WE are no longer a republic of self-governing peoples. The historical and causal questions as to how and when this happened are important but must, at this point, be subordinated to the only meaningful conservative response: revolution. The broad outline for such a revolution is the subject of this essay.
But first, let me clarify why revolution is properly conservative and then supply reasons why, at this time, it is the only proper response left. In our book, Coming Home: Reclaiming America's Conservative Soul, Bruce Frohnen and I offer a history of Anglo-American concepts of revolution as conservative. This is the heart of that argument:
The word “revolution,” derived from the Latin revolvere, meaning to turn or roll back, entered European discourse as an astronomic term concerning the natural course of planets orbiting the sun; when it was applied to political life in reference to England's Glorious Revolution of 1688, it conveyed the idea of reclaiming. Understood this way, English tradition was marked by a series of restatements of traditional rights, along with institutional reforms intended to better preserve these rights. Whether in Magna Carta from 1215, the Petition of Right from 1628, or the Declaration of Right from 1689, English constitutional declarations forged a tradition played out in the American Declaration of Independence. The bulk of all these documents is taken up with a list of charges against an overreaching king whose innovations threatened inherited rights and liberties. The rebellious English barons, Parliament, and the American Continental Congress all refined and affirmed what was already theirs – they “rolled back” to preserve but also to solidify their inheritance. Changes in the powers of the king and even secession from the British Empire were seen as necessary for the conservation of ordered liberty.
The American Revolution was, more than anything else, a revolution of self-governing people who rejected innovations that threatened their inherited liberties. In response, they were forced by circumstances to craft a new republic and to provide an innovative structure to preserve and enhance their inheritance. Decades of structural changes and more recent assaults on our most cherished values and beliefs have altered the nature of our political, social and cultural order. These attacks now require a response that return (“roll back”) us to the defining principles of our republic, founded on the only proper authority for the exercise of governmental powers—the sovereign will of the people. Crucially, the goal of conservative revolution is to reclaim what is ours by tradition, authority, and right—not revolution for the purpose of transformation or destroying in order to create afresh.
