The Mirror, the Window and the Anchor: A Conservative Stand

In one of of the most important podcasts I have ever done, this provides a clear outline of conservatism against that of the left, and other right wing ideologies.  It also illustrates a way forward for our nation.  

Transcript

The Window, the Mirror, and the Anchor: My Conservative Stand 

November 2025 

“A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling, ‘Stop!’”

William F Buckley

“America was born with an epistemological assertion: The important political truths are not merely knowable, they are known. They are self-evident in that they are obvious to any mind not clouded by ignorance or superstition. It is, the Declaration says, self-evidently true that “all men are created equal” not only in their access to the important political truths, but also in being endowed with certain unalienable rights, including the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Perhaps the most important word in the Declaration is the word “secure”: 

“To secure these rights, governments are instituted among men.” The government’s primary purpose is to secure pre-existing rights. Government does not create rights; it does not dispense them.”

George F. Will, The Conservative Sensibility

“All men have equal rights, but not to equal things.”

Edmund Burke

When I was in business, one of my old mentors noted that there is a job and there is a career.  The former was a series of tasks and the latter a craft.  The desire to constantly perfect the craft meant, among many other things, consuming a host of business books.  The vast majority was simple excrement.  A series of pithy little fortune cookie sayings, such as “teams work better than individuals” and so forth.  Jim Collins’ 2001 book Good to Great was different.  It contained something rarely found in business tomes: an “opposed to what” question.  Better to hire insiders rather than outsiders, for example, as CEO.  That concept alone goes against so much business orthodoxy as to be startling. 

It was simple logic that often bucked the instincts of groupthink.  I would argue that Good to Great applies to any organization, but one of the most transferable concepts from business to history, politics and culture is the Window and Mirror. 

Collin’s wrote, “Level 5 (the best) leaders look out the window to attribute success to factors other than themselves. When things go poorly, however, they look in the mirror and take full responsibility. The comparison CEOs, the companies that were not successful, that often ended in failure, often did just the opposite—they looked in the mirror to take credit for success, but out the window to assign blame for disappointing results.” [AT1] 

Speaking not of business but instead of national British policy, TS Eliot wrote, “Our preoccupation with foreign politics during the last few years has induced a surface complacency rather than a consistent attempt at self-examination of conscience. Sometimes we are almost persuaded that we are getting on very nicely, with a reform here and a reform there, and would have been getting on still better, if only foreign governments did not insist upon breaking all the rules and playing what is really a different game. What is more depressing still is the thought that only fear or jealousy of foreign success can alarm us about the health of our own nation.”

Thomas Jefferson noted, “Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others.” In this liberty, there is an inherent sense of responsibility.  

It is easier to attribute challenges to the window but the reality in 21st century America is they lay more often to the mirror.  And through the window lay the twin temptations of grievance and envy.  Grievance has often been the hard staple of the left.  Why am I not successful?  Because others persecute me based on sex, race, class, or any other ism they can conceive.  Yet lately, this has become a core to the right.  Why do I not succeed?  Progressives, of course, but add to that globalism, RINOs, immigrants, and that all-purpose 2,000-year-old calumny, the Jews.  

While grievance has been a purview of the left at least since the 1980s, its not an exclusive reflex. In fact, I would suggest it pre-dates history.  “Our tribe could prosper if it were not for those nasty Neanderthals,” as an excuse for lack of achievement.  

Conservatism is not about leveling the playing field to ensure equal outcomes.  If conducting a race, do the runners imagine that all will finish at the same time?  Americans spend $150 billion on sports entertainment, driven by the desire to see unequal outcomes. Instead, the conservative strives to create an environment where everyone starts from the same position[AT2] , not ends up in the same place. Though this cannot be perfectly achieved, it should be the goal.  I would not discount the possibility of a window in unequal outcomes. Still, in America today, it is hard not to say the results are linked more to the mirror, a concept the right is omitting with greater frequency.

