Bowling for Soup

Her two kids in high school, they tell her that she's uncool 'Cause she's still preoccupied with 1985. Debbie must be a Reaganite conservative...

I just finished Michael Anton’s 2020 book The Stakes: America at the Point of No Return (I bought it to read during Covid and never got around to it) and it is one book that I wish he had published the last chapter first, and then said “Hey, here’s the upshot and now I’m going to spend the rest of the book telling you why I came to these conclusions.”

When I think of conservativism, I think of what it meant during the Reagan years and the heyday of the Weekly Standard, National Review, and other conservative outlets – before Trump broke them and exposed that many, if not most, of the people behind them were establishment toadies who were little different from the left, with whom the Bill Kristol’s of the world claimed to be locked in existential combat.

In the concluding chapter of Anton argues that we can never go back to 1985 – when Debbie was gonna to be an actress, gonna to be a star, she was gonna to shake her ass on Whitesnake’s car (search google for 1985 and Bowling for Soup), and when being conservative meant being a free trader, loving the stock market, and we wanted to be Alex P. Keaton and dedicate our lives to conserving the Constitution.

Anton pivots conservatism toward safeguarding the remnant of Americans who uphold the nation’s founding principles, viewing them as the true repository of its constitutional spirit amid institutional decay. He argues, with some degree of plausibility that all of the things conservatives once held dear have been so corrupted by the elites and ruling class on left and “establishment” types in the GOP that it is useless to conserve something so broken.

Beyond this shift, he outlines a pragmatic, populist-inflected agenda for renewal—rooted in Trump-era nationalism but aimed at averting dystopian futures like one-party Leftist dominance or national fracture. This “new way forward” emphasizes decentralization, policy reforms, and cultural reinvestment to restore dignity, sovereignty, and pluralism. Here are some of his key additional proposals:

• Decentralization and “Secession-Lite” Reorganization: Anton advocates voluntary restructuring of states, counties, and cities to grant greater autonomy to ideologically distinct regions, allowing “Red” and “Blue” areas to govern according to local values without full national secession. This would preserve federal unity while fostering pluralism and reducing centralized conflicts. He also suggests that counties (like those along the eastern sides of California, Oregon and Washington) be allowed to split off and join another state or establish their own the same way West Virginia split from Virginia over slavery and Lincoln facilitated it happening.

• Immigration Moratorium and Citizenship Reforms: Impose a temporary halt on all new immigration until American workers achieve full employment with fair wages; eliminate birthright citizenship and dual citizenships to prioritize native-born citizens and potentially encourage higher fertility rates among them.

• Health Care Overhaul: Introduce price transparency for routine private medical care, paired with a national public plan covering major illnesses and injuries, to make the system more affordable and accountable without full socialization.

• Foreign Policy Restraint with Strength: Narrowly define U.S. national interests to avoid overreach; maintain a robust military but limit interventions; pursue détente with Russia while aggressively countering threats from China and Mexican drug cartels.

• Infrastructure and Domestic Renewal: Invest in transportation and public works to ensure Americans can “travel with dignity,” addressing neglect that erodes everyday quality of life and national cohesion.

• Civil Service and Institutional Reform: Overhaul the bureaucracy to prioritize hiring competent, well-trained individuals loyal to merit over ideology, breaking the stranglehold of entrenched elites.

• Economic and Cultural Populism: Urge wealthy business leaders to fund education and cultural institutions that serve the broader public rather than elite tastes; promote equal treatment under the law, with restorative justice limited to specific historical groups (e.g., descendants of slaves or Native Americans) if needed.

• Broader Civic and Political Mobilization: Build a “Trumpist” political party to champion the middle and working classes against globalism and oligarchy; encourage widespread civic participation, informed discourse, and dialogue to bridge divides and rebuild trust in our institutions.

Anton frames these as feasible under the existing Constitution but requires bold, unified conservative action to sideline the “ruling class” and reclaim normalcy. He acknowledges the odds are long but insists they represent the last viable path to averting irreversible decline.

I’m writing this before I have had sufficient time to work my way through the enormity of both our situation and the solutions, but if you are paying attention, President Trump is already headed down this track – and not without some success.