I grew up listening to conservative radio hosts Rush Limbaugh and Phil Valentine criticize Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and the Democratic Party. I shared (and still share) many of their critiques of Democrats, whose mainstream policy views have become only more sinister over the past twenty years. I did not think George W. Bush was perfect during his presidency. I lament the Iraq War. But I thought he governed in a broadly conservative manner and was a respectable husband and father. In subsequent primaries and general elections, I voted for Republican candidates like John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Marco Rubio, even when I differed with them on various policies. In short, I felt confident in my conservative bona fides.
Sometime around 2016, I increasingly heard critiques of the mainstream conservatives I grew up admiring. Increasingly, the conservatism of my youth was claimed to be an aberration from conservative, Republican views. What I saw as mainstream conservatism was increasingly belittled as “neocon” and “RINO.”
None of my conservative college friends railed against Geroge W. Bush as a war criminal. Yet over the past ten or so years, I have heard “paleocon” Republicans lambast George W. Bush as harshly as any Democrat did during his presidency. I have found it difficult to accept such claims from younger conservatives who have little to no personal memory of 9/11, did not see the American President encourage first responders atop a pile of rubble in Manhattan, and did not watch him throw out the first pitch at a Yankees game to raucous chants of “U-S-A” just days after the attack.
During Barack Obama’s presidency, I was disheartened both by his policies and by the way he spoke of political opponents, as if their disagreements with him were only political theater and not driven by principle. In 2015, at the end of Obama’s presidency, figures like R. Albert Mohler, Jr. (President of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) and Marvin Olasky (former Chief Editor of World Magazine) contended that Donald Trump was insufficiently conservative and morally unfit for office. I shared their unease regarding Trump. Eventually, Mohler came around to supporting Trump as a sort of “lesser of two evils,” though Olasky and others did not. For someone who grew up during the Bush era of Republicanism, Trump seemed like a radical departure from Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney. He openly mocked some of these men and most of the views they espoused. It was as if the conservatism of my youth was not just fading; it was despised. This experience was disorienting and frustrating.
Why do I share this background? I do so to highlight how politically jarring the past decade has been for someone who was raised as a conservative in the 1990s and began voting for Republicans in the early 2000s. I am as socially and politically conservative today as I have ever been. Yet I have felt somewhat alienated in partisan politics over the past decade as the Republican Party has been reshaped around President Trump. That is not to say that I am not thankful for some of President Trump’s policies and appointees to the Supreme Court. It is just to say that as the Democratic Party has become even more progressive, it often seems as if the Republican Party I once knew has disappeared in national politics as well. At times, it has been tempting to withdraw from the political process or even feel less patriotic. Many friends have expressed similar sentiments.
However, I have concluded that the impulse to withdraw is unhelpful. My personal commitment to and love for my country should not be determined by the current state of any political party or even the broader moral decline of our nation. My love for the United States of America is rooted in a deeper understanding of conservatism and a more robust sense of patriotism, which I will explore below. Furthermore, the fundamental convictions and ideals that our nation was founded on and has fought for over the past 250 years are well suited for the promotion of human flourishing, however imperfectly we might live up to those ideals at any given time.
In what follows, I want to share several reasons why even those of us who have felt like political exiles over the past decade should continue to love our nation and hold out hope for its future.
Conservatism: Dispositional and Pre-political
Last year, at the invitation of fellow HSF Contributor Matthew Steven Bracey, I read John D. Wilsey’s Religious Freedom: A Conservative Primer and discussed it with one of his classes at Welch College. It is a very helpful book. I am thankful Matthew recommended it. Wilsey contends that conservatism (he calls it “aspirational conservatism”) is dispositional and pre-political. We tend to think of conservatism only in reference to partisan politics. Certainly, it applies to politics. But conservatism is a general disposition a person has, and that disposition precedes any application to politics. Wilsey writes, “This conservatism is a temperament, an attitude, a disposition and a way of life before it ever represents a political stratagem.”[1] He goes on to say, “For over two centuries, conservatism has been an aspirational disposition that aims for a higher moral destiny for human persons and societies, guided by the light of permanent things, tradition, and just order while reckoning with the human condition marked by great dignity, but also limitation, imperfection, and change. The moral profit and ordered liberty of the person is the primary consideration of the conservative disposition.”[2]
Conservatives are committed to “the permanent beneath the flux”—a deeply Christian view of the world.[3] This disposition, Wilsey maintains, is pre-political. He is not saying that conservatism is apolitical. He is contending it is pre-political. Conservatives should apply this pre-political disposition to the realm of politics. Yet conservatism is about more than partisan politics. It is concerned with permanent things. I have been greatly helped by this reminder. My self-understanding as a conservative is more than political. It is pre-political and dispositional. Conservatives have, do, and will disagree on how to apply conservative principles to politics. But conservatism shapes my life in realms before and beyond local or national politics.
