From this history we learn that it is not the nation-state, but the kinds of nation-states that matter. From the birth of political philosophy in ancient Athens, it has been understood in the West that the difference between good and bad regimes, just as between lives lived well and lives lived badly, is all-important.
If we study that war and the actions of its profoundest statesman, we can find some lessons to guide us today.
If American conservatism means anything, then, it means the things found at the beginning of America, when it became a nation. 
Many Christians seem to believe that property rights are somehow un-Christian. At the same time, a lot of free marketers seem to think that all we need are property rights. Neither of these views is correct. 
Increasingly large majorities of the people consistently profess themselves afraid of their government. They think it too big. 
Think of the definition of “reality”; then think of making one’s own reality. Do you see that it destroys the meaning of the word to use it that way? 
Margaret Thatcher is one of the great prime ministers in British history, and one of the longest serving, at least in continuous times. 
I very much disagree with the idea that this election marks a decisive event in our politics, or a point of no return. 
You can read the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution in a few minutes. They are simple. They are beautiful. They can be understood and retained. 
I think it is no exaggeration to say that one of the most clear-sighted, deeply learned, and steadily courageous of all of the servants of human freedom in our age is the president of the Czech Republic, Václav Klaus. 