Midway Through the Storm: The Conservative Revival Is Real — And America Is Coming Home

May 31, 2025
4 min read

By Judd Dunning

Every movement with staying power has a midpoint — that moment when you’ve been through hell, taken your licks, and found your footing. That’s where America is now.

We are not back to where we were. We’re not quite where we need to be. But under Donald Trump’s renewed leadership and the people’s awakening, we are undoubtedly on our way home.

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Post-COVID Reckoning: The Narrative Broke — and So Did the Workforce

COVID didn’t just damage our health system. It decimated our economy — and gutted the soul of American work ethic. Entire office sectors collapsed as we created a new entitled class of remote workers, many of whom no longer serve their company, country, or community — only their own comfort.

We saw a rise in anti-patriotism, self-centered labor activism, and a total abandonment of the JFK spirit: “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.”

We forgot that true Americanism means putting your family, your team, and yes, your employer ahead of personal convenience. That spirit built this nation — not the soft, shrinking mentality of “me first” that’s infected so many since 2020.

Even the federal government is retreating from its own COVID narrative. HHS just dropped its recommendation for routine vaccination in children and pregnant women. Why? Because the science was never settled — and the truth is finally catching up.

In my book 13½ Reasons Why NOT to Be a Liberal, I warned:

“Comfort is the enemy of greatness. Entitlement is the gateway drug to tyranny. The more we accept soft lies, the more we surrender hard freedoms.”That’s exactly what happened. Now it must be reversed."

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Ukraine and Foreign Policy: We’ve Honored Our Word — Now End the Bloodshed

Let’s be clear: we’ve honored the Budapest Memorandum. First, by showing up. Second, by helping Ukraine defend itself. When Ukraine gave up its nuclear arsenal in the 1990s, we pledged support — and we delivered.

But it’s time to lead like statesmen, not martyrs.

The war machine must be quieted. The draft is too deep, the deaths too many, and the ideological lines too blurred. Democracy isn’t democracy when it becomes a proxy war for globalism.

Trump gets that. He knows peace comes through leverage — not surrender. If compromise is the price of ending bloodshed, then compromise it must be. Even if that means ceding contested land.

America needs to focus at home — on rebuilding our economy, our borders, our families. The world will respect us again because we chose peace from a position of strength, not exhaustion.

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Markets Will Rebound — Because Confidence Will Return

Markets don’t just respond to policy. They respond to tone, energy, and vision. Under Biden, the tone is weakness. The energy is chaos. The vision is self-loathing.

Under Trump, the tone is clarity. The energy is unapologetic. And the vision is America First.

With new tariffs, reindustrialization, and supply chain sovereignty, the next Trump term will unleash a Main Street bull run. Inflation will break. Jobs will multiply. Investment will return.

As I wrote in my Newsmax column “Quiet the Noise: America and Trump Are Winning Fast”:

“The market doesn’t fear Trump — it fears weakness. And weakness is what we’ve had for far too long.”

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Cultural Restoration: A Nation of Laws, Borders, and Moral Clarity

We don’t just need better governance. We need moral realism.

We’re seeing its return:

Law and order is rising again.
Second Amendment rights are defended, not demonized.
Parents are standing up to gender ideology and winning.
Faith and tradition are no longer punchlines — they’re the bedrock.

We are not a country to be remade by activists, academics, or imported votes. We are a sovereign nation, built by God, grit, and generations of sacrifice.

We need a baby boom of our own. Not population growth through border anarchy — but through young, faithful American families who birth, who love their country and raise children for it, not against it.

We’re not going to import our way out of national decline. We’re must birth and build our way out — one strong home, one strong father, one strong citizen at a time.

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Life. Liberty. Unlimited Potential.

This is the conservative reset. This is the real great awakening.