A classic mistake by rookie entrepreneurs is to think they have to hide their ideas, lest somebody steal it. But, the saying goes, "If your idea is any good, you won't just have to not hide it, you'll have to ram it down people's throats."

Your correspondent recently realized that while he has been sharing the gospel of PolicySphere in many places, he hasn't yet collected several of the beliefs that prompted the creation of PolicySphere.

So here we go. After asking an AI for synonyms for "manifesto" and not finding one that fits, here is our "manifesto," in four theses about why we believe this project is worthwhile:

Thesis 1: Policy Matters

To many people on both sides, politics has come to seem existential. Many on the left believe that, any minute now, the Trumpenwaffen are going to storm the Capitol and install a fascist regime in the US of A. Many on the right believe that the left is engaged in a master plan to deploy some combination of demographic replacement and voter fraud to turn America into a de facto one-party state.

If those are the stakes of the next election, then who cares about marginal tax rates and child tax credits?

But the Trumpenwaffen haven't come, yet, and elections in America, as we can see right now, are still competitive, for now. Maybe some day that will change. In which case we can all hang out at the FEMA camp. But in the meantime, the business of government trundles on, with all its flaws and frustrations. And for as long as that continues, things like marginal tax rates and child tax credits will continue to shape the incentives of ordinary people, which means that changes to things like marginal tax rates and child tax credits still have the potential to make a significant difference, positive or negative, to the lives of tens of millions of ordinary people. Which means that that stuff matters.

Maybe there will be regime change in America one day. But until that day comes, people will keep having fights in Congress, making decisions in executive branch agencies and in federal courts, and those fights and the outcome of those fights will continue to shape the lives of millions of people.

Which means, in turn, that creating a news outlet that covers this stuff in an intelligent and useful way is a good way to spend one's time.

Thesis 2: Good Policy Matters

Another shockingly contrarian view is that not only does policy matter, but the details matter. The execution matters. This is one of the key insights of the New Right (and, to be fair, was a key insight of the original neoconservatives in the 1960s and 1970s).

Yes, as conservatives we believe in limited government. But limited government doesn't mean no government. And the parts of government that we do want should be run as competently as possible.

What's more, realistically, under the current political settlement and any realistic political settlement we can imagine, while we can reduce the size and scope of government, and we should certainly seek to do that, we will almost certainly never reduce it as much as we want. And so we should even run the parts we don't like competently.

Should the Department of Education be abolished? Probably. Is it going to be abolished in the foreseeable future? No. So in the meantime, we should invest time and resources and attention into making sure that the Department of Education is run competently.

Is universal school choice a good idea? Probably. Are we going to get universal school choice everywhere? No. So we should think about how to run public schools so that our adversaries don't.

And that means having discussions about what good policy means and entails in practice. And that's why we believe PolicySphere is important and worth doing.

Thesis 3: The Policy Space Is More Influential Than You Think

If we had a penny for each time we spoke to a big conservative donor and he explained that think tanks are useless, we'd have enough pennies to start our own think tank.

The people who work on policy—who are a broader set than the people who work in think tanks; they include people who work on the Hill, people who work for journals; academics; people who work for public affairs firms and advocacy groups—are, in fact, among the most influential people in DC. Sometimes they themselves do not realize it.

The way they—we—wield influence is less obvious than the way electeds and big donors and PACs and agency heads do. But the best way to explain it is that they create the memes which then become the air that is breathed by people in this strange, not-so-little town of DC. And that actually matters a lot. They create the ideas that become conventional wisdom and, eventually, bills, acts of Congress, EOs, regs.

Do all of them do? Is there a reliable way for this to happen? Is there a scientific way to track it? Of course not. But it's nonetheless real.

What we've come to call "the policy space" is upstream of actual policymaking. The work that policy people do eventually becomes memes which eventually are adopted by decisionmakers and turned into real policy change.

As the essayist Tanner Greer puts it, Washington is obsessed with influence, and in Washington influence is wielded through creating and sharing narratives. "Influence is intangible. It is found in realm of ideas, narratives, perceptions, and thoughts. The D.C. elite exerts great effort shaping how people think about things."

He writes, very astutely in our view: "And the wonks, by and large, run the place. They are not in charge—though in some executive branch agencies this is true, and they are the hidden hand in Congress—but they are the largest social group in DC. The think tanks, the NGOs, the civilian DoD folks, congressional aides, the people running most of the executive government, the judges and their clerks." These people have the “ability to shape how people—the government, the public, or even an influential band of experts—thinks about topic x.” This is exactly right.

And yet, DC-focused media is obsessed with politics and, especially, process. That's where the juice is, they'll tell you. That's where the action is. Well, yes and no. Because a lot of time that action is downstream from the policy space. And if you understand the policy space, you will be one step ahead of those who focus on process. And that's the service we want to provide for readers of PolicySphere. A service we believe has a lot of value.

Thesis 4: The Factions of the Right Are Going To Have To Start To Agree On Stuff

Finally, a thesis that is less about the way DC work in general and more about the right. Much ink has been spilled on the ideological fights within the right, between the "New Right" and the traditional right. We are on the eve of an election that may deliver the Republican Party the levers of power and significant opportunities to shape policy.

And we are here to call the match between the New Right and the Old Guard: it's a draw. We both won.

And most importantly, none of us are big enough to defeat the communists.

It is both a great and frustrating thing about the American Right that if we start talking about tax rates, two minutes later we are having a philosophical debate about Burke and Mill and Lincoln. These abstract debates have their role, they are good and important—to a point.

Once you reach that point, you have to knuckle down and actually make policy. The Oren Cass fans and the Grover Norquist fans are going to have to find some way to work together. Because otherwise we get the Green New Deal, open borders, and trans kiddos.

We hope that PolicySphere can be, if not a neutral ground, then at least an honest broker, for these debates to be hashed out and for us, collectively, to figure out what the way forward is going to be, in terms of actual policymaking, in terms of where the rubber hits the road. Because this is how you actually change a country.

We're excited.