I wanted to begin here, with the concept of individual choices, to lay out the core of conservative values.  As Russell Kirk noted, “If you want to have order in the commonwealth, you first have to have order in the individual soul.”  Now, individualism is not the sole aspect of our lives, simply because we are social creatures.  Edmund Burke viewed the individual not as a solitary being, but as a part of a larger, historical social organism that includes the dead and future generations. He believed that true liberty is social, not “unconnected, individual, selfish liberty,” and is secured by institutions that provide moral and social order. For Burke, individual virtue is developed within these social, economic, political, and religious structures, which help individuals manage their passions and cultivate a sense of duty and dignity. 

But even here, in the critical concept of institution building, individual choice is paramount.  We can adhere to the law, or not, treat people as we would wish to be treated, or not. Attend church, get married, have children, stay married, and vote or not.  We can celebrate our nation and contribute to national institutions, or choose to be pillars of our communities, or not. 
 
 

Lately, the choices individuals make regarding these personal institutions [AT3] have been a lot of “or nots.” 

George Will, upon being asked what was being conserved in conservatism, noted the founding of the United States: “We seek to conserve the American Founding. American conservatives are the custodians of the classical liberal tradition,” I would propose “conservative liberalism.”

And by the founding, he and I mean two things: the natural rights enumerated, or as Will emphasizes, “secured” in the Declaration of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, and that of limited government built into the fabric of the Constitution.  The one secures the rights of individuals to choose.  The second prevents an overmighty government from impinging on those rights.  And here is the choice upon which many prevaricate: the safety of paternal government or the adult choices inherent in liberty.  Benjamin Franklin noted, “Those who would give up essential liberty to gain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Friedrich Hayek stated, “Liberty not only means that the individual has both the opportunity and the burden of choice; it also means that he must bear the consequences of his actions and will receive praise or blame for them. Liberty and responsibility are inseparable.” 

And here is my third concept[AT4] : In addition to the window and mirror, there is the the Anchor—well, really two anchors.  In times of stress, our anchors as a society are those institutions to which we must cleave when the storm inevitably comes.  But it is then the anchor of conservatism[AT5] , the greater ideology of these things, to which I have secured myself for the past 30 years, and intend to do so for any future time.  

The storms come in many forms.  Nationally, there was 9/11, a number of recessions, and numerous wars. Individually, there the inevitable storms, as well as the benefits to marriage, a family, a new faith, and a career, each involving its own particular tempest[AT6] .  Some of these, like marriage, were a choice.  Others were twists of fate.  In all of them, it was as important how I reacted to these changes as the changes themselves.  

Kirk adds, “Every right is married to a duty; every freedom owes a corresponding responsibility; and there cannot be genuine freedom unless there exists also genuine order, in the moral realm and in the social realm.” 

In politics and among right-wing politicians today, adherence to belief systems is increasingly situational, even transactional.  They hoist their anchors and let the wind blow them wherever it dictates. Today’s stalwart is tomorrow’s radical and vice versa and this version can easily be found online.  Kevin Williamson aptly describes this beast, “Like every other self-abasing servant of the digital mob, their politics are insipid, superficial, and subject to instantaneous revision as soon as necessity requires it. One might as well argue with a puddle of piss on a hot summer sidewalk—whatever there is to it won’t last as long as the argument, and all that will remain will be a stain, if that, and the knowledge that you have wasted your time.” 

This is not so on the left.  A figure such as Bernie Sanders was populist, classist, and socialistic in his outlook 50 years ago, and remains remarkably consistent today.  The politics of Zohran Mamdani may seem alarming, but it is what Sanders was desiring back in the 1970s.  

