraint.

Over the course of history, people came to realize that the greatest threats to liberty are the impositions of government, whether monarchial, democratic, or otherwise. On the other hand, people also realized that there are some things the government must control. Finding the right balance in this tension between order and liberty is often at the root of questions of the desirability of more or less government. At the end of the day, in choosing whether to have more security or more liberty, the conservative usually inclines toward liberty.⁴

THE SECOND PILLAR: TRADITION AND ORDER

Conservatism is devoted to conserving the values that have been established over centuries, resulting in an orderly society. It believes that human nature has the capacity to build a social order that respects human rights and is able to repel evil. Order consists of a systematic and harmonious arrangement, both within one’s own character and in the state. It entails the performance of certain duties and the enjoyment of certain rights in a community, as implied by the phrase “the civil social order.” It is absolutely necessary for life and the pursuit of our dreams. Order is an achievement but is easily taken for granted; it is perhaps more easily understood by looking at its opposite. Disordered existence is confused and miserable. If a society falls into general disorder, many of its members will cease to exist at all. Disorder helps to explain why order depends upon virtue—if the members of a society are disordered in spirit, the outward order of society cannot endure. Disorder describes well what conservatism is not.⁵

THE THIRD PILLAR: RULE OF LAW

Conservatism insists that a predictable and consistent legal system is necessary for ordered liberty. A lawful society consists of a government of laws, not men, as John Adams described it. It is one in which people know what the rules are, and in which rules are enforced uniformly for all citizens. Rule of law means that government itself, along with the governed, is subject to the law, and it means all people are to be equally protected by the law.⁶ Rule of law promotes prosperity, and it protects liberty. Simply said, rule of law provides the conditions for uniform justice.⁷

THE FOURTH PILLAR: BELIEF IN GOD

Belief in God means adherence to the broad concepts of religious faith, things like justice, virtue, fairness, charity, community, and duty—concepts absolutely foundational to conservative thought.⁸ Conservatism is tethered to the idea that allegiance to God transcends politics and sets the standards for politics. For conservatives, the reality of a supreme transcendent authority, higher than any earthly authority, naturally limits the legitimate authority of the state. No government can demand absolute obedience or legitimately attempt to control every aspect of our lives. This belief in God does not conflate faith and politics, and it does not mean that religious disputes are necessarily political disputes, or vice versa. Nor does it mean that all conservatives believe in God, or that they have a monopoly on faith. It does mean that conservatives believe that there is a moral order that lies behind political order, and that order establishes the natural limits of all human authority.

Man is fallible. If you believe that man is on top of things, that man is at the top of the heap—then you must believe that man can’t make mistakes, that man has all the answers. The foundational tenet of liberalism is that man can do anything. Individually, of course, that’s impossible. But the Left believes that man collectively can do anything, and that acting collectively through government, man can create heaven on earth. He can answer all of the problems that people have, and he can do it in such a way that there really aren’t any mistakes or errors. There is a reason that communism requires atheism; if rights descended from God, and heaven were not possible on earth, communism would fall flat philosophically.⁹

Each of the four pillars is related to the others—indeed, they are interdependent. Conservatism provides a conceptual framework that incorporates them into a whole. Liberty, for example, is a gift of God that is safeguarded by, and dependent on, the rule of law. The rule of law itself reflects and is dependent on natural law, the law written on every man’s heart from a transcendent source beyond human perception, which is reflected in every orderly and civilized society.¹⁰ This higher law distinguishes between good and evil and finds particular expression in tradition, custom, and human laws. Tradition and order are best expressed by the common law, the law that was developed over centuries by reasonable people in their everyday lives and experiences, and which establishes rules for order consistent with the past. And tradition and order are central components of belief in God. What could demonstrate tradition and order more fully, for example, than the Old Testament and the history of the Jews, or the teachings of Christianity, and particularly the Catholic Church?¹¹

