Let us say that conservatives get all they ever imagined from a Trump presidency, from the correction of Roe v. Wade and an originalist Supreme Court to a smaller government and a more robust military. For starters, that is.

Well, let’s hope. But let’s also inhale the sometimes unpleasant scent of reality.

1. There is no end-game for our political involvement. It will be ongoing, always. And there will likely never be a time when the next election is not the most important.
2. A president is not a CEO. He cannot give orders to 535 Members of the House and Senate and expect them to hop-to, nor can he instantaneously and completely undo the 81,611 pages of federal regulations published in 2015 alone.
3. Those thinking that the Donald Trump of The Apprentice can hire and fire at will have never dealt with the vast army of federal employees (many of whom are diligent patriots, by the way) whose jobs are secured in a firm cement of legal protections that cannot be undone with the snap of anyone’s fingers.
4. Resistance is bound to be bitter. Trump is disdained by the Left and untrusted by many Republicans. Many Democrats in Washington have never really recovered from the historic 1994 elections, which ended four decades of Democratic control in D.C. They still see the GOP as the party of an unpalatable group of Yahoos with no real right to govern what they believe rightfully is theirs — the federal government and all its works.
5. Priorities matter. If everything is urgent, nothing is. Everything at once is a philosophy doomed not only to failure but which, in its inevitable collapse, invites those with different ideas to take center stage.

No Political Victory is Permanent or Comprehensive

With all of that said, there is a more profound point that demands acknowledgement: No political victory is either permanent or comprehensive. We will never be at a point where we can say, “We’ve won!” and lay-down our political arms. Our adversaries will never sign a final, unconditional surrender document and simply quit.

Some of my friends on the Right act as though the “evil liberals” will someday just throw-in the towel and shrink back into the darkness. Not only is this moral bifurcation arrogant and unfair, it implies a kind of triumphalism that is a bit scary: The freedoms conservatives cherish apply, and must continue to apply, to people of the Left. And the people of the Left hold their views as strongly as we hold ours. Tenacity is not unique to any one movement.

No political victory is either permanent or comprehensive. We will never be at a point where we can say, “We’ve won!” and lay-down our political arms.

Second, Americans now operate from one of two fundamentally different views of life, governance, the Constitution, and the very nature of right and wrong. Radical personal autonomy flavored by a bit of “moral therapeutic deism” and a heavy dose of sexual wantonness thrown in are going nowhere quickly.

Reconstructing an honorable moral and political consensus will be the work of decades, not a single election. Should it ever be achieved, its sustenance will take as much or more work as its attainment.

Third, conservatives are foolish to long for an America that never was, a nation viewed through the gauze of patriotic imagination. The 40s and 50s were a time of general stability, peace and prosperity, but also a time of racial injustice, social turmoil and a Cold War ethos that had small children learning to scurry under their desks for fear of death by atomic vaporization.

America is the noblest of all political enterprises, but with every nation in history, it is not Camelot or Eden. There was never a time when “winter happened only by decree” and brotherly love warmed every citizen’s heart. We will not “take America back for Christ” because, as a people, we never acknowledged Him as Lord. A milieu of Christian values is not the same as near-universal regeneration.

Fourth, political victory is never lasting. At the apex of his political power, having led his nation to victory after six years of cruel war abroad and great deprivation at home, Winston Churchill was forced to resign as Prime Minister of Britain as his party was defeated at the polls and the innocuous Clement Atlee took the place of the “Last Lion.” Those who believe that any victory, however sweet, will paint all things with a Maxfield Parrish glow need to grow up.

Fifth and finally, political change is never lasting or total. Progress is possible and can be substantial, and it is for this that conservatives should hope and work. The abolition of slavery ended legal subjugation after more than 200 years. After another 100 years, the Civil Rights movement gave African-Americans and other minorities a strong if incomplete platform upon which to better realize their God-given and constitutionally protected rights as American citizens.

Yet even as all but a handful of pathetic bigots rejoice in a more color-blind society, as a nation we dislike thinking about the 2,700 unborn children whose lives end in the womb each day and whose mothers are victimized by a grim and unbending abortion industry.

In other words, the comprehensive transformation of our fallen world will only happen when the King of kings creates a new universe, including a new earth.

Should we, then, give up, withdraw, do private acts of charity and wait until the Lord’s return? Of course not. We must, in His Name, advance human dignity, liberty, and justice for all with a steady mindfulness of the imperfectability of man and the limitations of political action.

How? With prudence and integrity. With principled compromise. With malice toward none and charity for all. With the recognition that in God’s economy some things matter more than others, that personal preference and specific biblical teaching are not synonymous, and that the application of scriptural teaching to many matters of public policy is a question of good judgment, not obedience to an obvious truth.

Churchill is reported to have said, “Victory is never final. Defeat is never fatal. It’s courage that counts.”

Conservatives: Do we really believe that? If we want to avoid continuous frustration, we better start.