Stop Drilling Holes In The Ships Hull: Why Conservatism Needs a Course Correction

There’s an odd and unsettling strain of fatalism sweeping through the ranks of erstwhile conservative thinkers these days, as though they've been put into a form of collective hypnosis and conditioned into believing that the only way to stave off disaster is for all of us to throw ourselves headlong into another Trump campaign—ironically, more than Trump himself is willing to throw himself into it. It’s the kind of logic that says, “If the Titanic is sinking, you should try to put out the fire in the engine room by drilling more holes in the hull.” We are told in no uncertain terms that the stakes "this time" are too high and that a Kamala Harris presidency would be nothing short of the Four Horsemen galloping into Washington on horses with the heads of Stalin, Lenin, Mao, and Marx. It’s all very dramatic and a bit overly theatrical. The problem is not that we’re presented with a false choice—it’s that we’re capitulating to it without so much as a whimper. It’s like watching a horror movie where the characters keep walking into the haunted house despite all the signs telling them not to. Rather than resigning ourselves to this sad spectacle, let’s lay out a real plan—a conservative one, rooted in principle rather than in the fevered fantasies of a demagogue’s apologists.