THE FOUR CITIES THAT FOUNDED CONSERVATISM

It can be helpful to look at these conceptual pillars of conservatism from a historical perspective. Russell Kirk, probably the preeminent conservative thinker of the twentieth century, spoke of four great cities where the foundations of conservatism were laid: Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, and London. According to Kirk, what originated in those four cities culminated in a fifth great city, Philadelphia, in the late eighteenth century. Those four cities provide an excellent illustrative account of the philosophical underpinnings of modern American conservatism, how they were knit together, and how they evolved into contemporary conservatism.¹²

The first city is Jerusalem, from which the concept of a transcendent order originated, along with the notion that true law is divine and that God is the source of order and justice. Jerusalem’s contribution to conservatism is essential, reminding us that man is subservient to God, that man does not have all the answers, and that there is a greater power to which we owe our lives and all that we have. The Hebrews in the Old Testament taught that God made a covenant or compact with his people; he provided laws by which they should live, and from that revelation man developed modern ethics and modern law. The Hebrew notion of compact is present in the very basis of Western political order.¹³

The second city is Athens, where the ancient Greek philosophers, particularly Plato and Aristotle, developed the Western understanding of the basis of the social order, what is required for people to live together in society and thrive. In the Greek mind, ethics and politics are fundamental to human existence: ethics establishes one’s character, and politics is the means by which man attains his desires. Aristotle, whose work is profoundly influential in conservative thought, understood the needs of the individual person and his relationship to community. His account of man as a social animal recognized that man discovers his talents and their potential only as part of a broader community. Despite their philosophical contributions to conservatism, the Greeks add little to the appreciation of liberty; in their attention to natural human gregariousness, some Greeks were quick to conflate society and the state, even to the point of total subjugation of the person to the state.¹⁴

The third city in this historical progression is Rome, which esteemed the republic as the highest form of government. The Roman Republic introduced the separation of powers in the wielding of political authority and a system of checks and balances for the control of political power. Rome also embodied the idea of the rule of law as necessary for the preservation of both order and liberty, and as both reliable and consistent. Until the Roman Republic collapsed in 43 B.C., Roman philosophers such as Cato, Marcus Aurelius, and Cicero developed the appreciation for virtue as a necessary component in the rule of law. For the Romans, the virtues were necessary to maintain internal order by restraining human passions, making it possible to sustain external order and therefore conditions for preserving liberty. In this way, Roman civilization defined ordered liberty in a world where anarchy and disorder reigned. Following the republic, the Roman Empire contributed little to an appreciation for liberty but retained a great deal about the use of power in upholding order.¹⁵

Finally, London helped to establish the foundations of conservatism from the Middle Ages to the end of the eighteenth century and beyond. Starting with the Magna Carta in 1215, the English developed the concept of the common law and an appreciation for the universality of law applied equally to all, whether the king or the lowliest citizen. Magna Carta and the common law tradition also expressed the notion of the permanence and supremacy of law, meaning that existing law endures and must be obeyed by all.

In 1765, William Blackstone, Oxford professor and a judge, published his Commentaries on the Laws of England. In that massive work, he proposed that all law was rooted in the natural law and was properly shaped by Christian ethics, and he declared that man had innate rights to personal security, personal liberty, and private property. He allowed, however, that those rights were not absolute; according to Blackstone, life in society requires sacrificing certain rights as the price for the mutual commerce that society makes possible. This form of social contract is fundamental to American politics and is central to conservatism.¹⁶

The influence of British political thinkers on conservatism is great. Central to the conservative intellectual tradition are John Locke, John Stuart Mill, David Hume, Jeremy Bentham, and, most important, Edmund Burke. An Irishman and member of the House of Commons, Burke is probably the closest to being the intellectual father of American conservatism. His writings concerning the wisdom of tradition and order are his most important contributions to conservative thought. Specifically, he recognized that the collective wisdom accumulated over the centuries dwarfed that of any one person, and he understood that such collective wisdom was crucial to maintaining an orderly and productive society. To Burke, habit, instinct, custom, faith, reverence, and what he called “prejudice”—the accumulated practical knowledge acquired through experience—were more important than abstract reasoning. Together, they formed tradition and, for better or worse, constituted man’s very nature. In other words, the good of a society is dependent upon tradition—especially a tradition of obedience to laws. For Burke, reasonable laws provided the benefit of security, which compensates for the diminishing of perfect freedom. Arbitrary and unreasonable laws, which restrict liberty without the assurance of security, on the other hand, are to be feared the most.¹⁷

Among the most important lessons we learn from Burke was the value of the classical virtue of prudence—the art of practical wisdom, calculating the eventual results of policies and actions, of avoiding extremes, of shunning haste. Prudence is the statesman’s virtue; it equips and enables him to make sound judgments about the right means to achieve the right ends. Without it, politics may not be aimless, but it lacks a sure path to achieve its purposes.

