In the high summer of the Bush era, an administration official inquired about my “view from the cheap seats.” Excellent, thanks. Swaddled in ideological purity, safe above the muck of actual governance, I could spread generous disdain in all directions.

“Do you think that what you do makes any difference?” the Man in the Arena asked. (Never mind that Brooks Brothers’ nattiest wasn’t exactly “marred by dust and sweat and blood” after a bruising day at the laptop.)

Here my vanity got the better of my good sense. I might, ashamed to admit, have answered with an earnest ode to permanent things and the duty of dissent. There’s a chance I even quoted some decontextualized Burke on the subject of helpful antagonists. But he had a point. I snipe much and affect little—an apt definition of modern conservatism.

That’s not to say that he accomplished anything for the conservative cause either. Whatever his personal ideals, as a good soldier, his job required loyalty to the establishment.

No one tells you when you come to Washington that there are two political worlds. Not Democratic and Republican—those share a universe. They’re part of the industry of politics—a monopolistic enterprise with massive barriers to entry—cranking out reams of legislation no sane citizen should ever read. The bipartisan point is power for its own sake. Advancing a program comes second to consolidating and perpetuating control. Thus compromises are struck, convenient marriages blessed and dissolved. Tolkien’s ring is polished from both sides.

Then there’s the world of ideas, of high principle seeking some grounding in political application. Enormous energy is spent on theories that can’t long survive a collision with the machine. Activists see this coming and expect to lose. Martyrdom affirms their righteousness. And besides, without something to stand athwart yelling stop, they’d be out of business.

Most of the conservative reform manifestos published in the wake of the last two failed elections stage their assault from one realm or the other. The power-people would navigate out of the wilderness by a series of left turns. Their electoral strategy: co-opt the other side’s constituencies by agreeing to certain liberal premises, but hold your own ranks by promising to distribute favors more prudently. The idea men, on the other hand, can’t admit that their ideology cracked—even secular faith is infallible—so their slogans must simply be shouted louder into the liberal wind. Deeper tax cuts. Bigger tea parties. Iraq is a success story. If they’re terrorists, it’s not torture.

In The Next Conservatism, Paul Weyrich and William Lind assigned themselves the ambitious task of colonizing both worlds. They argue that the Right cannot live by politics alone. Cultural change is vital to the Republic’s rehabilitation. But neither can conservatives abandon the political sphere, lest their opponents overwhelm it and inhibit their freedoms.

This reads like a reversal, at least for Weyrich, who in 1999 famously advised his fellow conservatives to “look at ways to separate ourselves from the institutions that have been captured by the ideology of Political Correctness, or by other enemies of our traditional culture.” He noted at the time that much as the Republican Party had enjoyed electoral success, it had failed to accomplish conservative goals.

This book, rather than negating that call for retreat, claims to amplify it: “The next conservatism’s strategic goal, to be attained by creating parallel structures, should not be permanent separation from the rest of society. It should be to re-take the whole of our society for our traditional culture, by the power of example.”

The order of assault is not entirely clear. “Restoring the republic must start in Washington,” the authors posit. But in the next breath: “In a real republic, life is lived locally, and most issues dealt with at the local level.” Presumably the battles must be pitched simultaneously, an insight that may be this book’s greatest strength.

For too long, conservatives have focused on getting policy right. Consider the energy devoted to the pro-life movement, the centerpiece of the conservative cultural agenda. Countless marches and litmus tests haven’t laid a hand on Roe. Democratic support is near total, and Republican politicians recognize that as long as it remains law, millions unwarmed by their other initiatives will continue to trudge to the polls. These voters’ commitment to the unborn is honorable. But by narrowing the conservative interest in culture to a legislative checklist—abortion, gay marriage, euthanasia—the Right has failed to perpetuate a temperament that might have made it more broadly relevant.

Conservatives once appreciated the limits of human perfectibility, the virtue of localism, the value of thrift. Had those guardrails remained, would we have advanced a social engineering scheme like No Child Left Behind? Believed that Iraqis would welcome us with flowers? Fallen for the delusion that piles of paper made us rich?

The Next Conservatism speaks to where food comes from, the way neighborhoods are constructed, and how new technologies impact relationships—areas most delegates to the Republican National Convention would consider far outside their range. Perhaps that’s just as well: none of this can be programmed; it must be practiced.

