Returning to the Grange

What is the proper role of government? Does the role necessarily change over time or is it static? Since before Socrates we’ve been debating those questions. If I were philosophically academic, I would now tell you that I didn’t know the answers and wonder aloud (or at least as loud as the written form can be) if there would ever truly be answers.

The question of the role of government was decided more than a hundred years ago. (“We are now engaged in a great civil war, to see whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived, so dedicated, can long endure.”)

It is now the second question that appears to hang in doubt. Once the proper role of government is discovered and implemented, does the role need to be reevaluated from time to time in the face of technological advancement?

It is self evident, after more than two hundred years of experiment, or at least should be, that the proper role of government does not change, but rather the tools inherent to that role.

Why then is it that Constitutionalism in America appears to be dying a slow, European, death in the United States? Why is it that a man with open, stark, socialist tendencies, is even nominated for President, let alone leading in the final days before the election? Why is it that most American’s don’t know the two great questions of government have been answered?

We’ve stopped teaching.

The Conservative movement, dedicated as it is to the Constitutional framework created by the founding fathers, has grown lax and lazy. Oh sure, we argue our points, and sit around patting ourselves on the back that we are right. We feel secure in the knowledge that history bears out our argument and yet will again. In the mean time our schools churn young adults out into the world full of hollow propaganda, and lacking the basic thinking skills to preserve a free nation.

We must re-empower our Constitution. We must reinvigorate the idea that our government is based on law, not the whim of a somewhat pragmatic, but well intended, population. We can only do that by teaching. The bulwark of the constitution is not armies, or even a mighty currency, but rather the education of our fellow man.

Let’s be clear that I don’t mean the clumsy diversified education of our modern lexicon. I mean a sharing of the basic tenets upon which the fundamental questions of government hang. We must teach. We must teach everybody.

I am confident that if we teach, we will see a movement reborn, a movement which can not be stopped; a movement to save the soul of the American government.

I will no longer stand by and watch as craven politicians run around proclaiming they are Conservative, while pursuing policies that defy the basic tenets of that moniker.

The purpose of this blog is to start that educating process, to return to teaching the basics of Conservatism.

I hope to not be the only writer here, but to invite Conservative thinkers to write here as well, because I’m not a political philosopher. I’m just one of the millions of people that go to work everyday (in the private sector) and turn the engine of prosperity.

I have named the blog after Alexander Hamilton’s home, because I think we all need to return to our roots, the very foundational theories upon which our political philosophy is grounded. I pray that we can, here, do that.