It’s that time of year again.

Last year, around this time, I wrote a post asking you to support The American Conservative, saying:

TAC is currently in the middle of a fundraising campaign, the catch phrase for which is “realism and reform.” And, as catch phrases goes, it’s not bad. Who, after all, is going to come out in favor of “delusion and sclerosis”?

Who, indeed? Little did I anticipate the 2016 Presidential contest.

Today’s Republican party may aptly be described as the party of delusion, living in a world where omni-directional belligerence is global leadership, where massive unfunded tax cuts are the height of fiscal responsibility, and where ignorance of basic facts is not merely tolerated but applauded as evidence of authenticity.

And today’s Democrats, running on the status quo at a time when more than two-thirds of those polled say the country is on the wrong track, and set to be led by the wife of the previous Democratic President, whose primary challenger is a 73-year-old self-proclaimed Socialist—how better to describe them than as the party of sclerosis?

It’s a depressing spectacle.

And more depressing than the spectacle itself is the fact that the bulk of the press treats it as precisely that: a spectacle. As if the country can be counted on to take care of itself, and we can content ourselves during elections with rooting for our preferred team and enjoying the show.

But not all of the press takes that attitude.

Last year, I made a point of saying that TAC didn’t have a party line, and wasn’t interested in promoting a particular ideological agenda. And that’s still true. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing we believe, and it doesn’t mean we take a purely spectator’s interest in public affairs.

If there is one thing that unites the diverse factions and unclassifiable individuals around here, it’s the conviction that the Washington consensus in foreign policy needs to be questioned. That America needs to rediscover the virtues of restraint, to set priorities among our interests and desires, and to learn to work with other powers on common interests rather than attempting to dictate terms to ally and adversary alike. We’re holding a conference on the subject in November, and, as with our last such foray, we’re eager to use such discussions to build bridges between conservatives and liberals who, differing on other matters, see how vital it is that on matters of war and peace, a different voice is heard.

Because it is a different voice, one that gets heard relatively infrequently in the councils of either party, and is heeded even less. It’s striking, and depressing, to observe how, after the disastrous war in Iraq, and the substantial failure of our nation-building effort in Afghanistan, the current administration still found itself intervening in Libya, half-heartedly engaging in the Syrian civil war, and cheering on a Saudi war in Yemen—and did so even though people at the highest levels of the administration, including the President himself, expressed skepticism about the efficacy of such interventions. The pressures, internal and external, in favor of action are so predominant that it nearly always seems prudent, in a political sense, to give in to them.

So we have to change those pressures. And that change has to start with a persistent, ongoing effort to open up the national conversation to voices that advocate restraint, without equivocation or embarrassment.

And that’s our job.

I can’t say, as Churchill did, that if you give us the tools we’ll finish it, because that job truly is never-ending. But I can say that if you don’t give us the tools—the support we need to keep writing and publishing and arguing—then we’ll be finished.

And if you’ve read this far, you probably don’t want that to happen.

So please, in this one area, don’t err on the side of restraint. And, to the degree that you are able, show your support for The American Conservative.