Every political movement has its catchphrases, and one of the most commonly encountered among the dubiously-named “America First” tribe presents both a question and challenge:
“What has Conservatism conserved, anyway?”
It’s a question that gives pause to traditional conservatives and principled constitutionalists, because we all feel the hole left by the world we lost.
We see abortion continue to consume millions of unborn Americans. We see sexual perversion normalized and celebrated, and even some corners of the GOP swept away by its popularity. We see the entitlement state continuing to bloat and fester, and realize that both parties are now entirely beholden to the gimmes. We look at foreign affairs and see American dollars still funding the UN, NATO, and an ongoing war in Ukraine. We look for accountability to be imposed upon those who perpetrated COVID tyranny, and find none. We look for consequences for federal operatives who weaponized the justice department and other executive agencies against their political opponents on the right, and see them enjoying paid leave, pensions, and, in some cases, the talk show circuit.
Yeah, it’s demoralizing.
But it’s also not the whole story.
The framing of the question lends itself to black-pilling, which is the point: to prompt a positive case that can then be subjected to endless gainsaying.
For instance, if I say that conservatives have gained ground on gun rights (which we have), a critic could immediately suggest that gun rights are not as expansive as they once were, or should be in principle. This becomes an endless loop, because the ideal remains undefined, therefore the present reality can remain forever lackluster by comparison.
If comparisons against hypotheticals are unrealistic, comparisons to the past are often unjust.
We don’t live in that world anymore. The evolution of our society, technology, and behaviors naturally changes the application of our principles, and - perhaps more importantly - often skews our view of the past, and what was possible in it.
Many folks - including President Trump and Veep Vance - have put forward a vision of a return to the gilded age of American history as their ideal. And to a point, it makes sense. Who wouldn’t want a return to craftsmanship, affordability, domestic manufacturing, strong family ties, and a general acceptance of Christian morality?
But of course, that’s only half of the history.
Those things did not happen in a vacuum, they were born of hardship, pain, revival, and reformation. The generation that built that nation grew up in the aftermath of an horrific Civil War that nearly destroyed the nation.
And what was available after the war was not wealth or comfort, but opportunity. The wealth and comfort came later, and came because millions of normal Americans - including recent immigrants who came in several notable waves - worked hard in mines and steel mills and shipyards and farms to hand a better future to their children. And if you look at class breakdowns over the past two centuries of American history, the odds are good that if you had lived back then, you wouldn’t be the guy in the three-story gothic, visiting the Rockefellers’ wine-tasting.
You’d be the guy working double shifts in the factory alongside your 12-year-old, and walking home to a 600-square-foot box with no insulation and a mouse problem, that was still better than what your daddy and grandpa had.
That was the reality of most people during the incredibly successful and truly gilded age of America, and it wasn’t a bug, but a feature. That opportunity and social mobility is what vaulted us into the age of mass-production, entrepreneurship, and consumer-driven innovation. But at the time, it was just work, hardship, and frugality, and most of the folks who want to go back to that time wouldn’t survive a month.
And this brings us back to the main question, armed now with context.
What has conservatism conserved?
Lots, actually.
It’s just that some of the things we conserved no longer look like they once did. Some of the things we conserved no longer hold the sway they once did, because the world outside politics has radically changed. Some things we lost for a while and have just begun to recover. And in some areas we have made tremendous gains because of the patience and steadfastness of prior generations who could only just hold their ground.
How hath we conserved? Let me count the ways.
Conservatism has largely succeeded in protecting free speech, religious freedom, and the freedom of assembly and the press in America. Again, if we’re going to evaluate such a broad claim, we need to set parameters. Of course there are still problems, and of course there is much that can still be done. But despite the best efforts of the authoritarian left over my lifetime, free speech remains free - in large part due to the efforts of conservative leaders elected by Republican voters. One of my early articles discussed the dishonesty and danger around the left’s policy preference of “net neutrality,” which would have chilled internet dissent and pressured publishers and providers to restrict content from one political side of a given issue.
It failed. It died. We killed it. The Internet remains free, because conservatives conserved it. You can login to X right now and say anything you like in praise or condemnation of any social or political figure, because we have successfully conserved free speech, dissent, and online assembly.
During the Biden years, the left - with direct involvement from the White House and federal agencies - engaged in targeted censorship of conservative speech online. Free political discourse online faced an existential crisis, and deplatformed conservatives rushed to create parallel infrastructure and social media apps, which then faced their own forms of opposition and functional censorship due to denial of services. But then came a turning point, largely thanks to bold action by the Daily Wire and the New Right’s favorite villain, Ben Shapiro. While the case is still ongoing, the shocking censorship it exposed quickly spread online, attracting the attention of the world’s richest man, Elon Musk.
