Fisher Ames was a great man. He also had a great name (I couldn't resist). But this original, almost completely forgotten Conservative philosopher said something hundreds of years ago that is as relevant in the world today as wigs and horses were back when he said it.

Ames said, "Society is the substratum of government."

By that he meant that culture, in many ways, steers the ship of state. As the values of the culture change, voters will elect people who embody and represent those changing values. It doesn't matter if those changes in morals were brought on by the media, the church, a partisan and biased educational system, or all of the above; the people eventually get what they want. If their wants shift in a certain direction, regardless of the cause, in a representative republic the government will eventually change with it.

The establishment Republicans -- who have shown a far more robust proclivity to attack Tea Party conservatives than attacking the socialist left -- have been living at odds with this sentiment. They seem to believe in the culture of money and Democrat-Light government that plays dog to the societal tail.

Take for example the GOP establishment's efforts to turn the course of the party on gay marriage. Wealthy GOP donors claim to want to open the floodgates of campaign cash to Republican candidates; but they're worried about the party brand being tainted by those crazy Conservatives and their anti-gay marriage proselytizing.

What's revealing about this mentality is that the issue of gay marriage has absolutely nothing to do with gays or marriage. On the contrary, gay marriage laws have everything to do with the left's continuing effort to push religion out of the public space and get biblical teachings branded as hate speech.

We've seen the proof of this in places like Massachusetts, where one of the oldest, longest-serving Catholic Charities adoption centers decided to close its doors rather than violate their religious principles and comply with state law that mandates they give children to gay couples.

In short, the Church was forced to retreat from the public sphere.

In England, a country that can give us a preview of what's in store for us when government assumes the role of activist, a Los Angeles-based minister was heard speaking out against homosexuality on a street corner. A bystander actually called the police, and the minister was arrested for hate speech.

Again, religious teachings are criminalized and driven from the public square, literally.

In Canada, a man had an arrest conviction upheld against him for distributing religious pamphlets that spoke out against gay marriage.

Noticing a pattern here? It should be clear to anyone with the sense God gave the everyday farm-animal that gay marriage laws have a ton more to do with taking religion out of the public square than they do in granting "equality" to same sex couples.

And yet, there are establishment Republicans and their big-business donors who are apparently willing to see the 1st Amendment flushed down the drain in order to do... what? Keep the markets functioning normally? Keep their 401K's intact? Keep a diversified portfolio?

Is that what our party has become? There wasn't a soldier in the starving cold of Valley Forge, a Billy Yank at Seminary Ridge, nor a single Rough Rider at San Juan Hill who risked life and limb so that some millionaire centuries years hence could play golf at noon on a Wednesday, or install a car elevator in his home.

He fought so that he and his progeny would be able to live in freedom, in a country that recognized God as the highest source of power.

The fight between the Conservative base and its establishment overseers isn't about which side is more Conservative, and anyone who couches it that way is doing a tremendous disservice to how serious the fight we're in truly is. This fight is about the very same thing this country was fought for well over 200 years ago.
And it was fought for, not so that we would have the highest GDP, or the lowest corporate taxes, or the highest per capita income. No sharecropper or shoemaker ever would have risked the sweat of his brow, much less the life-blood of himself and his family, for that.

No, people fought a war and launched a revolution to secure freedom.

They fought so they could live in a society where the government was restrained, because it ranked the power of God above its own. The freedoms of speech and worship, the right to bear arms, as well as the right to freely practice religion, all served as bulwarks for whenever government encroachment reared its ugly head.

The wealth that establishment Republicans and others haveacquired under this system is the byproduct of this freedom. Not the purpose of it.

We as Conservatives are not willing to flush those hard-won freedoms down the drain for the sake of a diversified stock portfolio, or to land some big government contract. Our "party leadership" in Washington clearly is. That's the difference. That's what this fight is about.

Saul Alinsky once said, "I feel confident that I could persuade a millionaire on a Friday to subsidize a revolution for Saturday out of which he would make a huge profit on Sunday even though he was certain to be executed on Monday."

Does this not accurately describe the establishment Republicans? Boehner and McConnell would have gladly rubber-stamped ObamaCare -- almost immediately -- had it not been for Ted Cruz and his insurgent brethren in the House; knowing full well the ramifications that bill has for religious freedom and the power of the state.

ObamaCare was a potential noose around the neck of economic freedom in this country, and most country-club Republicans seemed to be more than willing to kick the chair out from under us; even though the hang man will inevitably one day soon be at their own door.

Now, am I saying that the wealth and largesse that many of the blue-blood Republicans have acquired is somehow evil? Or wrong? Absolutely not; but what is the point of having power or wealth without freedom, and maintaining the society and culture that preserves and procures it?

Ronald Reagan's dream of American prosperity was not a patronage system where our wealthy paid off the government alligator, "hoping it ate us last." It was a dream where wealth grew in direct relation to the growth and preservation of freedom. Not in spite of it.

I don't know about you, but I would rather live the lifestyle of a Yemeni goat herder in a country with the GDP hovering somewhere below sea level, living in complete political, personal, and religious freedom, than live in the world's largest economy while it is taken over by tyrants and secularists.

The fact that our country is more Conservative now than it has been since 1952, while we continue to lose national elections with establishment candidates, shows that our country suffers not from want of Conservatism, but from want of Conservative leadership.

Put in language that our upper-crust Republican elites are sure to understand... they have failed to supply the demands of the people. It's time to put the Alinsky Republicans out of business.