The Freedom Conservatism Statement of Principles, which several of us launched in July, is a simple restatement of the principles that have animated the broad American conservative movement for many years. It is not a statement of policy but of the principles that should guide policy. As such, it is not primarily about economics or culture but about the values that underpin American conservatism. Those values in turn reflect certain fundamental moral foundations on which we build our philosophical and political outlooks. The whole of it is about much more than just freedom.

There are several ways of looking at moral foundations. One of the most influential and easy ways to understand frameworks is that developed by psychologist Jonathan Haidt. He argues our moral intuition is based on several pairs of foundational values, which act like moral taste receptors. They are:

• Care/harm
• Fairness/cheating
• Loyalty/betrayal
• Authority/subversion
• Sanctity/degradation
• Liberty/oppression

What is particularly interesting about Haidt’s research is that he finds that American leftists are only really concerned about the first two of these pairs, while conservatives place importance on all of them (libertarians, importantly, act more like leftists in this regard, having not much time for loyalty, authority, or sanctity.)

For any statement of principles to adequately reflect how conservatives think, it will have to address these values. Even for self-described “freedom conservatives,” we couldn’t just stop at liberty, as that would simply be a statement of libertarianism (and an incomplete one at that). While Ronald Reagan might once have said, “The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is,” we recognize that freedom conservatism has a wider, surer base than just liberty. It is first on our list of principles, to be sure, but without other foundations, our house would be built on sand.

Thus, we address care in our second principle. We are concerned about the pressures the American family is under, and the harm wrought on communities across the nation. We appreciate both that the nature of work is changing and the uncertainty that change brings. We know one of the surest expressions of love for our children is ensuring a good education for them, and so we underline the importance of that. The policies many of the signatories advance based on these principles also reflect this care, such as our almost universal championing of school choice.

Fairness, which leftists so often juxtapose against freedom, is another value that is reflected prominently in the statement. It is why we put so much value on the rule of law (principle 5.) Without equality before the law, American values crumble. Equal protection of the laws is a promise to every American that is currently under severe attack from the administrative state.

Fairness also underpins another of our principles, that of principle 8: America’s promissory note. This principle has proved surprisingly controversial, with one critic caricaturing it as a concession to Black Lives Matter rioters.

Not only is this preposterous, it shows why conservatives of that ilk are destined to remain an angry minority. Without recognition that America has sometimes failed to live up to the standards set in the Founding, we unnecessarily divide America’s house by refusing to admit that many Americans have the odds stacked against them. The way to tackle this problem is not to rig the system the other way, as leftists want. Equal protection must apply to all.

Loyalty pervades the statement: loyalty to America’s full faith and credit, loyalty to our laws, loyalty to the idea of America as the greatest of all nations. Precisely because we value that loyalty, we recognize that non-Americans (such as me) might wish to pledge loyalty to the nation. Because we want that pledge to mean something, we require loyalty to the law while doing so. This is the point of principle 6. Our statement is patriotic, even if we do not use the word.

As for authority, we recognize the fundamental authority of America’s founding documents and principles. These have been subverted by the left for too long, most notably in their creation of a new constitutional order in the administrative state that sets itself up as prosecutor, judge, and jury over so much of American life. Meanwhile, too many American cities have become lawless zones where authority is absent, much to the distress of those living there, if not to their representatives.

America’s problems can be solved only by restoring legitimate authority. To do that, we will need to go back to the basics of our federal system. Principle 7 rejects increased centralism, and the subversive abuse of power that comes with it.

Our statement has been criticized for a lack of sanctity. Yet in our republic—where freedom of conscience is the first freedom guaranteed to all Americans—we must distinguish between the public sphere where government coercion is warranted and the private sphere where it is not. The signatories adhere to a wide variety of faiths and philosophies. All agree it would be a breach of America’s promise to promote one religion’s tradition over another.

However, we also agree with John Adams and many other founders that, “morality and virtue are the foundation of our republic and necessary for a society to be free.” The inculcation of morality and virtue is, in our view, the proper role of families, congregations, and the other institutions of civil society. Government should avoid impairing or crowding out these institutions. Most freedom conservatives also favor certain policies, such as parental choice in education, that will have the effect of strengthening them. That is the approach to sanctity of principle 10.

Finally, another critique is that we do not point directly at the enemy that is attacking these values on all fronts, the rampant new left. That is not the job of a statement of principles, just as a flag planted on a hill is not the weapon that defeats the enemies of that flag. Yet read properly, the statement is clear on this front. We are planting our flag precisely because we know what time it is.

It is probably because conservatives are complex moral creatures, so much more so than leftists or libertarians, that statements of their principles must be broad. At the same time, this means that they can have broad appeal. It is our hope that the freedom conservatism statement of principles not only reflects what many conservatives think, but also what many non-political Americans think. Its moral matrix represents a sure foundation on which to build a broad political movement that will secure blessings of liberty for our descendants.