Musk - himself hardly far-right - recognized the threat to free speech and purchased the left’s primary social media venue, Twitter, ending censorship there and revealing the extent of prior discrimination against conservatives on the platform.
That move changed history, and likely subsequent elections. It broke the stranglehold, and changed the narrative and incentive structures for other social media companies as well, with several others committing to fairness and rejecting censorship in the wake of the acquisition.
All of these things were opposed by the Left and the Biden administration, who used every tool in their arsenal to pressure Musk and shut down alternate networks. They lost. We won. Conservatives conserved free speech online.
Freedom of religion too - long under duress from the political left - has scored major victories at state and federal level, including the rise and spread of RFRAs and notable protections won from a Supreme Court boasting a conservative majority. Yes, we can point to losses too. But what remains is still greater freedom than other nations enjoy, and it’s here because conservatives held the line.
Gun rights were under continual assault during my childhood in the 1990s. The Brady Bill, passed with moderate Republican support in 1993, was a major setback to gun rights in the US, and for most of the next two decades the GOP maintained a defensive posture on the Second Amendment, talking about pheasant hunting rather than defensive carry or guns as insurance against tyranny.
But then in 2008, the Heller decision was handed down, and public policy, as well as public opinion, began to shift in favor of expanded gun rights. Support for gun control hit a polling low in 2011, and serious legislative challenges to gun rights have noticeably dipped at both the state and federal level. In fact, the right has enjoyed such success on gun rights that the activist left has increasingly abandoned calls for gun control in favor of simply arming and training themselves.
Again, there are still setbacks and frustrations - including some, like the bump-stock ban, from President Trump himself - but in general, the political right has won the day on gun rights.
Back in 2020, it looked like COVID might be the end of medical and economic freedom in America. Cities were in lockdown and draconian controls were enacted by nearly every level of government. Social distancing was mandated, masking was required, and those refusing to comply with these unproven and scientifically unbacked demands were not only mocked and chastised, but also denied services or jobs. Questioning the official COVID narrative from Fauci and Co. also resulted in online censorship and deplatforming.
But that began to change in 2021, as conservative governors like Florida’s Ron DeSantis and civil libertarians like Sen. Rand Paul began questioning the narrative and exposing the growing gap between hard medical science and the imposed social preferences of COVID authoritarians.
A backlash began, states began pushing back against federal overreach, new studies began to cast doubt on the efficacy and safety of the vaccine, and the social tyranny was disarmed in much of America long before the disease itself lost its epidemic status. Grassroots conservatives took to the streets - in unsanctioned gatherings - in support of medical freedom, and turned the narrative upside down.
Today even the mention of masks and lockdowns is generally embarrassing to a left that would like to forget it.
We won.
Looking at soaring abortion rates in America, it’s hard for any pro-lifer to be encouraged by the fruit of arguably the hardest-fought social issue on the right. Yet there is fruit, and hard-fought also means hard-won.
Millennials like myself who grew up cheering Randall Terry and Operation Rescue never thought we would see Roe reversed. We were told Roe was settled, and the best pro-lifers could do was skirmish on the edges, working to change hearts and minds. We stood in life chains, volunteered to local crisis pregnancy centers, and donated to right-to-life orgs, and expected to be locked in that apparently losing fight for the rest of our lives.
But then Dobbs happened, thanks entirely to conservatives who voted for Donald Trump on the promise of conservative Supreme Court justices. Trump - himself far from a principled pro-lifer, delivered on that promise, and the legal and moral abomination that was Roe v Wade was swept from the history books.
Because of that win, red states were able to pass a flurry of abortion restrictions protecting the right to life starting as early as six weeks, and strangling the financial life out of a newly-besieged abortion industry.
Critically, this almost didn’t happen. Many conservative and evangelical leaders unsettled by Trump’s rhetoric actively and consistently tried to drive pro-lifers from voting for him, as detailed in Megan Basham’s recent book, Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda. In the leadup to the 2024 elections, some of those voices even supported Kamala Harris, a pro-abortion hardliner who led the prosecution of pro-life whistleblowers at the Center for Medical Progress, at the explicit behest of Planned Parenthood - who also happened to be one of her major donors. Even with Dobbs in place, it’s hard to imagine how destructive a Harris presidency would have been to the pro-life cause.
Thankfully, we don’t have to find out, because she lost. We won. The states - not the federal government - are now the battleground of abortion law, and conservatives in red states across the nation can now take action to shut down abortion mills and protect the unborn.
Thus, the right to life, and the ongoing dream of a post-abortion America, was conserved.
