Since the days of Reagan—and perhaps those of Buckley’s then-new conservative movement— conservatism has been plagued by a false doctrine about government, which shapes both ideological theory and electoral slogans.

It goes something like this: for a variety of social and economic reasons, government is incompetent, inferior, and a necessary evil insofar as it must exist at all. It’s bad. The grand vision of the conservative movement is to roll it back and restrict it in future by whatever means necessary. This belief is reinforced by a vicious cycle of confirmation bias. The American structure of government is constitutionally geared towards division and internal strife under the cover of “checks and balances,” and the era of competent governors is long enough ago that much of conservative America cannot remember it. The rising generation of conservatives, from devotees of Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson to the MAGA supporters in campus Republican clubs, seem to be accepting this doctrine without question.

But we live in a unique moment in the history of American conservatism. The old order of libertarian economics and neoconservative foreign policy has been disrupted, if not yet destroyed. The political leader of Republican America is a man with a very different message. In his journey to the White House, the words from Donald Trump’s mouth rang very different. Something like this: “I am a successful businessman. I have built great things and hired great people. The U.S. government is not successful and does not build things right now, but it used to. When I am in charge, I will use my tremendous ability to make it a success which builds great things once more. I will Make America Great Again.”

These are two very different statements. And the latter is not some way of selling minimalist government: Trump has faced major internal opposition due to his economic nationalist tendencies and strong stance on immigration. Let’s consider this bold proposition: the latter Schelling point precludes the former. The reason for this is clear. If the conservative bias that government is necessarily incompetent and inferior is true, then government should not be able to build great things. And yet, all Americans remember eras in their history which they consider great ages of political leadership. Although these differ between Red and Blue America, this is a result of the difference in values; Republicans cannot claim that FDR was incompetent at pursuing the project of activist government, even if they dislike the goal. His legacy from the courts to the American civic religion has shaped life ever since.

But more to the point—and more urgent for the current administration—the notion that government must be incompetent means that Trump’s mission to make it competent and successful is a doomed mission. As the rest of this piece will detail, this is unacceptable for two reasons. First, it is manifestly untrue—we’ll consider several examples of competent government. Second, the Schelling point of government as a necessary evil rather than a possible good impacts beliefs and behavior in destructive ways. Fortunately, American conservatism is at an hour of decision: President Trump and his supporters should use it to jettison this false doctrine from the consciousness of Red America.

Let’s first reframe the concept of competent government. After all, the concept depends heavily on one’s concept of a good society. Precluding the debates of moral philosophy, let’s state that a society is good when it produces virtuous people, cultural genius and beauty, and economic prosperity. By extension, a government is good when it provides the support for society to achieve such things. Now let’s ask the pertinent question: is it big government or small government which best achieves these things?

Of course, the question is ridiculous. The answer to that question shifts depending on the policy question, and the correct policy answer may vary depending on geography, culture, historical context, level of technology, and much more. The United States achieved domestic development in the 19th century with relatively free trade within and protectionist tariffs without—a policy mix which would alarm both libertarian Republicans and Clintonian Democrats. On the other hand, China is achieving it through massive government involvement via state-owned enterprises. We can find examples of government which failed: for example, American alcohol prohibition. We can also point out many circumstances where the problem has been a lack of competent government: here we have the border crisis and a heroin epidemic.

We can even point to the financial crisis of 2008 as a perfect storm of incompetence: government was involved in the worst places (like encouraging banks to give mortgages to those who couldn’t afford them), while failing to govern precisely those areas which needed it (deregulation of a variety of financial devices and a pathetic bailout deal in the aftermath). The lesson is clear: big versus small government ranges from inaccurate to useless as a metric for policy-making. The bias either tilts toward government involvement in unnecessary areas or its absence in necessary ones. This is even true if we are considering things in purely economic terms. A pure devotion to free markets ignores political questions such as preserving cultural sovereignty and maintaining good relations between social classes. Meanwhile, the opposite tendency interferes with the ability of productive people and companies to work without the restraints of red tape; this is why modern Chinese socialism has taken advantage of policies such as special economic zones while preserving the state’s active role. We must demand a more substantive metric: competent government.