THE FIFTH CITY

The lessons of Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, and London together found expression in a fifth city, Philadelphia, where the Declaration of Independence and the American Constitution were drafted, debated, and adopted. It is, of course, where the United States was founded. The Founders, who are also rightly described as the fathers of the American conservative tradition, were highly educated and well-read men. They had studied the Bible; they had read the classics and the British political philosophers. They knew the history of Western civilization and melded the orders of the soul, what they had learned from the Bible; the mind, the teachings of Greece and Rome; and the polity, what had filtered down through Western civilization, largely by way of Britain. They used this combination to form the great experiment of a state predicated upon reverence for liberty, morality, and justice. This American creed is the foundation of American conservatism.¹⁸

The Declaration of Independence dissolved the political relationship between the American people and Britain, establishing a new, independent nation. It articulated the moral vision of the emerging nation, and suggested the form of government that would later be established. It also established a theory of what a legitimate government should be, and then spoke, both in general terms and in terms of specific complaints, about how British rule had violated those principles.

The Declaration articulated a list of twenty-eight abuses—issues such as taxation without consent; denial of trial by jury, of religious liberty, of freedom of speech, and so on—that settlers had come to America to escape. The social contract, in other words, had been broken and the colonists declared that they owed no further allegiance to the king of England.

The second paragraph in the Declaration is arguably its most important, setting forth the most basic belief of the Founders:

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

Here, the Founders are making a claim about natural law, a higher law than human law and a standard for all legitimate human law. The Declaration proposes that to secure these God-given rights, governments are instituted by men—in other words, natural law is prior to and the foundation on which man-made law is built. Only governments that secure the consent of the governed are legitimate, and the governed have the God-given right to change or abolish governments that forfeit their legitimacy.

The Declaration therefore disallows any divine right of kings, any absolute power of the state. Instead, all legitimate authority derives from the people. It makes it clear that man is born with these rights, that every person has equal rights, and that each is entitled to exercise those rights as he sees fit. Government’s only legitimate function is to secure those rights, and it must do so with the consent of the people. The Declaration therefore limits the power of government not once but twice: by its ends, or purpose, and by its means, i.e., our consent.

Eleven years later, after the war was won and independence secured, the Constitution was designed to reflect the principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence, establish the structure of the new national government, and spell out how it would function. The challenge was creating a government powerful enough to protect the rights established by the Declaration from both internal and external threats, while providing sufficient restraints on the new government to secure those rights against it.

Toward that end, the Constitution establishes a system of vertical and horizontal checks and balances. It identifies three branches of the federal government with duties particular to each, which limit each other, and sets forth the role of the states, reserving for them general police powers to accomplish what the federal government is not specifically tasked with doing. It provides citizens with a set of protections against government power and a way of protecting themselves against the abuses of that power. It enumerates the powers of the federal government, and gives it none that are not enumerated.¹⁹

THE TWO MOST PERFECT CONSERVATIVE DOCUMENTS

The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, taken together, were the work not of a moment, an hour, or even a generation. They reflect the wisdom of two thousand years of Western thought, political struggle, and hard-won knowledge about man and the state. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution may be the most perfect and most successful conservative documents in the history of the world. They are also an expression of the four pillars of conservatism. These two compact documents provide a practical codification of the doctrines of modern American conservatism.

First, they express devotion to the concept of liberty and the necessity of protecting liberty from the abuses of state power. The Founders recognized that government was necessary, but they also recognized that without strict limits its powers could threaten the very freedoms it was designed to protect. The Bill of Rights, of course, secured the most essential liberties from being infringed on by the government.

