Excerpts

Preface by Jonathan Krohn

All too often, it seems to me, Americans get swept away by debates over policies: Should we universalize health care? Allow homosexuals to marry? Bail out homeowners with upside-down mortgages? Politicians spend a lot of time battling each other’s policies, and average citizens hang all their hopes on those politicians’ finding the perfect policy solution to any given problem.

While it is fine to fight bad policy ideas with good ones, it is not fine to do so without recognizing the basic underpinnings of the thought process that creates policy. I believe voters didn’t understand the basic principles behind certain policies they found appealing in 2008, and that is how this country wound up with our most left-wing president: Barack Obama. Unless Americans take a step back and define their beliefs, we might have to endure another four years of his policy and its ramifications. Can America survive that?

As a conservative, I have a view of society that I believe is consistent with what our country’s Founding Fathers intended, and what morality requires of us. But I am troubled by the definitions assigned to conservatism by others, who think they understand who conservatives are and what they think—but really don’t. That’s why I am attempting to define conservatism in a way that cannot be tweaked or manipulated from one election cycle to the next, or from one part of the country to another. I am using basic, timeless philosophical principles to define conservatism.

All policies are formed by principles. If there is no basis for one’s actions, then the actions have no value, and if they have no value, then they become all but completely worthless.

It is this value and these principles that form the process of thought that is political philosophy.

This book is not about particular policies or individuals that change with every election cycle. This book is based solely and entirely on philosophy.