I’ve (re)started Shining City USA, this site, to contribute thoughts and build a community of individuals interested in developing the next generation of Conservative leadership for America.

As I write this on November 2, 2020 we do not know when the Trump era will end (I’m hopeful it’ll be over in about twenty-four hours.) What we do know is that it will end and the goal of SCUSA is that there is a set of positive values and political leaders embracing those values to restore Conservative governance to its rightful place.

America cannot survive without two relevant political parties and a political party cannot survive without a platform that has the potential to appeal to a majority of citizens. Under Trump, the Republican Party has embraced a platform of ideas that is labeled Conservative but does not reflect a set of values that would be recognized by individuals such as President Reagan, Senator Goldwater, or William F. Buckley – people I consider prominent public voices for American Conservatism.

In many ways, we must take back the Conservative movement and align it for the America we live in today. American Conservatism cannot be about the blanket rejection progress, it cannot be about anger and division, it cannot be predicated on discouraging voting, and it cannot be about nationalism (of any type.)

There are core values of Conservatism, starting with the notion that we want to conserve what we have today. To be Conservative is to seek power to simply exercise power, it is to seek power to protect society from the excessive use of power. A Conservative is always concerned about making society better, but does so from the standpoint of conserving what we have – i.e., do no harm.

A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.

William F. Buckley

While I’ve always appreciated that quote it is clear many have taken it out of context, both in terms of the piece in which it appeared and from an understanding of Buckley’s political philosophy. Buckley wasn’t advocating no progress, he was advocating for the idea that unrestrained change that can look like progress in the moment may unleash unintended consequences bringing about long-term damage. Thus, we yell Stop not so much to block all progress, but to force hard discussions that articulate the pros and cons, seek small changes that minimize risk, and ultimately ensure that making tomorrow better does not cause us to lose what makes today so wonderful.

That quote is from National Review’s Mission Statement, published in 1955. And it is a relevant and important today as it was sixty-five years ago. It also should not be used as an excuse to allow libertarian leanings in the pursuit of Conservative solutions to lead to world of no progress nor to allow the failures of Conservative thought to address the public’s demands thus making itself irrelevant. For if American Conservatism cannot address the problems of today it’s failure will eventually mean an unchecked leftist progressivism will come to dominate our society.

Refering back to NR’s Mission Statement there are two of their core values that I believe must be the basis for bringing American Conservatism into the future:

1. It is the job of centralized government (in peacetime) to protect its citizens’ lives, liberty and property. All other activities of government tend to diminish freedom and hamper progress. The growth of government(the dominant social feature of this century) must be fought relentlessly. In this great social conflict of the era, we are, without reservations, on the libertarian side.
2. The competitive price system is indispensable to liberty and material progress. It is threatened not only by the growth of Big Brother government, but by the pressure of monopolies(including union monopolies. What is more, some labor unions have clearly identified themselves with doctrinaire socialist objectives. The characteristic problems of harassed business have gone unreported for years, with the result that the public has been taught to assume (almost instinctively) that conflicts between labor and management are generally traceable to greed and intransigence on the part of management. Sometimes they are; often they are not.
3. No superstition has more effectively bewitched America’s Liberal elite than the fashionable concepts of world government, the United Nations, internationalism, international atomic pools, etc. Perhaps the most important and readily demonstrable lesson of history is that freedom goes hand in hand with a state of political decentralization, that remote government is irresponsible government. It would make greater sense to grant independence to each of our 50 states than to surrender U.S. sovereignty to a world organization.

Of course, we must go beyond just those three and we must then build on those values the solutions for this century. We must tell Americans how an American Conservative would address and solve the issues of today: income inequality, healthcare affordability, climate change risk, racial inequities, emergence of China as global power, etc. The list is long and it demands the attention and work of serious people.

The American Conservative movement must be be inclusive. Everyone must feel welcome, we cannot be a movement only relevant to a limited selection of white people – we must be relevant to all Americans. Not all Americans – of every background – will agree with us, and we accept many will not, but we will not shun any communities of people simply because we fail to appeal to majority of the community.

Put simply: A first rule of any political movement should be that we hear all people and we serve all people. All people may not agree with our approaches or how we consider trade-offs in making decisions, but we must always acknowledge all people and show respect to their concerns and their lived experience.

I will allow that to conclude this introduction but I have lots of thoughts on this subject and will add them in posts in the coming weeks and months (and probably years.) In addition, I invite individuals interested in writing and expressing their views on this matter to reach out and become a contributing writer.