This is without a doubt the political pendulum that swung the farthest left. Thus, it’s perhaps not a surprise that it’s also the one swinging back the fastest. Just a few short years ago, society was positively saturated with LGBTQ propaganda. Every movie, every show, every video game, every speech had to be “inclusive” of whatever sexual preference or identity had been added to the list that week. Normal social interactions began to bog down with weirdness - and sometimes lectures - about pronouns. The surrender wing of the GOP began lecturing conservatives about moving on from traditional marriage and embracing drag-queen story hour as a blessing of liberty.
While this is still the case among blue-state denizens and Hollywood production studios, it’s clear that society at large has moved on. Public opinion has shifted significantly against gay marriage, and a spate of restrictions have been passed restricting everything from men in women’s sports to trans interventions for minors. Comedians now openly mock the LGBTQ movement’s excesses, and conservative churches are becoming more vocal in support of not only traditional marriage, but Biblical patriarchy as part of a general rejection of feminism.
How exactly did we turn the corner?
Certainly there are many factors, including the totalitarian nature of the Left’s overreach in this area and their inability to control their more fringe elements. But equally important has been the stubborn resilience of traditional conservatives, who quietly held the line on marriage before and after Obergefell, and became the counterculture needed to ground the inevitable pushback.
Conservative politicians in red states went to war with gender confusion in the schools, and right-wing pundits like Matt Walsh exposed the inanity of trans ideology in his unexpected hit documentary “What is a Woman?”
Game studios even found their spines, as just this week one studio rejected pressure to modify their game to appease activists, retorting to one challenger on X, “We care about gaming and fun, and not modern agendas.”
Yes, there’s still a lot of work to be done, and it’s unlikely that America will return to a puritan sexual ethic by the year 2050.
But this particular wave of deviant sexual identitarianism is on the way out, thanks mostly to conservatives - both traditional Christian conservatives who want a return to Biblical ethics, and cultural conservatives who just want to get back to a sustainable dating culture and women that look like women again.
They took the slings and arrows, got called narrow-minded bigots, and didn’t care. They held the ground we needed to push back.
Immigration enforcement is, of course, the leading headline in America right now, as ICE struggles to make good on President Trump’s deportation promises. But it’s worth remembering that Biden, who opened the borders and facilitated millions of illegal crossings, lost the election to an avowed immigration hawk with a mandate to deport.
Not only that, but a GOP that was teetering on the edge of amnesty - and only pulled back by intense opposition from the conservative base - has done a full 180 on immigration. Mainline Republicans now embrace closed borders, deportations, and in many cases even reduced legal immigration - or face credible primary challenges.
Dissent remains within the party around specific policies, but it’s clear that the hardcore immigration language long-enshrined in the platform has been successfully mainstreamed as part of a general movement toward restoring American culture and identity.
Conservatives won on immigration.
in 1990 I was one of around 270,000 homeschooled kids in America.
Today there are around 3.5 million - around 6% of the total school aged-population, and still growing quickly. States - even some blue states, surprisingly - are continuing to expand homeschooling resources and freedoms, and corporate America has begun to cater to homeschoolers as a legitimate and independent market.
Here in Iowa, I was blessed to be involved in our state’s push to reform homeschooling laws - a move that took us from restrictive to one of the most homeschool-friendly states in America.
It didn’t happen by accident. It took political pressure from the GOP grassroots, driven up through the mechanisms of the party, and impressed on a reluctant legislative majority.
Similar stories abound elsewhere.
Conservatives won, and successfully defended our right to educate our children.
Right-to-work laws, which have consistently broken union power and restored political balance to the workforce, now exist in 26 states - six of which have been passed since 2001. Unions are in decline all over America, and with them, a generational bastion of leftist power. Conservatives who prioritized right to work over flashier issues nationwide have seen real political change come from their efforts - very likely including two Trump presidencies.
Yeah, we’re winning this.
And what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of foreign policy wins, manufacturing and innovation, deregulation, stopping the Green New Deal and blocking Obama’s destructive Pacific trade partnership.
I don’t know about you, but I’m not tired of winning yet.
Now please believe me when I say I’m the furthest thing from a rosy optimist - the entirety of my journalistic history would show I’m particularly gifted at reminding folks the glass is half-empty. Clearly, there are areas where conservatives have fallen short, lost ground, and surrendered outright (like entitlement spending). We still have a lot of work to do.
But it’s worth taking the time to detail our wins too, because those wins are a credit to good people who stood strong against opposition we’ve forgotten, and spent their lives in quiet opposition to the corrupting zeitgeist of American pop culture, long before the internet was around to tell them they weren’t alone.
We owe it to them not to blackpill. We owe it to them to build on the wins given to us, and keep putting one foot in front of another, even as scoffers mock and abandon simple faithfulness in their search for novel solutions and greater political power.
And we owe it to our kids to keep conserving what remains.