Patriotism: Rightly Ordered Loves
In a more recent work, God and Country: Upholding Faith History, and National Identity, Wilsey discusses the relationship between rightly ordered loves and patriotism. Wilsey maintains that a Christian understanding of patriotism flows from Jesus’s teaching that we are to love God with all our heart, soul, and might, and our neighbor as ourselves. In other words, my love for my family, town, state, and nation are applications of Jesus’s teaching regarding my love for God and my neighbor.
Wilsey rightly argues that patriotism is not some abstract idea or just having a “God and Country” service at church around July 4th. Patriotism is about rightly ordered love. Rightly ordered love begins at home with those closest to us and under our care and ultimately extends to love of nation:
Our love for our own people starts with those in our families and extends to those in our local associations, towns, counties, cities, states, and finally to our country. When we see the United States flag, we know that it is not just a piece of fabric, nor does it stand for some abstract nationalistic trope. The flag is a sign. It represents the individuals who make up the nation—those who are dead, those who are living, and those who are yet to be born. When we think of “the American people,” we include our ancestors, actual people who stewarded our country and handed it down to us as an inheritance. We consider it as our responsibility as the living to take care of that inheritance and to hand it down to our children and grandchildren.[4]
Rooting patriotism in Jesus’ teaching about rightly ordered loves has helped me realize that my love for country begins with a love for my family, my fellow church members, my neighbors, and so forth. What I ultimately want for each of these is their flourishing. This principle means I love them in tangible ways, which effects how I vote but includes much more. Patriotism, or love of country, is a rightly ordered love of people, living and dead, and the inheritance that has been handed down to me. Patriotism is gratitude for that inheritance and safeguarding it for future generations. This understanding of patriotism helps us love God, neighbor, and nation regardless of what is going on at any given moment in partisan politics.
A Truly Great Nation
The United States of America was founded upon these sorts of conservative principles, and they are enshrined in our founding documents. We are a nation well suited for the promotion of human flourishing largely because of our founders’ affirmation of a broadly Judeo-Christian worldview. From our founding, we have affirmed the existence of God, a God-given morality, and the dignity, worth, and value of every human being. These affirmations flow from our founders’ recognition that we are created by God in His image. But we have also broadly recognized man’s proclivity towards sin, which corrupts both society and its institutions. As a result, we have sought to establish laws that protect the God-given rights and freedoms of American citizens. Our founders built checks and balances into the very structure of our government to protect against government corruption and overreach. They recognized the need for both order and liberty. This idea is deeply Christian. It is part of what makes our country great.
People often point to the failures and sins in our nation’s history. A conservative understanding of history enables me to recognize the ways in which our nation has fallen short of its ideals. We should not minimize that. But this sad reality is true of any nation or human institution. The citizens of the United States of America enjoy more liberty and more opportunity for human flourishing than any nation on earth. This bequeathment includes religious freedom, which our founding documents recognize and protect. The ultimate flourishing of our nation depends on the faithfulness of the Church to proclaim the gospel and the citizens of our nation to repent, believe, and live in accordance with the gospel. Certainly, the gospel will go forth even in the most hostile settings. Yet American citizens are blessed to be able to worship according to the dictates of conscience.
Conclusion
Contrary to the constant barrage of malicious critiques of the United States, I want my children to recognize the great good our nation has achieved throughout its history and the hope it offers to its citizens. We are certainly not a perfect people or a perfect nation. Acknowledging this point does not make us “woke” or something less savory; it makes us honest. But we are, to use the words of Wilfred McClay, a “land of hope.” I still believe that. I want my sons to believe that too.
I do not know what the future holds for our nation, its citizens, and its political parties. But one thing I have learned over the past decade is that my love for this nation should not be swayed by the current state of institutions and talking points of political parties. As a Christian and a citizen of the United States, I bear the responsibility (and privilege) to engage in the political process, to care for the needs of my family and community, and to seek the flourishing of my country.
[1] John D. Wilsey, Religious Freedom: A Conservative Primer (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2025), 33.
[2] Wilsey, Religious Freedom.
[3] Wilsey, Religious Freedom, 45.
[4] John D. Wilsey, God and Country: Upholding Faith, History, and National Identity (Brentwood, TN: B&H Academic, 2026), 142.
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