Along with the classical liberal value of individual liberty, I would add natural rights to life, liberty, and property, and a limited government to protect these rights. Classical liberalism advocates for a free market with minimal government intervention.  And I would advocate alternative institutions for protecting these positions, including the local community, religion, and, above all, the family.  “It is arguable that the most molecular word in political discourse, the noun that denotes something on which all else depends and builds, is neither “justice” nor “freedom” nor “equality.” It is “family.” Without the nurturing and disciplining done in intact families, individuals are apt to be ill-equipped to exercise the freedom to become unequal. They, therefore, are handicapped in the pursuit of justice for themselves and others.” Adds Will 

And if individual choices are paramount, what is the alternative concept?  Government decides.   I am not an anarchist.  The preservation of the founding requires some form of government.  David Hume noted that “A great sacrifice of liberty must necessarily be made in every government; yet even the authority, which confines liberty, can never, and perhaps ought never, in any constitution, to become quite entire and uncontrollable.” I believe in paying taxes and think the government’s essential role is the middle of those secured rights, life.  The government’s role in the form of police or a national army is crucial.  

Yet Thomas Sowell has the better vision of government: “Life in general has never been even close to fair, so the pretense that the government can make it fair is a valuable and inexhaustible asset to politicians who want to expand government.” It is one thing to pay for firefighting services through taxes, quite another to create a redistributive government that exists to ensure equal outcomes.  

“The Constitution is a paper manifestation of a deeper cultural commitment to liberty and limited government, in the same way a marriage certificate is a physical and legalistic representation of something far deeper, mysterious, and complicated. When the marriage fails, the marriage certificate won’t save it. And when the American people lose their love of liberty, the Constitution will not save us either,” states Jonah Goldberg.

I note this quote because much of the right today confuses the precepts of conservatism with the government’s ability to preserve conservatism itself.  Using the government to preserve conservatism is like asking the fox to help guard the chickens in the henhouse.  If ever there is a figure who most personifies this way of thinking, it is Pat Buchanan.  I agree with many of Buchanan’s precepts, including his lip service to a small, simplified government and an adherence to a moral order.  I agree with him in expressing concerns about unlimited immigration.    

But where I part with Buchanan is on protectionism.  “Stop exporting American jobs. Stop exporting American factories, and stop exporting American sovereignty and independence to global institutions like the World Trade Organization.”

One hears today about the hollowing of manufacturing as if standing in front of a machine for 8 or 12 hours at a time were some Golden Age, some greater signal of virtue. For that matter, back breaking the toil in 90-degree heat was once seen as some benefit by those who never were forced to the task.  I think many who are nostalgic for those halcyon days never actually worked a year in a plant or harvested grain in a field without a tractor or combine.  

America after this hollowing out is still number 2 in the manufacturing sector worldwide.  But it is the concept that protectionism by its very nature means government chooses, not the individual, not the market.  And when the government chooses, the warping of such will be paramount.  This intrusion, into all manner of American lives from choosing where to locate manufacturing plants to what farmers should plant is discordant with Buchanan’s statement that “The core belief of liberalism, the political philosophy that has guided the Democratic Party since FDR’s New Deal — that competent, caring, compassionate government is the instrument best suited to addressing America’s social disorders — is being fatally undermined.”  Yet we would trust the government to decide trade and dictate industrial policy?  

I also disagree with Buchanan on foreign policy.  “U.S. leaders of both parties, “from arrogance and hubris,” Buchanan wrote, were engaging in “imperial overstretch” even as they were reducing defense expenditures as a result of what was termed a post-Cold War “peace dividend.” “As we pile commitment upon commitment, in Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the Middle East, and the Persian Gulf,” he continued, “American power continues to contract—a sure formula for foreign policy disaster.”   

Yet Buchanan was one of the strongest advocates of the Cold War, hardly an isolationist stance.  There exists a straw man argument that America should not be the world’s cop or that we get involved in affairs throughout the globe.  That is not true now, nor has it ever been.  In my lifetime, I have seen Rwandan massacres resulting in a horrific war in Central Africa.  Peru and Ecuador have fought it out.  The Iran and Iraq war, fought over eight years, resulting in a million deaths.  Add to that conflicts in Sudan, Yemen, and even superpowers such as China and India, or India and Pakistan shooting at each other on their common border[AT7] .  If the US has expended time, blood, and treasure on any of these, it is in such a covert fashion as to escape notice.  