Second, they preserve the rule of law. Protecting the freedoms granted under the Constitution requires a fixed and certain rule of law. As the Founders saw it, a system in which the ruling power could alter the Constitution and the law as it pleased, and thus expand the scope of its authority, was incapable of sustaining freedom. The legislative mechanism ensured that there could be no arbitrary decrees and that justice would be settled by fixed rules and duly authorized judges. The Constitution could be amended, but only by means of an arduous and cumbersome process.

Third, they honor order and tradition. As mentioned, the Constitution was the culmination of more than two thousand years of Western civilization and Western thought. Further, the Founders recognized that a government was needed to provide defense, administer justice, and otherwise maintain an ordered state of affairs in which people could go about their business safely. It established continuity and the stability of leadership, providing for an orderly process of choosing leaders, making laws, and administering the new republic.

Finally, they reflect belief in God. Both documents reflect the great reverence of the Founders and their understanding of the Bible. The Declaration of Independence opens with reference to the Divine by saying men are “endowed by their Creator” and closes with reference to “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” and an appeal to “the Supreme Judge of the World.” The Constitution, although less explicit than the Declaration, enshrines the liberties discussed in the Declaration and protects them. It explicitly safeguards religious liberty as an integral part of a free society, and it reflects the Founders’ confidence that the free exercise of religion would have a positive impact on society and government.

It is fitting that many conservatives call themselves “Constitutional Conservatives,” that the Tea Party has adopted the Constitution as its iconic text, and that the conservative legal community showcases the Constitution as its fundamental document. The Constitution sets forth the basic tenets of conservatism in clear and unambiguous language; it is brief but complete, and still stands as the very bedrock of American conservatism. There is no better expression of what conservatism in America stands for than what the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution embody.

AMERICAN MODERN CONSERVATISM: A HISTORY

A brief history of the modern American conservative movement helps to connect these historical reflections to the form that contemporary American conservatism takes in the twenty-first century.²⁰

As World War II drew to a close, America was culturally conservative, but not so politically. The growth of government and political domination of economic activity were accelerating. All three branches of the federal government were controlled by left-leaning Democrats. Communist Russia and “Uncle Joe” Stalin were still considered benevolent, and Great Britain was largely a socialist state. Opinion makers and the universities were largely in agreement concerning politics and economics. In short, liberalism was in control of all the organs of influence.

In the midst of this, conservative intellectuals began to critique what they viewed as a dangerous drift of the United States toward socialism. Among them was a group of libertarian economists, led by Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, both Austrians, who wrote about the virtues of capitalism and free markets. Socialism, Hayek wrote, was the “road to serfdom” and free market economics provided the only way for Europe to rebuild and for the United States to combat the growing communist and socialist threat from Russia and Europe. These libertarians advocated limited government instead of socialism, self-reliance instead of the welfare state, private property and entrepreneurship instead of government involvement in the means of production and central planning. The alternative, they wrote, was chaos and global poverty.

Another group of emerging conservatives perceived the primary threat to the West and to Western civilization in the spread of communism, which exerted its influence around the world in an attempt to subvert American culture and the American way of life. For anti-communists, communism represented everything abhorrent to Western values—it was tyrannical, repressive, socialistic, and atheistic. It employed terror, deceit, and subversion to achieve its ends and was determined to force its ideology on the rest of the world. Communism’s goals entailed the destruction of tradition and order in the rest of the world, and it defied the rule of law.

The anti-communists also believed that modern liberalism was a progenitor of communism and, by sharing the same substantive goals, was more often than not complicit in its spread. These men were appalled at the peace that followed World War II, particularly the fact that Roosevelt and Churchill had surrendered most of Eastern Europe to the Soviet Union.

The growing strength of Soviet Russia, the fall of China to communism, and the lack of will on the part of American and European liberals to stand up to the communists alarmed the anti-communists. They also perceived threats to American internal security and considered the fact that the federal government was being infiltrated by communists and other leftists to be to the detriment of our national interest. The anti-communist movement became the most public and popularly persuasive feature of the emerging modern conservative movement.

