To those of us of a certain age, the year 1980 will be marked forever as the beginning of a gilded age in politics as conservatives streamed into Washington full of energy and enthusiasm ready to do battle on behalf of Ronald Reagan and his revolution with the staid, established interests who were strangling the country with their attitudes of defeatism and ennui.

Trying to explain what it was like to someone in their twenties or thirties is usually an exercise in futility. The reason is that those born after the revolution or who were very young while it was fought have no conception of the kind of country Ronald Reagan inherited from Jimmy Carter and the Democrats in that fateful year of 1980.

How do you explain 12% inflation to someone who has grown up in a virtually inflation-free era? Telling them that the prices you paid for food at the grocery store went up noticeably every week draws blank stares of incomprehension. Or trying to give a young adult today an idea of what it was like to try and buy a car when the prime rate was 18.5%? Or the feeling that America’s best days were behind her and that we may as well get used to the idea of decline. Or that communism was the wave of the future?

This was America when Ronald Reagan took office. His prescription for the country – cut taxes, revitalize the military, cut the bureaucracy, and rein in spending – triggered an explosion of ideas the likes of which Washington hadn’t seen since FDR’s first term. These were heady times for young conservatives who were more than ready to explore ways to bring the thoughts of conservative thinkers into the political conversation and make theory a reality.

I first remember hearing Lyn Nofziger at a breakfast meeting of the National Chamber of Commerce back in 1981. He didn’t give a speech as much as he simply “harrumphed” his way through his presentation. He was gruff, funny, down to earth, and very wise. He didn’t talk about conservative ideology as much as he talked about “the movement.”He gave a brief rehash of the 1980 election and then showed with devastating clarity why the Republicans would win most national elections far into the future. Demographic electoral trends in the south and west were going to heavily favor Republicans for decades to come. He believed that the Democrats could only win national office if they ran a moderate southerner who was identified with the pro-military wing of the party, a fairly prescient analysis given that Mr. Nofziger had no clue that the Soviets were to collapse in less than a decade.

At that breakfast, Nofziger demonstrated a clear understanding of the idea that politics is a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. And in this interview published in today’s Washington Times, it appears that Mr. Nofziger has not forgotten that one salient fact:

“They’ve been in power too long,” Mr. Nofziger says of Republicans. “Any time you put any political party in power for too long, it becomes corrupt. It loses its focus. It forgets why it came there.”

When it comes to the so-called neoconservatives surrounding the president, he says, “?’Conservative’ is a word that doesn’t mean anything. It can mean what you want it to mean.”

This is what I see as the major problem of the Bush Administration. Their conservatism is defined electorally not ideologically. It is ridiculous to talk about this Administration as the left does as “ideological” in a conservative sense. I truly believe that if 9/11 had not occurred, there would have been little to ignite the passions of Bush and his people and they would have governed as centrists in both domestic and foreign affairs. Their cautious approach to the flap over the collision with the Chinese fighter was indicative of the way Bush would have managed foreign affairs; consensus over confrontation.

But as he waxes nostalgic in the interview, Nofziger reveals the reason why conservatives today seem lost:

“To me, conservative means believing in a minimum amount of government and a maximum amount of freedom—and keeping government out of people’s lives and business—and leaving people alone,” Mr. Nofziger says. “I recognize you have to have national defense and have to finance the government. But government does not have to be the be-all and end-all.”

The question isn’t if this definition of conservatism has been invalidated by the Bush Administration but rather what does it really mean?

How do you translate that classic definition of conservatism and have it mean anything relevant when trying to govern a 21st century industrialized liberal (dictionary definition) democracy?

Simply believing one wants “small government” is a meaningless exercise in wishful thinking. Do we get rid of the FDA? How about the FTC? Or the EEOC?

These agencies aren’t superfluous bureaucracies, they are vital to the functioning of a government that wishes to protect the food and drugs consumed by people, ride herd on gigantic corporations who do not have the interest of the majority of the people at heart, and protect the rights of formerly oppressed minorities. But in order to carry out their mandates, they must insinuate themselves into “the lives and businesses” of people.

Can they be run better? Can they be made more responsible to the people we actually elect to run these agencies? The answer is yes. But how that is accomplished without some kind of revolution (with a concomitant upheaval that would endanger those agencies abilities to carry out their mandates)?

I’ve only begun to explore these questions. I would be curious to hear other people’s thoughts on how to translate the Nofziger definition of conservatism into something that would reflect the realities of government today.