The Conservative Revolution

This week I am in New Hampshire meeting with FreedomWorks volunteers and organizing our strategy for the 2008 presidential primaries. We are working to build a constituency of expectations here in New Hampshire that will ask the candidates the tough questions about tax reform, the entitlement crisis and energy policy in the age of climate change hysteria.

The state is beautiful. I will take my first tour of Concord and Manchester tomorrow. I will post updates later in the week.

Update: I toured the state capitol building in Concord. It was pretty cool. There are 400 House members in New Hampshire but only 24 senators. I also did a district office visit with Sen. Judd Gregg’s staff. We talked about taxes, energy and social security. Tonight I am having dinner with the leaders of Students for Saving Social Security and two Brownback for President staffers in Manchester.

On the heels of his recent second place finish in the Ames straw poll, the media is showing new interest in Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee. But conservatives should not believe this “huckster” when he says he is a conservative.

Huckabee is a tax and spend big government Republican posing as a conservative.

Read this article by a liberal columnist in Arkansas.

Here is the truth about Mike Huckabee’s reign. He was largely a passive executive, who usually left initiative to the legislature. He was roused to passion for nine initiatives, each a sharp expansion of government activity or control: the dramatic expansion of government health insurance for children, the CHART program to combat health deficiencies with tobacco-settlement funds and later higher cigarette taxes, the sales tax for recreation, the consolidation of small and middle-sized schools (under 500 students), highway taxes, and two big bond issues each for highways and universities.

Then read the Club for Growth paper on Mike “Huckster” Huckabee.

Conservatives should not slip into thinking that Huckabee is the “conservative” candidate in the race. We can debate who the best conservative candidate is, but let’s not settle for someone who claims to be conservative when he is not.

I was one of probably 13 Americans who watched the Ames straw poll on C-Span today. There is some good coverage already in the blogosphere here and here.

Here are my quick thoughts on the speeches.

Romney - Gave a cogent and passionate speech about strengthening our defense, our economy and our families. He did the best job overall and had the most supporters.

Tancredo - Delivered a very strong speech on illegal immigration and protecting our culture. He performed better than I have seen him do throughout the campaign. 2nd best speech.

Paul - Had the loudest supporters and gave a good talk about the Constitution, liberty and peace. He even uttered the words “freedom works.” Laura Ingraham kind of took a shot at the Paul supporters by saying “The peace train is leaving the stadium.”

Cox - Who? Came in with the Rocky soundtrack playing in the background. Rocky was a long shot but John Cox has NO shot.

Brownback - My TiVo cut off so I missed his speech. I will have to catch it on YouTube and write something up.

UPDATE: Just read the text of the Brownback speech. He focused on life, faith and family. I like his support of a flat tax, but not his interest in more ethanol mandates.

This article originally appeared in Campus Magazine.

Now that the title of my book has become part of the lexicon when discussing the situation on college campuses, I feel compelled to explain my purpose in using the term “the conservative revolution.” For some, this phrase flies in the face of traditional conservatism like that expressed by Edmund Burke in his Reflections on the Revolution in France.

Conservatives, we are told, reject revolutions as radical and bloody innovations. While this may be the case in a political context such as the French Revolution, revolutions are not all the same. In this essay I hope to provide three examples where revolutions were in fact conservative, and one scenario where a future revolution could be conservative.

First, let us look at the American Revolution. Who could argue that this was a revolution whereby the colonists rebelled precisely to preserve their rights as British citizens? When listing the grievances in the Declaration of Independence that brought forth the revolution, Thomas Jefferson mentioned policies that the King and Parliament had instituted that had violated the colonists’ rights. Most of these policies were recently enacted, after the French and Indian War. It was the King and the Parliament, and not the colonists, who were changing things. Therefore, the revolution that ensued sought to restore things as they were before the innovations of the British government. This was a conservative revolution.

The Texas Revolution that began in 1835 was also a conservative revolution. The Texian rebels led by cult heroes like Davy Crockett, William B. Travis and Sam Houston were fighting to restore their rights that had been trampled by the Mexican dictator Santa Anna. In fact, the flag that flew over the Alamo was the flag of 1824, which represented the Mexican Constitution of 1824 abolished by Santa Anna. It was Santa Anna, and not the Texians, that was the radical innovator. The Texians did seek their independence, but only because the government that they had consented to had become tyrannical. They sought to restore their rights that had existed prior to Santa Anna, but in doing so, launched a new nation, the Republic of Texas.