Yet another group of conservatives was concerned about the loss of American values and the importance of tradition and faith for purposes of preserving Western civilization and culture. These traditionalists saw in unprecedented social permissiveness and vulgarity a threat to American identity. They believed in ethics and honor, the power of the church, and the need for traditional education and higher learning. In a word, they were concerned about the decline of Western civilization itself, and were devoted to the recovery of tradition and order. These traditionalists included people like Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley Jr., and Richard Weaver, among others.

These men were concerned with ideas not only as an intellectual exercise but for their practical implications. They challenged the intellectual status quo and sought to use their ideas to change the world. Although they did not think much of his theory of economics, they agreed with John Maynard Keynes’s claim that “ideas are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. . . . Sooner or later, it is ideas, not vested interests . . . which are dangerous for good or evil.”²¹ Lamenting what had happened to the United States and indeed to the rest of the world during the first half of the twentieth century, they believed that cultural and political liberalism was at odds with American ideals at home and abroad. Liberal ideas, they thought, were responsible for the assaults on individual liberty, limited government, free markets, and Western culture itself.

Into the early 1960s, many of the conservatives who would occupy the stage for the balance of the twentieth century developed a coherent and highly respected portfolio of academic books, articles, and lectures and, in the process, set the stage for the upsurge in conservative politics that would follow.

It is clear that in addition to reverence for liberty, suspicion of growth of the state, hostility toward communism, and a commitment to the power of traditional ideas, another force motivated much of what conservatives were doing at the time: reaction to and against change in the world, largely being advanced in one way or another by the Left. That reaction is what prompted many conservatives to feel that they needed to fight. Things were going wrong, in their eyes, and needed to be fixed.

By the early 1960s, conservative momentum grew, and conservative organizations were formed; conservative magazines and book publishing companies were organized; a lecture circuit was established. In short, the beginnings of a “movement” developed. Explicitly “conservative” politicians came into prominence, and in 1964 Senator Barry Goldwater, the country’s most visible conservative politician, was nominated as the Republican candidate for president. Although he lost, his campaign solidified the movement politically, attracted thousands of bright young conservatives to national politics, and transformed the Republican Party from a politically moderate party dominated by easterners into a more conservative party largely animated by people from the South and West.

During the 1960s and ’70s, the movement continued to grow. And in the 1980s, Republicans nominated, and subsequently elected and reelected, Ronald Reagan, the most conservative politician ever to have reached a national standing in politics. When Reagan finished his second term, having included in his administration thousands of conservative appointees, the conservative movement had, over forty years, transformed itself from an intellectual movement in the 1950s and ’60s to a political movement in the 1960s and ’70s, and finally into a governing movement in the 1980s. In the process, it solidified a coherent philosophy still in evidence today. It is no exaggeration to say that most of today’s influential conservatives—politicians, academics, activists, donors, writers, and the rest—got their start working for Ronald Reagan in some way.

THE TENETS OF MODERN CONSERVATISM

Given how far modern American conservatism has come from its beginnings, it is worth considering the extent to which it has been transformed by its successes and by the inevitable changes of more than sixty years of history. Yet the pressing issues of our day are not particularly different. Fittingly, the core beliefs held by contemporary conservatives stem from those timeless four pillars already described.

Many conservatives make it a point to identify themselves as “Constitutional Conservatives.” This is a good starting point for examining the tenets of contemporary conservatism. First, conservatives today universally advocate a return to limited government based on the rule of law. We are currently experiencing a rapid growth in government—the creation, if you will, of a government intended to satisfy every need and desire of the populace. It is at the forefront of conservative philosophy to object to such growth. Limited government is the focal point for the ongoing struggle between governmental power and personal liberty. Ronald Reagan was right to say that the government that can give you everything you want can also take away everything you have.

The second tenet of modern conservatism is a close corollary to the first: economic freedom. Economic freedom posits a combination of free market capitalism, lower regulation of business and economic activity, and fiscal responsibility. Conservatives are generally tax cutters because they believe high taxes do not simply fund government with the resources to do things it should not be doing, but also stifle economic growth and progress. That’s why conservatives tend to favor entrepreneurship over big business, which often embraces government regulation because it stifles competition.

