[C]onservatives’ main function is to uphold and preserve the American system. [The South and the Battle Flag: The Real Argument That Conservatives Should Make, December 1, 2011]

Yesterday, VDARE.com editor James Fulford quoted something that the late Lawrence Auster had written at his View From The Right [VFR] blog six years ago regarding liberals' insatiable demands. A bit further down in that same VFR entry, Larry also wrote:And a few sentences after that, he reiterated that conservatives' mission is "preserving and defending the American system."

In other words, conservatives' premier concern should be what we at VDARE.com call "The National Question":

The National Question is, in short, an examination of how long the US can continue as a coherent nation-state in the face of current immigration policy. [VDARE Foundation Mission Statement]

At my request VDARE.com's editors have added "National Question" to the "Popular Tags" cloud you'll see on the right side of this page if you scroll down.

And at times, Donald Trump has grasped—or, at least, expressed—that central point. For example, Peter Brimelow quoted Trump's definition of conservatism, given at the Republican presidential candidates' debate on February 6, 2016:

I view the word conservative as a derivative…of the word conserve. We want to conserve our country. We want to save our country. [Hmmm…Trump Agrees With Brimelow On “Conservatism”, VDARE.com, February 7, 2016]

Seems pretty obvious, no? Well, no, what with the steady drumbeat we're subjected to that the U.S. is a " propositional nation ," wherein anyone—anywhere—who nominally agrees with American political principles is essentially an American, history and culture be damned.

So it's useful to have someone in America's mother country now eloquently making the same point. In an article lamenting the disarray in Britain's Conservative Party ["Tories"], commentator Melanie Phillips wrote:

To say the party is now finally tearing itself apart over Europe is again to miss the point. The party has forgotten that its principal task as a conservative party is to conserve – to uphold, protect and defend what is most valuable to the nation. And that is nothing less than British national identity itself and the values that this embodies. For decades, this national identity has been under siege from those who scorn and defame it as imperialist, racist, xenophobic, backward-looking and all the rest of it. For decades, those subscribing to the universalist agenda have been undermining its institutions and dissolving its cultural glue in order to create a different kind of society altogether. Fixated upon economic materialism, the Conservative party never understood that, when Soviet communism collapsed, the attack upon the west merely moved from economics and political organisation onto the cultural battleground. It never occurred to it even that there was a culture war, let alone that its task was to defend British society against such existential attack. Instead, it was either indifferent to what was taking place or, worse, decided to go with the flow by itself embracing some of this hostile agenda. It is this profound confusion that has thrown up Mrs May as Britain’s Prime Minister. What Britain needs now above all is a Prime Minister who sees his or her task as the defence of the UK as a democratic, sovereign, self-governing state whose laws and society reflect its own historic culture. That the Conservative party fails to understand this is not only its own tragedy but that of Britain too. [The Vanishing Conservative Party, MelaniePhillips.com, October 6, 2017; emphases added]

That's "National Question" talk from Phillips! VDARE.com readers should learn to recognize it. And then talk it up yourselves.