For five years, even keeping one’s sanity and perspective was a daily battle. Being faced with a constant conflict between one’s own beliefs and one’s own side is no fun. Knowing what things to defend and what things to denounce often required the hard work and introspection. If there is a positive intellectual legacy for the Right, it is that we were all compelled to retrace a lot of steps that had been worn into our mental carpets since 1980.

It is always better to have power than to lack it. But opposition can be liberating in its possibilities. That is true now, more than ever. Of course, there will still be a need to fight the Left’s endless temptation for revisionist histories, but for now, we are free from Trump. We should enjoy that liberation, and defend it. Because America will need us once more not only to oppose, but eventually, to propose again.