I’m going to start calling myself a Restorative Conservative because I don’t think conserving the status quo is enough anymore. The status quo is broken. We have a federal government buried in debt, consumed by mandatory spending and interest, that is incredibly detached from its core constitutional responsibilities. This has been supported by generations of politicians who refuse to touch the programs driving us toward fiscal and economic collapse. Restorative Conservatism means restoring the proper role of the federal government: Secure the border, maintain the strongest military in the world, protect the constitutional order, honor obligations to veterans and those who have already built their lives around promises like Social Security and Medicare, and then begin the difficult work of dismantling, devolving, or reforming the massive entitlement and welfare state that Washington has built atop mountains of our forcibly taken monies. The “so what” is simple, there is nothing conservative about conserving national decline. If we continue borrowing from future generations to maintain a government we cannot afford, eventually the economics will make every other political argument irrelevant. The goal is not to destroy government. The goal is to restore a federal government strong enough to do what it must, restrained enough to stop doing what it should not, and solvent enough to survive. Let’s start actually fighting to take our government back from being the biggest welfare state in the entire world.