Politics in perspective

Tuesday was the first even-year Election Day since 1996 that I did not find myself upon a blacktop island in a congested intersection in the early morning hours. This time, I didn’t wave any campaign signs toward potential voters in passing cars. I happen to consider this election, and all elections, very important. I also have come to realize – since I first stood on street corners with campaign signs at the age of 13 – that politics is not the way to save America.

Politics is the art of the possible. It is the realm in which the values of a people are transmitted into the coercive power of government. To make the transition between values and coercion, in our republican society, requires a continual process of campaigning and compromise. It is to be hoped that at the end of the day, ordered liberty and justice will prevail in the land.

But I must take issue with the conservatives who are convinced that to politics we must go to discover ourselves, and from politics we must derive our values. Properly framed, politics is the reflection of – not the source of – our values. Politics ought to be a realm for the advancement of prudent statesmanship in the affairs of equality under law, domestic peace and security, military defense, the promotion of the general welfare, and the long-term maintenance of constitutional government.

Those things we seek from government through politics are necessities of a free society. Yet conservatives, like liberals, have sought more from government, and from politics, than is necessary. We have forsaken a political culture based on the first principles of the American founding, and we have adopted a conservatism that is reliant on government itself to address the most spiritual of our national crises.

We vainly imagine that we might somehow save the country from destruction by the Left if we only get the Right to the polls. We suppose, for instance, that the family might be rescued from annihilation if only we mount a sustained political effort to amend the U.S. Constitution to define marriage.

The winds of conservatism – in the broadest sense of that word – are blowing oxygen upon the wrong fire. “Government, like fire,” said George Washington, “is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.” Still – as it was in that last most crucial election of 1980 – government is not the solution to our problems.

Conservatism’s role in American politics in the 21st century ought to be, in large measure, to hearken government back to the vision of the Founding Fathers. That certainly means that we must elect the right men and women to offices at every level.

But most of the great work of preservation must be conducted outside of politics. That means the winds of conservatism ought to be turned away from government and back toward the institutions of our communities: the church, the family, the school, the marketplace and private associations. These are the places in which we must find our values. Only when those other spheres of authority are revived to cultivate the best of character and ideas can we count on government to reflect the best of statesmanship.

America’s most significant problems – the decline of national unity, the corruption of our moral character, the rise of a bestial culture – are problems of the heart. To operate on the heart of America, government cannot be a seat of “compassion.” Our leaders can speak of compassion, but they must speak to rally the people as Ronald Reagan spoke, not to rally the engines of bureaucracy or the coffers of Congress.

True compassion comes from individuals and families and churches, animated by love for God and country and community. True love is deeply spiritual. Politics is many things, but it is not lovely. If we are to set politics aright, we must seek that which is lovely outside of politics.

Conservatives must win elections. We must seek great and mighty victories at the polls.

But conservatives’ greater challenge in our time – a challenge that will make all the difference in political proceedings of every kind – is to win the battle of ideas and the struggle for hearts. From pulpits and talk-radio microphones, bookstores and Internet sites, e-mail inboxes and day-to-day conversations, classrooms and dining rooms – there we must find our first battlegrounds. Minds and hearts won over for good, politics will follow along.