My foreign policy scripture is fairly clear.  We intervene when a foreign power can disrupt our trade with other nations or if a power shows the capacity to involve itself with our affairs.  It was not that long ago that Iran designated the US as the Great Satan, and just a few years ago that their proxies in the Middle East attacked our troops in bases sanctioned by host nations. China clearly sees us as a threat[AT8] .  Russia, under Vladimir Putin, has interfered in our elections. 

As noted, Buchanan was a sturdy cold warrior, which was proper as the Soviet Union preached worldwide Communism, not just for Russia, but everywhere.  

These things alarm for one reason: history.  Beginning with the U Boat campaign and the Zimmerman Telegram in World War I, and culminating in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor two decades later, the iron rule of foreign affairs holds true:  we fight them there, or we fight them here.  As horrific as the Rwandan war was, at no time did any of the combatants from Congo to Zambia to Rwanda itself threaten our people, our troops, or our trade.      

What fueled much of Buchanan’s post-Cold War foreign policy was an aversion to assisting Israel.  Some, including Tucker Carlson in 1999, inferred that Buchanan’s position was based on antisemitism.  There is no direct evidence of that, though his animus was especially virulent.  

As concerns Israel, it is the avowed desire of Islamic jihadists existing in Iran, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia to destroy the United States.  But with Israel’s presence, all the attention goes there, not here.  Is this so-called neo-conservatism?  Put whatever tag you desire. I call it common sense, and 9/11 is the example.  

Yet I would have the debate with supporters of Buchanan.  In a Venn Diagram between the followers of Buchanan, and fusionist, Reagan style conservativism, there is some overlap between them, especially concerning the value enumerated above, and in contrast to progressive thinking[AT9] .  But, so sadly, it does not stop there.  There are forces, highly illiberal, marshalling on the right.  The concept of MAGA and Trump has cracked the door, and insidious figures are pouring in.  That they make common cause with Buchanan, and the leftist hatred for Israel, based on a twisted view of colonialism on the left and antisemitism on the right, needs to be fought.  

These post modern including neo-Nazis and White supremacists, would like to reorder society to their liking, similar in that overthrow to the left and similar to tyrannies reigning in mid-20th-century Europe and Asia. In this they omit Kirk’s guidance, “Men cannot improve a society by setting fire to it: they must seek out its old virtues, and bring them back into the light.”

Reagan-style conservatism, consisting of small government, moral order, and American exceptionalism abroad, had little tolerance for post liberal neo fascists and the rampant misogyny of these new figures.  Buchananism, with its America First precepts and veiled antisemitism, is aligning as much with these figures as with the Reaganites.  These illiberal movements, which in classic window fashion blame Jews, blacks and even women for both the real and illusory ills of the nation.  So it is important to contend with Buchananism, and whenever and wherever, condemn the other.  

And there is another brand that has matches several attributes to Buchananism, what used to be called paleo-conservatism[AT10] , an ideology of American nationalism, strict immigration limits, non-interventionist foreign policy (isolationism), and a return to traditional social and cultural values. It.  I have already noted that nostalgia is not history.  For some, the 1950s were a wonderful period.  Yet the material and health comparisons with 2025 are very different. Houses were half the size.  One car, one TV, no air conditioner, rarely eating out, and the phone was a wall unit that contained a rotary dial.  Of course, no social media, and that culturally was probably a plus, but health?  Average lifespans from birth were 67 for men and 72 for women if white. Today it is 79 and 81 with anti-arthritis drugs and fake hips, so the quality of lift is much better, along with lifespans.  Infant mortalities in 1950 were 29.2 deaths per 1,000 live births.  That rate is 6 today, or reduced by 400%.  

