I don't know the answer, but that didn't stop me from adding 700 words to this symposium of the Center of the American Experiment. It attempts to answer the following questions:

• Should we even bother thinking about something conceived as urban conservatism (as opposed to other basic kinds) to begin with?
• If you were to design a philosophy of urban conservatism, what would it contain? What would it not contain?
• Do you believe it�s possible to build and maintain a sufficiently potent and longterm
• conservative movement in the United States without more than token support in major cities and other urban areas?
• What about the same question in regards to Minnesota? Is it possible to build and maintain a sufficiently potent and longterm conservative movement here with hardly any support in Minneapolis and St. Paul and most inner-ring suburbs? In considering this question and the one immediately above, you may want to take into account various demographic changes well underway across the country, especially significant increases in minority populations.
• And by the way, how do you define conservatism?

And all in 700 words! So I picked a brief corner of that and wrote. You like? You don't like? Leave a comment.

I'll use this to ask a simple question to a statement in the symposium by Dane Smith, when he says �[Conservatives] need to say things differently and also back up their words with money.� My question: Whose money? And by what right should we have to coerce money from the public to pay for our ideas?

Labels: Minnesota, politics