Liberty Agenda

Democrats are the pro-government party, and progressives use that position to hand out goodies, punish enemies and recruit voters to the cause.  But there are still some flickers of freedom out there:

The poll found that 20 percent of respondents ages 18-29 identify as libertarians. Another 42 percent were unsure whether they were libertarians, and 39 percent rejected the label outright. Libertarianism had its strongest showing among young people: only 17 percent of 30-44 year-olds, 15 percent of 45-64 year-olds, and 9 percent of the 65+ crowd self-identified as libertarians. (Reason)

I'm not urging paleo-cons to turn libertarian.

They associate libertarianism with dope smoking nudists, and that's just the way it is. What this poll shows is that young people are clamoring for a liberty agenda they just cannot find in the democrat party unless they want pot, free birth control or government-funded abortions.  If uptight GOOP politicians would stop railing about those issues, they could almost attain parity with Dems for the youth vote.

Here's the crux: 

Instead of being a weak, flailing and ultimately failing countervailing force against leftwing progressivism, conservatives should have staked out their ground in liberty and justice for all. Instead, they just became one more group of people wanting to hijack the government to enforce their values and tell everyone else what to do.

The Catholic Church is on a big tear about religious liberty, while actively combating personal liberty. 

Modern-day conservatism is rife with such contradictions, as is progressivism. It's wrong. 

Progressivism is only working right now because they are selling what's hot, flinging out free candy and doing all the easy stuff.

The Catholic Church, Evangelicals and other social conservatives picked poor ground to fight on and had horrible messengers, so they lost.

The right way to fight is to stake out ground firmly on the constitution. Claim the public square and preach from there the beauty of its freedoms. The same set of founding principles that recognizes gays also recognizes gun owners, dope smokers and Gospel preachers, and damn any government poobah who tries to squelch any of it.

It is probably too late for that now, though. The United States has devolved into twitter-powered, mob-rule popular democracy, and conservatives have lost.

Not even the morally upright like having morality preached at them by dubious political hucksters, but everybody loves freedom and the chance to become successful in a free and open marketplace.

That space is open, since neither political party is preaching it.