But there is even a school that celebrates the antebellum South as some sort of lost Elysium, unless one is black, of course.  They call themselves Heritage Americans, but that is a euphemism for white, preferably Northern European American, regardless of how they dress it up.  Under their vision, Patty Murray, a far-left Senator of Washington, is a real American; conservatives Thomas Sowell or Condoleezza Rice are not.  

I am always curious about policy preferences for these people.  Progressives have been and are clear about theirs for a century.  Buchananites as well.  But what do Paleoconservatives want? Mass deportation of all colored people of color to Liberia, as was proposed by Northerners in the 1850s?  It is ridiculous, but there is a common theme throughout Buchananism, paleo-conservativism, and even the sickly grown neo fascism.  When common institutions such as marriage, family, religion, community, and nation decline, then something must fill the vacuum.  And to be clear, there is a vacuum.  

New data from the Pew Research Center found that just two-thirds of 

Americans (67%) believe they have either achieved the American Dream (31%) or are on their way to achieving it (36%), while almost a third (30%) of Americans believe that the Dream is out of reach for them. Contrast this with 2017, where barely 1 in 5 adults (17%) stated that the Dream was out of reach, and 82% believed they were on their way or had achieved the Dream.  

In 2017, Pew found that Gen Zs and Millennials were very optimistic about their futures, with 87% of Gen Z respondents and 91% of Millennials respondents believing that they had achieved or were well on their way to achieving the Dream.   

Today, almost a quarter (23%) of Boomers and Silents, respectively, believe that the Dream is out of their reach. Gen Z and Millennials, however, have turned negative on their futures. In just seven years, those in Gen Z are now three times more likely to report this same conclusion, jumping from 11% in 2017 to 36% in 2024.

We can provide many explanations for this.  COVID, the greatest government intrusion on our liberties in the past 90 years was certainly part of the issue.  The relentless anti-American curriculum in K-Post Graduate College influenced many.  The lack of effective, unifying governance provided by all recent presidential administrations would be another factor.  Higher costs of education, housing, food, and transportation provide another.  And the right, once a source of patriotic optimism as a counter to leftist thinking, now indulges in as much grievance as the left traffics.  

I would note on the affordability talk, which, alongside COVID, is the most pertinent of these ideas, that there is a perception that capitalism has failed.  A troubling 2025 Cato survey found that 62 percent of young Americans (age 18-29) hold a “favorable view” of socialism. 34 percent even hold a favorable view of communism.  

But then, in every sector cited, consider the paramount role of government.  Public teachers’ unions control the budgets and curricula of K-12, as was clearly seen during the COVID pandemic. The federal government controls student loans courtesy of the Obama Administration, creating a student loan debt bubble.  Because of thousands of local regulations, the building of more housing, which would reduce costs by creating supply to match demand, is prevented for regulatory and environmental reasons.  Thanks to the Trump administration’s protectionist policies, the costs of many goods, including food, are higher than they were even in the Biden years.  And Trump’s own COVID spending spree, along with Biden’s, coupled with the GOP’s total inability to rein in spending, leads to higher prices.  And of course, there is healthcare, where costs have significantly increased since the Affordable Care Act under the Obama administration.  

Where capitalism holds sway in the costs of goods from computers to TVs to automobiles, the costs are either lower or adjusted for inflation, consistent with years past.  We need more capitalism, not less.  

And there are two cultural issues.  One is demographics.  More children are raised in one-parent households than ever before.  And those families are smaller.  Couple this with a permissive attitude, and the child is a wonder, a princess, a genius, yet governed by often illusory safety concerns that keep them wrapped in bubble wrap.  Fewer kids coupled with an explosion in leisure time (yes, that is a thing) means that kids are the center of the family, not the parents as should be the case.  

