ICON is short for “Independent Conservative.” For many years the term “conservative” has gotten muddled and today differs little from the Republican Party’s orthodoxy of the moment. Operating as an arm of the Republican Party rather than as an independent philosophy has robbed the conservative of his effectiveness as a true adversary against the predations of the modern state.

Conservatism, as the name implies, is about conserving: conserving life, conserving culture, and conserving one’s country. As the people of the United States have marched left in their social mores and as Washington D.C. has centralized greater amounts of power what is needed is not conservation, but roll-back, not a preservation of the status quo, but another paradigm.

The goal at ICON is to have a productive discussion about the events of the state in the context of a principled conservative philosophy more interested in ideas than party loyalty. Political analysis, foreign policy, and other topics of interest are discussed here from a perspective that fits within a certain framework, but is not blinded by partisanship.