Our voluntary decisions can lead to a new beginning for America

What does it mean to be a real conservative in America today? For rational people, it has nothing to do with politics. It has to do with personal values and personal choices. It has to do with the voluntary decisions of individuals and families and communities.

The things in America which are worth conserving were built on the social values that I still believe in. Personal morality. Voluntary choice. Individual responsibility. The Protestant work ethic. Trust in neighbors. Strong families. Giving and charity.

Those are not political issues. Those are personal choices that individuals, families and communities voluntarily lived out over many years as they built this country.

There were plenty of poor choices, too. There were plenty of evil and selfish people who were part of the story. But without conservative social values at the core of families and communities, the best parts of America never would have existed.

The morally powerful nation which grew on this continent from a mixture of ethnic and national origins came together in spite of politicians, not because of them. Everything that was good about America came from the bottom up — from those with conservative personal values.

Everything that’s gone wrong over these many decades and even centuries has come about through the use of political power. (Yes, everything.)

Politics has been a form of magical thinking, because many people believed they could create a good and moral and perfect country by waving a magic political wand and pretending that somehow changed objective reality.

Today, we face a cultural and societal crisis. We face economic collapse. We face moral and ethical decay. And if we have any hope of reclaiming what has been good about America — the decent and moral values rooted in faith and family — we have to go back to first principles.

We have to give up the magical thinking that says politics can change reality and make people perfect. We have to return to the voluntary personal values which can lead us to a bright new future for America — once again.

Individual freedom and personal choice were the default settings for the early years of the United States, but perfection was never a choice. A lot of evil existed. Black people were slaves in many parts of the country, which violated the principles of individual liberty which had been claimed as the philosophical core of the new country.

There were elements of political control which politicians tried to saddle us with. There was a lot of personal bigotry toward certain ethnic and religious groups. The treatment of the Native Americans was genuinely shameful. There were plenty of things wrong.

But what was being built was far more free and dynamic than anything that had ever existed. For most of the people here, America was a place of unparalleled opportunity and freedom. And it was the values of the people building the country that gave it real strength.

In the late 19th century, a group of people who believed in magical thinking started claiming they could ignore reality and reshape human nature to their will. They called themselves progressives. They claimed that by making up new rules which they demanded other people obey, they could reform the country — by controlling those who didn’t agree with them.

Progressives believed they could build utopia by using political power. They slowly gained power and started taking away the individual freedom that most Americans had enjoyed to make their own decisions.

When socially conservative people started pushing back against these progressives who were trying to force their rules onto everyone, they slowly adopted the evil political coercion that the progressives had used so forcefully.

As the 20th century went along, progressives gained more and more power. And political conservatives became more and more like them. Even when it came to things which had been left up to individuals to decide in the past, this new politically active person started demanding legislation to enforce their own views.

These new so-called conservatives were becoming more and more like the progressives who had started destroying individual freedom — all because they started trying to use the same political methods used by the progressives.

For those of us who still hold conservative social values — of individual freedom and personal choice — it’s bizarre to watch what politics has become. We still believe in personal and voluntary choice. Both sides of the mainstream believe in forcing people to obey. The political mainstream is nothing but a monumental struggle over which group is going to get to force everyone else to obey.

This political game is inherently immoral and corrupt. It attracts the worst of the worst. It attracts narcissists and liars. It attracts wolves in sheep’s clothes. Worst of all, it slowly detaches these faux conservatives from the personal values which had once made America truly great.

Today, politics is nothing but magical thinking. It’s grown men and women who make promises that they know can’t be kept. It’s people who promise to say some magic political words — and write down draconian orders on paper — and somehow change objective reality.

As more and more people who think they are conservatives are sucked into joining this evil system, they are losing sight of the voluntary values which once made America good — and which made families and communities loving and moral and great.

If you believe in conservative social values — rooted in individual freedom, voluntary choice and personal character — the answers are to be found in turning away from politics and insisting on a return to the freedom of individuals to make their own choices.

That’s true even when we don’t agree with those choices. 

America can be great again, but it won’t be great through political action. It won’t ever become great by following political con men whose lives and values stand in opposition to everything decent and moral that real conservatives have believed in.

Rejecting politics and embracing voluntary choice can lead to a new beginning for America. It can lead to a new beginning for American families. For individuals with moral and ethical values. For everyone who wants a renaissance of the greatness which we grew up believing in.

Real conservatives are the ones who still believe in individual choice and voluntary communities. If we’re going to see a rebirth of freedom and greatness in America, it’s going to require far more people to join us in returning to our core of genuinely conservative values.

I hope you’ll join us.