This past weekend, as Americans celebrated 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the document’s most quotable lines – the ones about liberty and happiness, consent, and sacred honor – took center stage in public life. Rightfully so.
However, anyone reading through the Declaration from start to finish reaches a point, about a fifth of the way through, where its words become noticeably less familiar. The particulars of the colonies’ relationship with the British Crown rarely find their way into stump speeches or cable news hits.
One of these seldom-quoted lines appears just before the list of grievances begins: having cast off a tyrannical order, the people must “provide new guards for their future security.”
At the most basic level, this means that rebellion for rebellion’s sake is not appropriate, and those who break away from an old order assume the obligation of establishing a new one. In declaring independence from the British Crown, the Founders knew that “mere anarchy” – to borrow a phrase from the poet W.B. Yeats – was not an adequate outcome.
A new order – a Constitution – is indeed what the revolutionaries established. The Second Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation in 1781, but by the mid-1780s it was clear: New guards were again needed for our future security. So, after much debate, the United States ratified the Constitution of 1789.
In between the Declaration of 1776 and the Constitution of 1789, the Continental Congress adopted a national seal – that mysterious eye and brick tower on the backside of our dollar bill.
Charles Thompson, the secretary of the Continental Congress and a principal designer of the seal, included a motto for the fledgling nation: Novus ordo seclorum, “a new order for the ages.” The motto appears at the bottom of the seal, just below the Roman numerals “MDCCLXXVI,” which symbolize the year 1776 – the beginning of the new order.
Yet Thompson did not pull such a motto out of thin air. He borrowed it from Virgil’s Eclogue 4, composed around 40 BC. In the poem, Virgil prophesies the birth of a boy, through whom “the great cycle of ages is born anew.” Early and Medieval Christians widely considered the poem to be a prophecy pointing to the birth of Christ – the ultimate beginning of the new order of the ages.
All of this – the “new guards,” the “new order,” the references to ancient poems and prophecies – point to the undeniable reality that our Founders were deeply traditional, but not in the distorted modern way of thinking about tradition.
In modern parlance, the adjective “traditional” is often used interchangeably with words like “old” or “antiquated.” The stereotype of the “traditionalist” is the tweed-wearing, pipe-smoking academic whose life revolves around the happenings of a long-gone time and place.
Yet, tradition is oriented as much toward the future as the past. The Latin word “tradere,” from which we get “tradition,” means to hand on or pass down. To be traditional is not to pine for some supposedly better day in the past, but it is to receive from our ancestors, steward what we are given, and then pass on our inheritance to the next generation.
Today, the young Right is coming of age in a moment that mirrors the moment faced by the young Founders of our republic. Though we are not founding an entirely new nation or engaged in a deadly conflict against a tyrannical monarch, we have, in some sense, broken away from a political establishment.
The conservative movement fundamentally changed when President Trump descended the Gold Escalator at Trump Tower in 2015 and announced his candidacy for president. The America First agenda that the president campaigned on opened a whole new world of politics to our generation, and we are no longer bound by the laissez-faire orthodoxies of the old guard establishment.
Now that we have broken away from the establishment, the question that faces our generation now is what political goods will we pass on – “tradere” – to the generation of conservatives after us?
One option before the young Right is to lament all that we have lost, and embrace an escapist mentality that says the only solution is to “go back” to some nebulous time in the past where everything was better.
Another option is to become resentful, nihilistic, and attempt to burn down every institution in hopes of a radical reset.
Yet, going back to 1950, 1776, or 1400 isn’t an option, and nihilism is antithetical to Christian hope.
If the young Right devolves into a merely destructive force, whose only mission is to scoff at the old guard or to “own the libs” on X, then we will lose. While resentment and frustration can and does win elections, only love and piety can inspire good governance.
The “New Right,” as it is called, ought to do precisely what the conservative establishment failed to do: establish new guards for our future security. The project before us is one of building new institutions, and making the long march back through existing institutions, all for the sake of the republic we will pass on to rising generations.
Since New Guard Press began in 2023, our mission has been to articulate a positive vision for the future of Conservatism – a vision grounded in the Christian faith and the Western tradition. Over the past three years, our political vision for the young Right has become more concrete.
The new guards required for our posterity include:
- A renewed culture of faith, not only for the utilitarian goods that religion brings to society, but because each individual was created by and for God, whose essence is Love and whose desire is for each of us to know, love, and enjoy Him forever.
- An economic system that unapologetically rewards work and family life, and secures the independence our forefathers bled and died for. This requires interventions in the market on behalf of American families, workers, and our national security.
- Restricted immigration, along with a renewed expectation of assimilation by legal immigrants, and the deportation of illegal aliens.
- An education system that not only produces workers, but forms citizens to know and love their homeland and civilization inheritance.
- Technological progress ordered towards human flourishing, and the protection of children from harmful content.
- A foreign policy of realism and restraint that is grounded in our national interests, not ideological adventurism.
These are not new ideas. The young Right, like the American Founders, are not building something without precedent. While the establishment GOP of the late 20th century may have failed to pass along a positive vision of what it means to be conservative, there is a much older Conservative tradition for us to draw upon: The New Nationalism of Theodore Roosevelt, the American System of Henry Clay, the statesmanship of Abraham Lincoln, the character of George Washington, and of course, the wisdom of the classics and the examples of the Saints.
However, the ultimate new guards for our future security are not ideas or policies, but they are people. The most vital guards for our way of life are the young men and women serving long hours in behind-the-scenes government roles in Washington, D.C. and state capitols; the workers tirelessly building, producing, and innovating in the private sector; and the young parents faithfully rearing happy and virtuous children.
These new guards for our future security will keep alive the novus ordo seclorum that began 250 years ago.
