Reagan understood ideas. He became a conservative, because he knew ideas have physical consequences.
There are not one in a thousand, GOP/RNC elite, that have any, zip, nada, education in political thinking, the great books, names like Burke, Tocivell, never mind familure with Hyack, Mies, Buchannan. Not one has even read Adam Smith.
In a phrase, the GOP is a frat boy leadership. They come to the struggle of ideas, unarmed.
The left is well armed. Wrong ideas. Bad ideas. Evil ideas, well proved desatorusly in our life time. Heck, see the cities of Detroit, Newark, Oakland, East St. Louis.
But, the left blelives, so facts are irrevelent.
One party, see facts, but is with out belife in ideas.
The other party has ideas, but couldn’t care less for facts.
We are in the middle.
Money people are fleeing for the hills, or aligning themselves with either of the ignorent, or both if they are smart, parties.
Old story.
What do you think is going to happen when money people stop fighting the decline, and start trying to profit from it? You think the short selling hedge fund guys were bad, wait until everyone piles in. (They kind of have already started)
How many great city states, with fine public buildings, wealthy youth, sports arenas, merchant ships in the harbor, farmers bringing in harvests, with fine arts have come and gone?
Forget the city states. How many empires, spanning thousands of miles, with fine Armies, well equipped, postal systems, large educated Mandarin class of bureaucrat rule enforcers have come and gone?
All of them. Every human civilization has grown by relying on stalwart men and the women who stand with them. Every civilization has then become soft and complacent and the stalwarts have been marginalized and sidelined by the soft clever ones. They eventually sap the life from the society and it all comes crashing down. There are no exceptions. That said, it's still better to be of good cheer than not. And it is definitely not in season to discard the few people on our side creatively and aggressively thinking, as I perceive your last post to do. Besides, it is politically suicidal to abandon the only political force not averse to even working with you. The Republican Party may not be as stalwart and Stoic as you appear to prefer, but they are streets more so than the alternative, which is the force working to undermine social order so they can dominate and feed off it. I don't like the alternatives, but no others of any credible status present themselves (short of the Second Coming). So, be of good cheer and call the current pres__dent by the name he seems so assiduously to covet: Mickey Bricks.