Not Left vs. Right—Liberty vs. Control

How Conservative Principles Built America, and How to Re-center a Corrupted Republic

The argument of the last several centuries isn’t really “left versus right.” It’s liberty versus control. From barons forcing a reluctant king to sign a charter to colonists insisting that rights come from God and not Parliament, the through-line is clear: free people keep fighting to make rulers respect limits. That fight, anchored in ordered liberty, local responsibility, free speech, equal justice, property rights, and moral agency, is what we now call conservatism. It has always been the centerline of the liberty tradition.

Our Founders encoded that center into the machinery of government: a constitutional order built on separated powers, federalism, due process, and open debate. The system was designed to protect pre-existing rights and to restrain political passions, left, right, or otherwise. Over time, though, the order has been pulled off axis by two corrosive forces: a far Left that tries to remake human nature through bureaucracy and speech-policing, and a far Right that mistakes authoritarian rule for freedom and sabotages governing coalitions. Both expand coercion, just with different slogans. The way back is not novelty; it is memory, recovering the conservative center that has always made liberty workable.

The liberty tradition: subjects to citizens

Long before 1776, the English-speaking world learned two hard truths:

• People are dignified yet fallible. Freedom without guardrails dissolves, and power without limits corrupts.
• Virtue and knowledge grow from the bottom up. Families, churches, associations, and markets form character and solve problems better than distant rulers. Madison understood this principle well.

The American Founding operationalized those truths. It secured rights that predate government, divided power so ambition checks ambition, reserved most decisions close to home, and kept public life open to argument rather than enforced ideology. That’s not “far anything.” It’s the mainstream of Western freedom—the conservative center.

What worked—and why

America took off because the operating system matched reality:

• Rights above rulers. Law binds the powerful and protects the meek.
• Checks and balances. No one faction can seize everything at once.
• Federalism. States and communities tailor solutions to their people.
• Free exchange and free speech. Prosperity and truth are discovered, not decreed.
• Equal rules, not equal outcomes. Justice applies the same standard to all.

These commitments created space for families to rise, businesses to build, and civic groups to thrive. The center held because citizens shared a practical creed: work hard, tell the truth, raise your kids, love your country, and treat opponents as neighbors—not enemies.

How we drifted: two corruptions of the same mistake

In our time, the center has been squeezed by extremes that make the same error, they overestimate what politics can fix and underestimate what politics can break.

• The far Left pushes a therapeutic-authoritarian project: redefine dissent as harm, narrow the Overton window, outsource authority to “experts,” and rule by perpetual emergencies. It promises uplift, delivers dependency, and calls it compassion. It replaces persuasion with penalties and pluralism with litmus tests.
• The far Right answers with strict authoritarian ideology, more government, more edicts, more restrictions, trading liberty for control under a different banner.

Both paths centralize coercion, one through swelling bureaucracies, the other through strongman theatrics. Both erode the habits that make republican self-government possible: patience, persuasion, prudence, proportion.

A third, quieter corruption props them up: label inflation. Institutions fling “far right” at anyone who defends biological reality, color-blind law, or parental rights, exiling yesterday’s mainstream from today’s debate. That isn’t analysis; it’s gatekeeping. And it makes honest pluralism impossible.

Re-centering: the conservative core

To recover a functioning republic, we don’t need a new ideology. We need to reassert the conservative core that has always been the liberty center:

• Human dignity & moral agency. Rights are inherent; government secures them, it doesn’t grant them. Treat citizens as responsible adults, not clients to be managed.
• Rule of law, equally applied. End double standards. Protect the vulnerable first. Choose process and evidence over passion and PR.
• Subsidiarity & federalism. Make decisions at the lowest competent level—family → community → state—where knowledge and accountability live.
• Pluralism & free speech. A big country needs room for disagreement. Protect conscience; keep public institutions viewpoint-neutral; defeat bad ideas in the open.
• Opportunity through abundance. Build what makes life affordable: energy, housing, infrastructure, and skills. Clear chokepoints; trust enterprise; reward work.
• Fiscal realism & stewardship. Live within our means. End omnibus gimmicks with single-subject bills. Sunset old rules unless re-justified.
• Mediating institutions matter. Strengthen family, faith, and voluntary associations. Government cannot manufacture virtue; it can stop punishing it.

A practical program (measurable, non-extreme)

• Safe communities: prosecutor transparency; truth-in-charging; due-process-respecting, order-restoring policing that protects the poor first.
• Parents first in education: curriculum transparency; universal choice portability; rigorous literacy/civics; neutral public rules for viewpoint diversity.
• Abundance agenda: two-year permit clocks; yes to nuclear, pipelines, and refining; apprenticeships and skills-first hiring; zoning reform for workforce housing.
• Clean budgeting: cap spending growth to population + inflation; single-subject appropriations; automatic continuing resolutions slightly below prior levels to end shutdown theater.
• Speech & due-process protections: no government “jawboning” of platforms; strong conscience protections in law.
• Administrative rollback: independent cost reviews; default sunsetting of major rules unless Congress re-votes them.

None of this is utopian. It’s civilization maintenance.

A word to each side of the coalition

• To conservatives and the broader right: trade spectacle for statecraft. Count votes, write amendments, pass laws that last. Stop turning allies into enemies over marginal differences. Rebuild trust by delivering safer neighborhoods, better schools, lower costs, and honest budgets.
• To Democrats who still value liberal norms: rejoin the liberty tradition. Defend free speech, color-blind law, and neutral public institutions. Curb the radicals narrowing the window of permissible thought. Help put **Americans, not rulers**back at the center.

The stake in the ground

The core American choice hasn’t changed since we stopped being subjects and became citizens: decree or law, ideology or argument, rationing or abundance, managed dependency or earned dignity. The conservative center—ordered liberty with real limits on power—built a nation where ordinary people could build lives. The far Left’s soft despotism and the far Right’s authoritarian ideals both pull us away from that center. They are mirror errors; the remedy is the same: limits, pluralism, and responsibility.

Plant the flag back in the middle of ordered liberty and hold it. Make the country safe enough to raise kids, free enough to speak the truth, prosperous enough to build a future, and humble enough to live within its means. That is how Americans tamed kings and parliaments. It’s how we’ll tame our own worst impulses now.

Choose builders over burners. Reward competence over clout. Re-center on the conservative principles that turned wilderness into unimaginable prosperity—and will make America worthy of her promise again.

in liberty,
The Hillsdale Conservatives