Yesterday evening I met up with some friends at the City Inn in Westminster. We were all Republican supporters - if not all enthusiastic about John McCain - and agreed that the scale of the GOP defeat on 4th November was now the only real issue. Amidst news of recession, sterling's slide and nationalisation of the banks we went round the table to offer each other one source for hope:
I suggested that we are winning the war on terror. We certainly haven't won it but as I stated in my Telegraph article, Iraq is improving, al-Qaeda is on the run, support for extremism is declining across the Muslim world and even Barack Obama is becoming more hawkish (so thinks Christopher Hitchens anyway).
One of my dining partners believed that the enthusiasm for statist solutions to the environment was in retreat. He cited Canada's rejection of green taxes and the rebellion of Italy and Poland against EU climate change plans.
Another (controversially) said that Sarah Palin was his cause for hope. He admitted the John McCain's running mate was an unfinished article but she had brought glamour and enthusiasm to a Republican party that desparately needed both.
The fourth suggestion was an expectation that the Conservatives in Britain were about to begin a long period of power. There is a theory that we could see the splintering of Britain's Left after the next election with a large SNP group of MPs making it much harder for Labour to win enough MPs to govern alone.
Other causes of hope I could have mentioned: David Cameron's social reform agenda, the emergence of monopoly-busting new media, the growth of Christian belief outside of Europe, empirical evidence that is validating conservative positions on the family and new technologies that witness to the humanity of the unborn child.
What are your own causes for hope?
