Getting caught up in the sniping politics of this election season is all too easy, but it’s time to turn our focus away from this senseless bickering and start thinking about the future. I have made up my mind in regard to our presidential options, and my down ticket options are also pretty clear. At this point, even if I changed my mind about the political candidates at the top of the major party tickets, it wouldn’t matter in the least, as the state I live in is far from a battleground state anyway.

So I turn my mind to more important questions that have relevance to the future of the Republic and the ideological conservative movement. What, after all, happens after this election? Do we pretend that all of the vileness of 2015 and 2016 didn’t happen and “come back home” like some sort of codependent abused spouse without the wherewithal or basic self respect to say enough is enough and make good on our promise to never return? That’s not going to happen.

So what is going to happen? If anything is going to happen at all, we will need a functional, “big tent, firm foundation” political party that represents the values of enough Americans to gain political efficacy, in the next four to eight years. Whether this political party gains the political traction necessary to make any sort of change on the national stage will depend a great deal on not making the same mistakes that has doomed other political parties to irrelevance.

While we have to remember that we have political issues that we cannot and thus will not compromise on, we need to remain open on other counts. More political freedom, not less, is always better, and we should remember that, if we’re going to have any relevance to not only ourselves but to people all over the political spectrum that we want to reach. More economic freedom, not less, is always better, and we believe this because it’s what works. It works, because it recognizes fundamental realities of how markets operate and works with those realities, not against them.

Things we cannot afford to budge on:

• Natural Rights (Life, Liberty, and Property) are nonnegotiable.
• Capitalism offers the best economic outcomes for the most people.
• Taxation is theft, and the less of it the better.
• Government is evil force, so it must be as limited as possible.
• Pro-Life is fundamentally necessary to a just society.
• Defend the homeland is necessary and obvious.
• Federalist republicanism is necessary to self governance.

Beyond these seven very basic core principles, is there anything that we simply cannot live without in our political party? I know that many well meaning people may want to add their religious beliefs and institutions to the platform. I am sympathetic, however, the consequences of subjecting our religious institutions to the whims of public authority have been extremely poor. Why should the institution of marriage be subject to a vote? It should not, so let’s not make it a voting issue.

And, for the record, all Liberties such as those protected by the Bill of Rights, are already existent within Natural Rights philosophy. Calling them out specifically is more than a little redundant, if we commit ourselves to Natural Law. If you aren’t familiar with the principles of Natural Law, start here.

So, the questions are:

• Is there anything missing?
• Can we expound on these seven basic core principles and apply them to the local level and state levels?
• How do we assert our political relevancy as a political constituency without political candidates, because that’s where we’re going to start, no matter what?

These are the questions that we need to be asking in the coming months if we want to save our Republic, because the one thing we know for certain is, the only thing the two major political parties are offering is the bucket full of “same” that they have been serving for the last 100 years.

Let’s start the discourse on Twitter, hashtag: #ConservativePartyNow.

 

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Liberty is For The Win!