The Seven Basic Tenets of Modern Conservatism

The Seven Basic Tenets of Modern Conservatism

1. Free Market/Capitalism
The principle of the Free Market and Capitalism are to be affirmed. An unfettered and deregulated free market should be allowed to operate. All functions that can be privatized (post office, airport security, etc) should be. A review of regulations must be made to eliminate those that most severely restrict private businesses. Regulations should be made by Congress not by bureaucrats and a sunset provision made for each regulation.
Free Trade should be encouraged. Free Trade means trade on equal footing; countries such as China which encourages piracy and does not allow an open market of goods imported should be punished by disincentives on their exports to America. Free Trade agreements with as many countries as possible is the preferred course of action.
2. Minimalist Government
Government should be viewed as a referee or judge not a participant in the economy: allowing the game of capitalism to continue and stopping only to penalize those who break the rules (fraud/laws). If it wants to change behavior, it should change the rules (moving goalposts back behind the end zone; moving kickoff to 35 yard line, etc) and allow the game to keep on going. That is, by incentives and disincentives behavior is to be modified not by fiat. For example: Instead of a CAFÉ that tries to change the laws of physics, government should provide incentives (yearly bonus) to those with vehicles with high mileage while charging an excise tax to those who wish to continue buying tax guzzlers.
The wisdom of our forefathers to have only four departments in the federal government should be revisited. Do we really need a Department of Education or Energy (for the past 30 years these departments have spent tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars and performance is worst today than when they were started) Major efforts within the government (education, energy, labor, commerce, agriculture, etc) should be downsized or returned to the states.
The Federal government should only be involved in Justice, Treasury, State (foreign affairs), and Defense. All other duties should be handed to the states or given to the private sector. If a function can be performed by the private sector, it should be.
Government is notoriously inefficient and by limiting the functions it has to offer, inefficencies should be diminished. Government only takes wealth and redistributes it, it does not create wealth.