Don't Let Your Conscience Be Your Guide

Been reading this book Don't Let Your Conscience Be Your Guide and the following passage really struck a nerve for me.

"The tremendous experience between God, Moses, and the other leaders of Israel, which was shared, perhaps, by a sizable number of the common people, made Torah a glorious possession.  But that formative experience could not continue as a creative experience.  It left a residue of rules to be followed in order for the people to please God.  The residue of rules, when taught to the children, would stand in their mind only as rules; and the experience which motivated the rules would only be a story of how things were with people in the past.  This is the natural history of social revolution and wars of liberation.  In order for the social gains of a revolution to be held, the ideology has to be taught to the children; but by the third generation the sanctions for the ideology seem unreal and the ideology itself becomes a regularized way of living.  The drift is always from ideology to law, because children grow up in a new situation.  Ideology, in fact, becomes law whenever it is taught as an 'ought.'"    ---C. Ellis Nelson

This is what has happened to Americanism as well.  How can we reverse the deadening, legalistic feel that so many young people have for both Conservatism and Americanism, and make them come alive.  It seems that a vibrant though foolish philosophy holds sway over two generations at least.  A stale philosophy which stinks of "oughts" has little chance, regardless of its truth.  We have to revitalize Americanism.  In order to do that, I think we have to embrace how truly radical it is, and not be constrained in voicing our position, no matter how politically incorrect or tactically unsound when it comes to elections.  People who attempt to always play it safe are hardly alive, and a political philosophy which does the same is destined for the ash heap.