Suppose that years from now our own government grew in power and began to dismantle our Constitution. Many on the left and right believe that this is already happening today, although I think we are far from it. If our government declared martial law, forced a national identification card, instituted a draft, jailed dissidents and launched wars of conquest around the globe, would Americans continue to want to “conserve” that government? Those on the left and the right might actually join forces to overthrow the government through revolution and restore it to its constitutional foundations. Would this revolution be a conservative revolution? It seems to me that if the effect of the revolution was not bloodshed and anarchy, but ordered liberty and a return to constitutionalism, one could call this revolution “conservative.” Let us hope we never come to such a scenario. But I think the example is helpful in understanding the term “conservative revolution.”

How does the use of the phrase “conservative revolution” apply to college campuses today? When free speech is violated, conservative newspapers are destroyed and Western Civilization is torn down every day why should conservatives “conserve” the campus culture? Conservative students are facing an intellectual battle daily in lecture halls, dormitories and administration buildings. Conservative students are fighting on campuses to restore the campus to a culture of free inquiry, intellectual pluralism and academic freedom. Since the takeover of the campuses by the sixties radicals, the academy has become a bastion of Marxism, multiculturalism and political correctness. Again, the radical innovators are the professors and administrators, and not the conservative students.

When choosing to describe the battle for college campuses as a “conservative revolution,” I deliberately chose this phrase. Conservative students who revere Edmund Burke and Russell Kirk should be comfortable with this term. And those students who read Locke, Hayek and Rand should be equally comfortable in this description of our goal. When I called for the launching of a “conservative revolution” to take back our campuses from the grip of the far Left, I was not calling for the use of bullets, bombs nor the guillotine. Rather, I was calling for an intellectual battle that holds no punches, that seeks to tear down multiculturalism, political correctness and Marxism. In their place, I urge my fellow conservative “revolutionaries” to promote the ideas of Western Civilization, the great books, Judeo-Christian values, the free market and ordered liberty. Students should be organizing on campuses, starting clubs and newspapers, and hosting debates.

The end game is not to destroy the institutions of higher education themselves. Rather, it is to destroy with the power of truth the failed ideologies of Marxism and collectivism, and return the campuses to an environment that upholds the ideas that have preserved Western Civilization. Nothing short of an intellectual and political revolution against entrenched Leftists on campuses will suffice. Therefore, I declare that the conservative revolution should continue to be the battle cry for conservative students everywhere.

Brendan Steinhauser is the author of The Conservative Revolution: How to Win the Battle of College Campuses.

The Weekly Standard’s William Kristol has a piece in the upcoming issue of the magazine about the Iraq War. He just returned from the country this week and said on Fox News Sunday that things are remarkably better in Anbar province. He writes that the anti-war left had a disappointing July.

Excerpt from his piece:

For the Iraq war’s opponents, July began as a month of hope. It ended in retreat. It began with Democratic unity in proclaiming the inevitability of American defeat. It ended with respected military analysts–Democrats, no less!–reporting that the situation on the ground had improved, and that the war might be winnable. It began with a plan for a series of votes in Congress that were supposed to stampede nervous Republicans against the continued prosecution of the war. It ended with the GOP spine stiffened, no antiwar legislation passed, and the Democratic Congress adjourning in disarray, with approval ratings lower than President Bush’s. It began with Democratic presidential candidates competing in their antiwar pandering. It ended with them having second thoughts–with Barack Obama, losing ground to Hillary Clinton because he seemed naive about real world threats, frantically suggesting that he would invade Pakistan.

July also began with the liberal media disparaging the troops. It ended with the liberal media in retreat. The New Republic had to acknowledge that its pseudonymous soldier’s account of an incident purportedly showing the dehumanizing effects of the Iraq conflict was a lie: It had taken place in Kuwait (if it happened at all), before this imaginative private ever saw the horrors of war. The New York Times was so shocked to discover in late July that public opinion hadn’t continued to move against the war that it redid a poll. The answer didn’t change.