We have raised a new generation that is both instilled with a sense of self out of proportion to almost anyone’s ability and thrust into a world in which the increasing presence of government limits their options, opportunities, and potential.  When a child today looks into the mirror, they see a brilliant soul, and when they look out the window, they see a world that is against them.  They have not even learned competition, resilience, or grit. When adults, they are expected to accept responsibility and be accountable, but do not learn those traits when they are young.  And when young adults have a plethora of types, from both left and right, telling them the problem is the window, they take the negative turns noted above.  

Governmentally, we need to free our politics, economics, and even culture from the bonds of less competent government.  We need to end collective bargaining and remove unions from our schools.  The federal government needs to get out of student loans.  Local governments need to build[AT11] more housing.  Tariffs need to be returned to Congress as the Constitution dictates. The government needs to focus on core powers, such as security, rather than economic redistribution.  

Culturally, we need to remind our kids that their future lies in their own hands, in the mirror, but that there are moral guides to help them: adherence to law, marriage, family, religion, community, and nation.  

And of these, the family is the most crucial. Jonah Goldberg wrote, “Hannah Arendt once observed that, in every generation, Western civilization is invaded by barbarians: We call them “children.” The family is the first line of defense against this barbarian invasion … parents are at war with the darker side of human nature, which we all work to trim away from for our children by inscribing in their hearts notions of decency, fair play, and self-restraint. When parents fail to do that, other institutions, including the government, try to step in and remedy what they can. But no teacher, counselor, social service worker, priest, rabbi, imam, or police officer will deny that, when the family fails to do its part, the work of every institution downstream of the family becomes that much more difficult.” Broken families lead to broken societies.  

We need new education about capitalism, what Mani Basharzad of the Foundation for Economic Education notes, “It should show how our ‘propensity to truck, barter and exchange’ gives rise to miracles—from airplanes to iPhones—things unimaginable to those living just decades earlier.” When looking at the innate sins of man, note that capitalism harnesses greed for the good of all, wherein socialism weaponizes envy for division and divisiveness.  

Only with this path, dictated by conservatism, can we achieve a new level of greatness.  And it is through conservatism that we can get there.  

When I started the Conservative Historian five years ago, the goal was to provide better history to counter the progressive versions of Howard Zinn, James Loewen, and the 1619 Project.  The current history, in which the narrative began not with research but with a proposition, almost always with the United States as a toxic entity spreading virulence about.  Yet over the past few years, there has been a dark history on the right, a sort of black-mirror version of the left.  Neither starts with a question, but always with statements.  Then they cherry-pick those facts or make them up to prove their narratives.  And this is becoming the case with our politics.  

Caught between these two movements, my conservatism can, at times, be a lonely place.  I do not really care.  I could get far more clicks, views, listens, and even remuneration for hoisting my conservative anchor, looking out the window for any perceived grievances, and achieving the coin of today’s media realm, attention.  I choose not to do so.  For when I look in the mirror, I see a conservative.   

 [AT1]Did you want to quote Jim Collins below this?

 [AT2]What’s interesting is that even this can’t be achieved.. There will always be people born into better situations than others and therefore afforded better opportunities. But a capitalist meritocracy still offers more opportunities than any other system

 [AT3]Which institutions, the national ones?

 [AT4]Maybe to punch it through, restate again that “in addition to the window and the mirror, here is my third concept”

 [AT5]Just to be clear, the other anchor is conservatism?

 [AT6]Clarifying - you’re referring to these as storms as well?

 [AT7]Maybe just a little clarity that these were all conflicts of some sort

 [AT8]Maybe another topic for a column, essay, or podcast is economic imperialism.. China making investments in countries throughout the world is an interesting policy to inspire loyalty to themselves and potentially get in the way of our trade w/those countries

 [AT9]Can you maybe expand on this a bit? Was a little confused

 [AT10]Maybe a quick definition on this first? I definitely understand it from context clues in the rest of the paragraph but spelling it out might be helpful

 [AT11]Build what?