Big business’s willingness to help big government and vice versa has been termed “crony capitalism” by some. A few years ago, The American Spectator published an interesting piece called “America’s Ruling Class—and the Perils of Revolution.”²² It divided the country into two segments in a different way from what has been commonly described. The author described the ruling class as being about 30 percent of the population, largely comprising people who are graduates of elite universities, and who occupy the legal community, big business, Wall Street, academia, or the media. Most of these elites have a vested interest in sustaining big government precisely because it’s good for them.

The author put the rest of the country into what he called the “country class.” These are the people earning a living, going about their own business, and on the whole not having much to do with the government. He suggested that the country is polarized between these two classes.

Conservatives do not approve of this elite ruling class. That is in part why libertarianism is an extension of conservatism into economics. Libertarians resist the idea of government picking winners and losers in the marketplace and believe in freedom remaining as unfettered as possible. They strive to maximize individual freedom by removing government restrictions on business, personal behavior, and all other individual activity.

A third tenet of modern conservatism is limited and judicious use of the courts. Activist courts have arrogated unto themselves responsibilities far beyond what was constitutionally given to them—so much so that they in effect now make policy. The Founders would not recognize the courts today. Activist judges who intrude into matters and decide issues that are outside their proper jurisdiction are now common. Far too many political issues are decided in the courts rather than being settled by the political branches of government. Consequently, the judicial philosophy of federal judicial nominees occasions some of the most hotly contested battles in Congress. In reverence for “rule of law,” conservatives insist upon judges who decide cases according to the Constitution and the law, not in light of ideological aspirations.

The fourth tenet of modern conservatism is concern about the restoration and maintenance of American virtues and traditions. Contemporary conservatives who are motivated to political activity out of concern for social issues generally adhere to these tenets but are especially devoted to family values. Abortion, gay marriage, moral permissiveness, and related issues are prominent concerns among social conservatives, as are education policy, adoption and foster care, and government intrusion into personal and family matters. Many are evangelical Christians, and much of their concern is animated by their faith.

The fifth tenet of modern conservatism is strength on foreign policy. Conservatives are often divided on just what this means. Historically, conservatives believed that war should be avoided if at all possible, but were dedicated to a strong national defense. “Peace through strength” is a conservative mantra. But a new strand of conservatives, the so-called neoconservatives, joined the movement in the 1970s and ’80s. Many neoconservatives were former Democrats, often liberals on domestic policy but anti-communists and hawks who identified with other conservatives on foreign policy during the Cold War. Neoconservatives tend to be more inclined to use military power for purposes other than simply defending American interests, and are known to embrace such impulses as nation building.

No clear lines of demarcation distinguish the different branches of conservatism, and most conservatives don’t fit neatly into one or another camp. A general consensus remains because, for the most part, they can usually find enough to agree on for the purpose of upholding the four central pillars of conservatism.

In an effort to sustain an appreciation for and commitment to these principles, conservative leaders gathered not long ago to draft a statement of conservative belief and purpose, a statement that was subsequently signed by hundreds of thousands of citizens across the country. The Mount Vernon Statement articulates, in broad terms, principles that most conservatives embrace. The statement begins by reaffirming the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and emphasizing the fact that the Constitution unites conservatives through the natural fusion provided by distinctly American principles. It reminds economic conservatives that morality is essential to limited government, reminds social conservatives that unlimited government is a threat to moral self-government, and reminds national security conservatives that fiscally responsible government is key to America’s safety and leadership role in the world.

The Mount Vernon Statement offered a set of policy prescriptions that remind us that conservatives will continue to have to apply these timeless principles to the age in which they live. The increasingly unprecedented growth of government and the decline of Western civilization are driving young people to conservatism—so much so that the contemporary conservative movement has as much if not more energy than it has ever had in the past.

In order to build on those past successes, and sustain them into the future, contemporary conservatives would do well to remember these foundational pillars and apply them with prudence, patience, and perseverance.²³