The authors’ plan of attack is best understood through their vision of foreign policy, which is perfectly congruent with their cultural model. They lean heavily on the work of Col. John Boyd, who defined grand strategy as “the art of connecting yourself to as many independent power centers as possible while isolating the enemy from as many independent power centers as possible.” In a world marked by the decline of the state, that means connecting to as many centers and sources of order as possible. When we invade centers of disorder, not only do we enmesh ourselves in chaos, we unite these enemies against a common threat and most always fail to leave a more ordered state. By isolating ourselves, we would not only spare blood and treasure, but blunt a long-term challenge by allowing internal contradictions to work themselves out. (The authors take care to clarify that America has never been totally isolated and should continue to engage the rest of the world through trade and the power of moral example. Sen. Robert Taft set the standard: to be “respected as the most disinterested and charitable nation in the world.”)

Neither do these authors advocate total pacifism. Rather, they share the conviction of the great German military theorist Carl von Clausewitz that “Defense is simply the stronger form of war.” They write:

When we tell Moslems that we intend to remake them in our image—as Michael Scheuer put it, to allow Mrs. Mohammed to vote, vamp and abort—they have little choice but to fight us. In contrast, a defensive grand strategy leaves Islamic societies alone, to be whatever they want to be. They have less reason to focus on us, leaving them to fight among themselves.

Weyrich and Lind imply that the same strategy carries over to culture. The modern conservative movement has disastrously elevated freedom over the older virtue of order—worse, a misconception of freedom that envisions it not as a function of limits but as a byproduct of democracy. So rather than being a means of protecting individual enterprise, it becomes a weapon whereby majority will rules.

Conservatives who complain that movies are too smutty and teens dress too slutty miss the point. Rather than denouncing a corrupt culture to which a majority already subscribes, far better to seek out and develop centers of order.

As with military force, conservatives should use politics defensively rather than offensively: “We should not seek to use political power to ram our agenda down anyone else’s throat. Rather, we should employ it to prevent government from ramming ideologies, utopian schemes and other radical ‘improvements’ down our throats.”

In many respects, this book works better as a dictionary than a strategy manual. Some of its policy prescriptions are wise, including a “none of the above” ballot option and a renewed commitment to trains and streetcars. (Conservatives who rail against funding Amtrak might ask themselves whether they also want the government to get out of the road-building business. Is it so much better to subsidize a lifestyle that fractures communities and makes us dependent on dangerous foreign suppliers?)

Certain dictates are more debatable. For instance, the call to “retroculture” will strike many residents of the reality-based community as contrived. Conservatism isn’t about resisting innovation but channeling change through the architecture of custom—venerating history without attempting to re-enact it. Conservatives needn’t become Amish to recognize that a productive country must build something other than pyramid schemes.

But quibbling over these details diminishes the larger point: recovering the notion that “conservatism is not an ideology but a way of life.” Weyrich and Lind’s Next Conservatism is about perpetuating the tradition of Burke and Kirk and Taft—not attempting to give national healthcare a Republican whitewash. After years of ideological innovation, we’re long overdue for a strategy “to secure … our hearths and homes, our farms and firesides, not ‘democracy’ in Karjackistan.”

Sadly, the project begun in tandem finished solo. Paul Weyrich died before this book was released. Bidding farewell to his friend, Lind envisions him “running through fields of asphodel,” an allusion to that mythical Greek plane between Heaven and Hades reserved for souls distinguished neither by heroism nor roguery. Upon entering, they drank from the river Lethe and lost their distinct identities.

Was Lind implying that his old comrade’s legacy was somehow mediocre? Far from. The martial Greeks used the myth as a call to arms: those who didn’t fight had no chance of winning passage to glorious Elysium. And the Next Conservatism isn’t about daring exploits.

My Bushian friend and I had bought into a modern version of the old myth. We were engaged in our own kinds of combat, seeking to win the Elysian wreath best suited to each—one power, the other principle. The Next Conservatism doesn’t eschew either. Engagement is vital. So too is political imagination. But our means were mistaken. The future doesn’t belong to the Beltway’s best and brightest. It will be worked out on a human scale, around common tables, in millions of decent decisions by conservative Americans ready to move past movement politics.