Conservatives are on a roll.

A huge negative reaction to liberal Democrats' overreach may well push the Republican Party to victory in 2010. What then? Ah, there is the rub.

When modern conservatism started, it had big dreams: rolling back government, lowering tax rates, defeating communism, strengthening the traditional family, de-funding the left, pulling back the Supreme Court.

Well, two out of six is not bad.

What is the heart of the thing that conservatives care about now? We had better be ready to answer that question before 2010.

I cannot speak for a movement, but as for me, I am a conservative because I believe in one core unshakable truth: Every human being is made in the image of God. Because we are made in the image of our Creator, creation (and not consumption) is the core of a truly human life. Human beings are makers.

We make babies. We make families. We make friends. We make communities. We invent products and processes; we discover new scientific truths. We make movies, blogs, stories and paint pictures. We create new businesses and even whole business enterprises.

And it all begins with an individual and his (or her!) dream.

A few months ago I spoke to an eye surgeon who has turned his basement into a design studio for new medical inventions. He eagerly told me about a new invention for closing cosmetic surgery wounds that combines the control and finesse of hand-stiching with the ease of a conventional surgical stapler. Will it work? I don't know. But I do know that not every human society is full of doctors you've never heard of eagerly tinkering with new machines in their basements. There's something enormously special and valuable and unique about American culture. It doesn't just happen. It needs to be respected and protected, or it can and will disappear.

A free market is intensely valuable to me not primarily because it makes us all richer and able to consume more -- but because it creates a world where talent, initiative, productivity, hard work and creativity are unleashed and encouraged. Entrepreneurs, artists, scientists and philanthropists are close kin. They all dream of things that never were and ask, "Why not?" Then they roll up their sleeves to make something new happen.

I spent a week in Europe in July. Reading the papers was an incredibly depressing experience. Every story about human troubles ended with a call for government to act to solve the problem. The collective impression is a political culture of angry but entitled begging. Ugly.

I do not know if the American experiment will continue to create a real alternative to the culture of democratic socialism (and surely there are far worse systems of government than Europe's). The unique American synthesis that produced modern conservatism is breaking down, in part, because the productivity of the few turns out to be so much more important than the productivity of the many. Crony capitalism, where business leaders make faux money by buying politicians instead of supporting free markets, is a growing threat. The incentives and structure that help us sustain family life turn out to be different from those that help us make art or new businesses. The cultural conditions that foster a creative class and that foster the creation of people may in fact have begun to diverge in fundamental new ways.

Politics is emotional because people are rational. Your single vote, your phone call, your $10 donation can't change much by itself. For most Americans, most of the time, politics is mostly an expressive act. We vote our values to prove to ourselves that they (and we!) exist.

Values matter, but voters are most intensely motivated when our values and our interests are both threatened. That is the tsunami President Obama threatens to unleash.