Conservatives need to acknowledge that the free market works but that there must be legitimate parameters and rule sets to guide it.

The free market does not “care” about who gets harmed in its mad dash of creative destruction. To make it palatable for those that will fail in the race, so to speak, there must be some small ameliorative
spring boards so that people can be given the proverbial “hand up, not the hand out.”

Also, obvious greed must be prosecuted ruthlessly so that people feel that there are consequences for unrestrained greed.

The problem today is that the free market has been viewed not as a tool for social betterment, but as a tool for overt self aggrandizement and the “losers” are so angry they are quite willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Conservatives need to start discussing how government can be made “responsible.” The goal cannot be to kill it, it must be to truly reform it. That was what many believed the promise of Obama to be, though the actuality is that he seems more interested in the moment at growing it.

There must be a balance.

Speaking of Aristotle, he, like many (though not all) great thinkers believed in a Golden Mean that is neither too much nor too little.

Reaganomics has a core that still is beneficial and can be harnessed for amazing good, but a dogmatic and unrelfective embracing of it doesn’t acknowlede there may need to be some tweaking to avoid it becoming a caricature of itself.