What differentiates the Schelling point of competent government is that it commits to neither bias before even considering the situation. We can compare it to the mission command philosophy of certain militaries, which emphasizes outcomes, while allowing freedom in the means of execution. During the election, Donald Trump shaped and made salient concerns held by the Republican base (as opposed to those held by think tanks and popular conservative figures), which persisted despite the best efforts of Beltway conservatism and the Republican National Committee. This brought several talking points to the forefront: a strict policy on border controls, action on trade agreements which had not benefited America’s workers, and a stop to foreign adventuring via nation-building wars. Now, is this a call for bigger or smaller government? More stringent control of the border and tougher trade policies on countries like China is the very definition of bigger government. Meanwhile, a renegotiation of free trade agreements and the winding down of foreign conflicts may scale certain federal initiatives back. Government is a means and not an end, big or small.

Despite the howls from establishment conservatives and liberals alike, this is not a bug in the Trump program. This is a feature—and a much needed one. What Trump managed to do was break out of the old paradigm entirely. This isn’t to say he lacked an ideological program: the nationalist and sovereigntist approach inherent in his platform is clear. But he was willing to commit to whatever approach would bring the goals of the “Make America Great Again” program about. This was a massive step in shattering the old paradigm of smaller vs. bigger government in conservative thought. It necessarily moved toward the new dialectic of sovereignty versus globalism.

Ironically, the conservative disdain for government has often become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The problem is that much of American government truly has become inept. But being a dominant power between two oceans, America has perhaps failed to check if this holds true elsewhere. In fact, there are many examples of competent government to be found. We need not even limit ourselves to the small-state powerhouses like Singapore and Switzerland. In a matter of decades, the Chinese state has achieved massive industrialization, the establishment of political norms and institutions after a chaotic era, extensive geopolitical power, and the lifting up of two hundred million souls from poverty. We can point to Poland, which has achieved tremendous economic growth that it has effectively translated into political clout within Europe, pursuing its own vision informed by Polish and Catholic values, rather than those of Brussels. Not just competent but even (dare we say?) dynamic and accomplished government is eminently possible. So why has it so often failed at all levels of American life: city, state, and federal?

Books could be written on this subject, and this piece isn’t one. But let’s highlight one particular barrier which American thought has created when it comes to the goals of competent government. Namely this: American political life has long suffered from a focus on means to the exclusion of ends. The most obvious example of this is the privileged position of the U.S. Constitution in moral and political life. Of course, many countries have great respect for their constitutions. But few if any treat theirs with the sheer awe and sacral emotion with which American conservatism treats that of the United States. Progressives have always seen the Constitution more as something to be expanded and fleshed out with the changing of the times, which is perhaps why they have managed to cement so many more of their political victories in law. It is easier to change society by writing new norms than by trying to repeal them.

Nevertheless, America’s Constitution holds powerful symbolic value for both sides of the spectrum. For American conservatism, it represents the blood shed in defense of liberty. For American progressivism, it represents the safeguarding of rights and their continual expansion from 1776 onward. Much energy is devoted to the question of whether this or that policy is constitutional. Even for such fundamental questions as demographics, the nature of marriage, and the involvement of money in elections, the question of the common good appears to have often been absent. What was important was whether the policies around these issues aligned with the Constitution or not, the moral worldview behind them being of little consequence.

