Unmaking the Leviathan Part V: Why I’m a Restorationist, Not a Conservative

The professional Conservative class in DC loves to talk about how much they’ve conserved and how they’re a bulwark for our Constitutional traditions and rights. Really? Despite the investment of billions upon billions of dollars, what have they actually conserved?

Marriage? Nope. Education? Hardly. Borders? Our republic writ large? Our rights? Anything at all on any level? Hardly. We have a tiny vestige of our inheritance as Americans left.  

Let’s be honest: conservatism is such a tired movement and quite frankly, a tired word. Restorationism offers something different. It rejects the passive defense of a collapsing status quo and calls instead for active rebuilding. Restoration is a verb. It’s work. It’s purpose. Quite frankly, it’s political war.

We don’t want a return to 1980 or 2004. We want to resurrect the spirit of 1776 and 1787—an ethos among the American people that demands a restoration of rights and a republic, a system where all power flows from the people, not bureaucrats.

Remember why our Founders fought the British Empire. Some will mistakenly say it was for economic reasons, though the taxes exacerbated the situation. But it was the thinking behind the taxes that triggered the American Revolution. In reality, the tax burden, especially compared to what we pay today, was quite light. It was about restoring natural inherent rights: the Englishmen on this side of the Atlantic felt that their God-given rights were being taken away by Englishmen on the other side of the ocean. They truly believed that what no earthly power gave, no earthly power could take away. The Empire did not give them their rights: God did. Yet the Empire viewed those rights as suggestions in the real world of politics and policy, rights that couldn’t be allowed to interrupt the goals of the Empire.  

That was the essence of the Revolution, which in many ways should be called the American Restoration: the colonists were demanding their God-given rights be restored and when the Empire attempted to crush them for that, the colonists invoked another right: the right to defend with musket and sword what God had given them In fact, to not defend those rights was to treat them as rubbish and shame the One who gave them.

We must have that same spirit and resolve. We must understand where our rights come from, what a rights-based government looks like and live out in reality what we believe in regards to where our inherent rights come from. They are not suggestions to be thrown away because they are inconvenient in the given moment. They are sacrosanct and should be treated as such, not only by us, but by those in government.

The hour is late. The cause is clear. We must choose restoration over retreat.