At a practical level, it is worth considering how Benjamin Disraeli reformed the modern British Conservative Party in the 19th century. (For a fuller account, see David Gelernter's Feb. 7, 2005, article in The Weekly Standard, "The Inventor of Modern Conservatism.")

Disraeli envisioned the Conservative Party as the true national party, while the Whigs were merely the party of intellectual ideas. In that time, English intellectuals and progressives were fascinated with German ideas, just as today Democrats are enchanted with European ideas. Disraeli judged: "In a progressive country, change is constant; and the great question is not whether you should resist change, which is inevitable, but whether that change should be carried out in deference to the manners, the customs, the laws and the traditions of the people or in deference to abstract principles and arbitrary and general doctrines." By championing the vote for the people in a century in which that was inevitable, Disraeli formed a conservative party that dominated British politics for 150 years.

Today there are certain profound values -- free markets and respect for life -- that are renounced at the price of our soul. Free markets, particularly, are under the immediate, explicit assault of the next government. Life may be undermined more surreptitiously.

But as a national cause championed by a national party, a conservative agenda must, for example, learn to speak persuasively to a near majority of Hispanic-Americans, or we will be merely a debating society. When Texas joins states such as Colorado, New Mexico (and even North Carolina, Virginia, Arizona and Florida), where Hispanic votes are necessary for victory, there is no possibility of national governance without finding that voice.

Our challenge is not to retreat to the comfort of self-congratulatory exile but to sweat and bleed -- and be victorious -- in the arena of public opinion.