Early to bed, early to rise ought to be understood as part of what George Will calls the “conservative sensibility.” A sensibility is not an ideology or a system. It isn’t even, strictly speaking, an idea. It is something in that little corner of the soul that speaks to you in the voice of Dwight Eisenhower, saying: “Get a job. Save some money. Pull your pants up. Look after your family. Don’t get carried away. Be grateful for what you have. Things could be worse — see to it that you do not go out of your way to make them so.”

There was a time when Republicans would say, “If everybody else was jumping off a bridge, would you follow?” Now, if everybody is jumping off a bridge, Republicans say: “The people have spoken!” And over the edge they go.

The Republican Party in particular may be a lost cause, but I do have some hope that the American people at large still may be able to recover some of that conservative sensibility. My read on the populist madness of recent years is that Americans have come to feel that many of the important things in life are beyond their control, and they are desperately trying to reassert that control. I do sympathize, but, with age and experience, I also have come to understand that many of the most important things in this world never were within my control in the first place, and the words of the hymn “I Can’t Even Walk” mean more to me than they used to. But there are some things that are in my control, and I mean to exercise that control where I can.