Perhaps you've heard of conservatism . . .

This could be our opportunity to re-introduce ourselves in fresh ways

I’m fully aware that three weeks is long enough for the Very Stable Genius and his remaining band of throne-sniffers to do something so spectacularly ridiculous yet foundation-jarring that it dwarfs all we’ve seen in the last five years. Other factors could change the landscape during that time. The Iran situation could continue to ratchet up. We’re still not to the bottom of the Russian cyber-attack that led the news a few weeks ago. Is it an ongoing threat?

But I think a consensus is shaping up - a rarity in this brittle moment - that Trumpism is just about out of gas. It’s lost the New York Post.

To be sure, Trumpists still exist in big enough numbers to control the Republican Party. But that just makes the question of whether or not the Republican Party can be salvaged or not a more urgent conversation. If Trumpism does so completely take the GOP over that actual conservatism is completely elbowed out, the party will die from having been so massively infected.

And the rest of us will be looking for a home.

So, in any event, the question of how to re-ignite the viability of conservatism is a top-priority matter.

The very first step is to be sure we know why we want to be about that task. Presumably, at least hopefully, we are mainly driven by a confidence that conservative principles serve all and any kind of person. We’re interested in a thriving, flourishing society and, maybe more importantly, thriving, flourishing people that would comprise it.

In other words, you’re in it because you want to live in a world that works. Your main motivation is not dragging a brand you champion over the political finish line. If it is, why are you bothering? You’d be a better fit among the Trumpists.

If we’re equipped with confidence in our principles, we can show anyone in a conversation why conservatism would work for him or her.

Economic conversations are best entered into from the spiritual level. The first premise of a free-market argument is that a human being owns himself or herself. After our lives, freedom is the greatest right with which our Creator has imbued us, and self-ownership is the basis of all freedom.

From that comes a message of empowerment. A human being ought to want to maximize control over his or her destiny, and that means having control over economic choices.

Economics is, looked at from a certain way, about agreement, which is generally a very productive thing for two free minds to achieve.

A good or service is worth what buyer and seller agree that it is worth. Period. No other entity has any business being part of that agreement - certainly not government.

From there, one has a platform from which to embark on such topics as why health care, by definition, cannot be a right, or why minimum wage is bad and wrong, or why Trump’s tariffs worked as a counterforce to the tax cuts.

Sell people on the appeal of acting on their freedom. Find your particular way of conveying that victimhood doesn’t serve anybody.

With regard to the cultural side of this worldview we embrace, some perceptivity is definitely called for. It’s a different world from ten years ago. Some Supreme Court decisions and other institutional occurrences have “opened” society in ways that are to a lot of people’s liking. To be sure, they are ways that run counter to the basic design of this universe, but we’ve now had some years to see that conservatism can survive with its basic tenets intact when we include those with whom we’re in 85 percent alignment.

There’s common ground aplenty for non-Trumpist conservatives. Localizing education and putting it on a competitive footing is a fine thing, is it not? Private-sector solutions to whatever environmental challenges we face ought to be the default setting on that, don’t you think? Making the patient-provider relationship in health care, with as few intervening players as possible, the center of the entire system makes sense, no?

Even the basic notion that returning to a society-wide assumption of a transcendent level of reality can have broad appeal if presented effectively, I think.

This has been a racially charged year. Does that have any bearing on how we articulate the conservative message?

Not much, I don’t think. As I say, the point of conservative principles is that they work for anybody. If race is more than an incidental concern, victimhood sensibility can insinuate itself in the exchange, and the focus on individual sovereignty and agency starts drifting out of grasp. It shouldn’t matter who is talking to whom, what their races or genders are.

Also consider that, even if Biden must deal with a majority Republican Senate, he can and will, like the two most recent presidents have done, rely on executive order to get policy initiatives moving. He’s going to look into how to go about student debt forgiveness. He’s going to send John Kerry to far-off capitals to get the United States fully involved in this Great Reset. He’s going to put identity politics front and center when making personnel decisions.

People, most of whom have pretty casual engagement with the intricacies of policy, will soon start seeing daily-life results of the Democrat lurch leftward. They will see many things that do not work, or encumber them or restrict their freedom.

It might be the perfect time to dust off some principles.

I think there will be a real market for something that makes sense and isn’t a lot of hollow dazzle-dazzle or tribalistic insignia-wearing.

Just freedom, decency and dignity.