This attitude has ingrained itself in both conservatism and progressivism. Conservatives have traditionally been so devoted to ideas like property and markets that they have aided their most ardent enemies in the process. For example, conservative voices rallied during Citizens United to protect independent spending from corporations and unions on political speech. This, despite the fact that many of America’s largest corporations back globalist free trade agreements and HR-mandated progressive norms that would make Hillary Clinton raise an eyebrow. Meanwhile, progressives have jettisoned any idea of the moral good on even the philosophical level. The individual’s consent is not only the foundation of political rights but also of moral life. We have seen the results: the dissolution of any sense of moral and political community. For most of American history, its citizens understood themselves as having some kind of common vision in mind. For the first century or so after their founding, America was a republic which protected the rights of Englishmen. If its federal government was secular, its culture and institutions had undeniably Christian roots. In its second century (particularly after Lincoln’s victory in 1865), the focus shifted toward a moral and civic national community as well. Even when the explicit demographic focus changed in the 1960s, America still had a sense that they were a nation committed to freedom and individual dignity.

These times are behind the union. Of course, neither Right nor Left can escape the moral sphere entirely. Politics is too tied to it. Red and blue America began with two different ideologies, each with a different agenda in the legal realm. Red America from the 1970s onward became committed to a philosophy of negative rights and the shrinking or decentralizing of government. Blue America was committed to the pursuit of positive rights and an activist government pursuing social issues (although we should note that by Clinton’s era it had abandoned economic ones). These translated into competing moral visions. Ironically, both are quite grounded in a version of individualism and freedom from coercion. But for the former this is a civic individualism and economic freedom, while for the latter this is a social individualism and moral freedom. The former subverts the political state while the latter subverts the moral community. America will not survive either tendency.

Two paradigm changes are necessary. First, the currently-mobile Overton Window must shift to realize that the state and the community are both positive aspects of human life, and not oppressive necessary evils. Second—and what is much more logistically difficult—American political life must regain a vision of the common good which the legal and political structures are tools to achieve. In other words, it must embrace a standard against which to judge the Constitution. There are forces within both Red and Blue America which can possibly be reconciled to such a vision. Conservatism is reviving a sense of national sovereignty and political community, but is still wedded to many libertarian priors. Meanwhile, the Democrats have long abandoned the focus on good government and the economic empowerment of workers and family life. They now pursue the social campaigns of bored urban singles and Clintonian oligarchs for ever more niche segments of the progressive stack. This is a travesty. America is a country of wealth with a huge population. It deserves a political order which can properly mobilize these resources and put them at the service of its families and its visionaries.

It is unlikely that Trump will achieve this full Restoration of American life by himself. However, it is fully within the range of possibility for the president, his administration, and his allies in the Republican party to complete the necessary transformation within American conservatism. Several things are necessary. First, the vision of the common good must be properly fleshed out. National pride and sovereignty are all well and good, but America must ultimately re-establish its unique civilizational roots and fully embrace its position as a geopolitical center. It is a Western country and a superpower. It cannot pretend to be a proposition nation which engages in imperial actions in the name of some “international community” of sovereign states. Power demands competency. Second, the forces of American conservatism must reconcile themselves to the state and to the Schelling point of competent government.

Trump is only one manifestation of much greater forces moving in the world in our time. The long echo of the 20th century is vanishing, with its ideological, political, and economic certainties. The contradictions of the neoliberal globalist order are becoming ever clearer. Centers of opposition are already coming into being, though not all have fully fledged alternatives: Poland, Hungary, Italy, China, and others. We are witnessing the return of values beyond the economic, of political community, and of states which govern and do not merely regulate. But it is not enough to look at what is happening abroad. And as such, any inspiration must be applied in building the future at home. Great political visions are important precisely because many of these people and groups are currently separated and divided. It is necessary that they communicate and become more and more familiar with one another, and ultimately coordinate.As Trump’s presidency continues, we are already seeing those segments of conservatism which were intertwined with the old neoliberal-neoconservative order beginning to fall away.

In order for the healthiest segments of the conservative movement to move forward, it is vital that they embrace the power and institutions of government. They must be seen not only as a necessary evil, but as a positive good. The shocking paradigm shift of 2016 will be of little use if national and sovereigntist forces refuse to use the very tools which they now control. They can rest assured that the forces of neoliberalism will not.