(1) Conservative disappoint with today's court ruling should make them reflect on “regime theory.”

(2) The regime is the way of life of a political community as determined by its ruling element. The ends that define a regime may be reflected in law––e.g., a constitution––but need not be.

(3) Regime theory does not locate the ruling principles of a political community in law but in people, that is, in individuals who ACTUALLY rule and who, by pursuing ends of a certain kind, embody the ruling principles of the political community.

(4)The more complex the political community, the more complex the regime. But the concept remains fundamentally the same.

(5) In the U.S., the regime includes the various human types that make up Congress and other branches of govt, but also the captains of industry and culture and academia, the CEO’s, the media heads, the professors of elite universities.

(6) These bodies collectively embody the ruling principles of life in America and also produce, through a well-tuned filtration system, the next generation of leaders. To know what the American regime is, to what ends it is dedicated, look at the way of life of the leaders of...

(7)... these bodies, to the ends they actually pursue and defend in broad daylight, not to constitutional law.

(8) The ends these individuals actually pursue determines the way of life that the rest, or most of the rest, of Americans, who look up to these bodies and their leaders and hence take their bearings about right and wrong from them.

(9)To think that, simply because you’ve managed to sneak a conservative or two through an Ivy League education and into a Supreme Court seat, you’ll be able to challenge or even put a dent in the firmly established horizon of opinion of the American regime, and that what a law...

(10) ... says can possibly avail you in such an enterprise, is the height of political naivete.

(11) The laws of this and every political community have always been and will always be interpreted by those in positions of formal authority in light of the way of life actually pursued by the leading human types of the community, who set the moral tone of life and who...

(12) ... in ways both big and small, obvious and obscure, determine what can or must be praised and what can or must be blamed.

(13) Until conservatives effectively challenge the American regime, they will continue to find themselves surprised by how easily and swiftly they can be betrayed by laws (or judges or politicians) they thought were good.

(14) Politics is not ultimately about what the law says but about the type of human beings that are most admired––looked up to––by the community. The order in the souls of these human beings is the real law.