(Oh, this is going to get me in trouble. OK, here we go)…
There is a quiet comfort in believing your adversaries are monsters. It spares you the burden of self-reflection. If the other side is animated only by hatred, madness, or malice, then you needn’t ask whether their concerns might be valid—or whether your own answers have fallen short. It is much easier, after all, to accuse than to examine.
But what if we began with a more difficult premise: that most Democrats are not enemies, but good people trying to solve real problems?
I believe they are. I’m not speaking about the politicians, the career grifters who exploit our basest instincts to drum up resentment for personal gain, nor do I speak of the radical ideologues hellbent on destruction and retribution. I’m talking about the average, regular Democrat. I believe they see suffering — hungry children, uninsured families, the working poor drowning under debt — and they are genuinely moved to help. And when they look at the Republican Party, they don’t see anyone seriously trying to meet those needs. We speak of free markets and economic growth, and we’re not wrong to do so. Capitalism has raised more people out of poverty than any other system in history. But it is also a system that leaves gaps that the market cannot, or will not, fill.
Capitalism, after all, is a kind of financial Darwinism: the best rise, the weakest fall. It rewards innovation, discipline, and excellence—and it punishes inefficiency, redundancy, and error. The best businesses, products, services, students, and practices succeed, and the worst ones fail. That is precisely why it works so well. But a decent society cannot be content with that alone, because decent people want not survival of the fittest, but of everyone. A nation is not a marketplace. We are not merely consumers and producers. We are neighbors, families, fellow citizens.
When Republicans fail to speak to that deeper moral bond, Democrats step into the void. Their solutions are almost always flawed, sometimes disastrously so. But they are, at the very least, attempting to address the pain. That effort, even when misguided, is sincere. And that sincerity wins hearts.
Rather than wrestle with that uncomfortable truth, we retreat to caricature. We tell ourselves that the left is un-American, unhinged, anti-Christian, Marxist. Those people exist, of course. I’ve written about them before in The Devils We Know: the rioters, the anarchists, the ones who burn cities and cheer death and chaos. They do not seek justice; they seek ruin. One might say the radicals of the left want to destroy society, while the radicals of the right would burn down the state. Both would bring the ruin of the other.
But these are the fringes. Most Americans do not live there. Most are not interested in tearing down anything, but rather are trying, in their own way, to build something better. And that applies to both sides.
This, in fact, is the animating hope of conservatism: that America is good, that Americans are good. That we are not perfect—far from it—but that we are worth preserving. That our rights and liberties are not just legal, but moral; that our people are not just citizens, but worthy stewards of a grand and fragile inheritance.
And that belief is not merely political—it is moral. Conservatism is not just a set of economic principles or a reverence for tradition. At its best, it is a moral vision rooted in the dignity of the person, the importance of responsibility, and the reality of human fallibility. It acknowledges that people are flawed, including us, but also that we are all capable of virtue.
We can hold to the doctrine of original sin and still believe in the image of God in every soul. We can be clear-eyed about the failings of policy while still recognizing the goodness in motive. Conservatism is a bet on both sin and grace—on what must be restrained, and on what deserves to flourish.
It’s not always an easy bet to make. But it is, I believe, the right one. And it is still a winning one.
P.S. I know that a lot of people are going to get on me about this essay, and say I’m not a real conservative or whatever. But you know what? It’s my blog and I can say whatever I want. How about that?
