Leo Tolstoy wrote a book by that name in 1887. The question remains timeless.
What must we do?
Or more to the point, what must we conservatives do? Time is no longer our friend. For decades, the forces of the hard left have worked to undermine liberty and to bring socialism to our shores. Now, they are close to succeeding in their dream of a Socialist America.
What then must we do if we are going to stop socialism?
Michael Filozof in the American Thinker on July 1, called for a new militant conservative movement. Why? Because there isn’t one.
43% of Americans self identify as conservatives. Another 32% self identify as moderates. That is going to include everything from center right to center left. Only 23% self identify as liberals. Unfortunately for America, the liberals are militant and for decades now, liberalism has been advancing and conservatism has been in retreat.
For the last few decades, conservatives have been at best, passive. We have waited for the next great hero to come along. Where would America be today had Ronald Reagan not decided to run for President? From Goldwater, we waited for Reagan to come along. From Reagan we waited and hoped George W. Bush was the next conservative hero. Now we wait for Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann or Herman Cain or the as yet undefined conservative hero to come in and rescue us.
We don’t need a hero. We need to rescue ourselves. We need to become militant.
What then must we do?
A call to become militant is not a call to raise arms, but a call to raise our commitment. As committed as the far left has been to socialize this nation, we must be more committed to American exceptionalism and liberty.
Conservatives are defined by a couple of characteristics. Work and family. We work hard and then all we want to do is go home and spend time with our families. Those are noble traits, but if we are going to prevail in this struggle, those days are over.
For three generations of Americans, the concept of sacrifice is almost totally unknown. No more. What now must we do? We are going to have to make sacrifices of our time and our energy.
For those who are not active in your local Tea Party groups, that time is now over. You must get active. You must become involved.
Unless we are going to make the Tea Party a political party, which is something most people in this movement do not want to do and something I do not want, you must also become involved in your local Republican Party. In America, we have a socialist party, the Democrats and then we have a non-denominational party, the Republicans. You are not going to go anywhere in the Democratic Party if you are not pretty far to the left. In the GOP, you can be almost anywhere and if you are willing to work in the party, it almost does not matter what your beliefs are. Look at Arnold Schwarzenegger or Jon Huntsman or Gary Johnson.
We need to make the Republican Party a true conservative party.
At the local level we need conservative/Tea Party activists to plot how we are going to take the localities back. There are some good local areas where you have good local government. Those are fairly rare. We need Tea Party activists running for office. We need Tea Party activists running for City Council or County Commission. We need Tea Party activists on the school board.
Sarah Palin started her rise in government as a leader in the PTA. Where could you start?
The School Board is probably the government branch that the Tea Party most needs to control and needs to do quickly. We have lost three generations or maybe more to liberal teachers. In Wisconsin, the Teachers’ Union was busily turning another generation of kids into liberal activists when they took the kids, who should have been in school studying, to the capitol to protest for the Teachers’ Union.
We have far too many instances of our schools and our colleges being used for little more than political indoctrination and conversion centers. We can no longer afford to sit around and complain. Voting is not enough. We have to get involved.
Any conservative revolution we have must start at the local level. We must control the school boards because they control the education of children and that is the future.
We must get Tea Party activists into the city councils, particularly in some larger cities. We conservatives have abandoned the big cities to the liberals. Conservatives typically just flee to the suburbs. Look at the big cities. They are disasters. They are also almost universally controlled by liberals. Name a single large city that has a conservative mayor? The ten poorest cities in America all have something in common. None of them have a Republican Mayor. Not only do they not have a Republican Mayor, none of them have elected Republican leadership in decades.
Detroit, which is the basket case of all American cities, has not elected a Republican mayor in 50 years! In the last fifty years, Detroit has gone from being a model American city to being a failed city. One of Detroit’s biggest attractions now is what is called “Urban exploration.” People go to the old abandoned buildings in Detroit, much as tourists visit the ruins in Rome or Greece.
We have seen liberal activism for the last fifty years. They have been militant and a minority and look what they have done. Now, they are on the verge of doing what socialists have dreamed about for decades. They want to destroy the capital of the free market system. They want to destroy the greatest, freest nation that has ever existed.
What then must we do?
We are going to have to make sacrifices. Instead of just working and going home to spend the evenings and weekends with our families, we are going to have to give of that time to help save the country.
2012 will be the greatest battle of our lives. Do not think the left will go quietly into oblivion, accepting the will of the American people that we do not want to be socialist.
They will fight with everything they have. They will pull every dirty trick they can come up with.
If we are going to save freedom and liberty for ourselves, our children and our grand children, we are going to have to fight back. We must commit ourselves and our wealth and our sacred honor to one overwhelming goal.
We must commit ourselves to the destruction of liberalism in this country.
Tags: 2012, Conservatism, gop, liberalism, party, republicans, socialism, tea
Permalink Reply by Donald Gregan on Or, as it is commonly referred to, the SCOTUS.
Except for that they do legislate from the bench.
Permalink Reply by Phil on Our first act as militants should be to march on the UNITED NATIONS with sighns reclaiming our sovereignty.
I prefer to call us public adcocates.
Don't forget the symantics.
Permalink Reply by dave williams on Permalink Reply by Dave Mason on Educate yourself; then others.
Become the Go-To person on the block, family, friends, social group, church, and mentor someone else to do the same.
If your community/city/state is like ours here in AL, it will probably go Republican/Conservative. So, if you can afford to donate to a conservative candidate in a known battle ground or organization that is KNOWN to support conservative candidates, do so.
I don't know about you folks, but, I can't go to sleep AND wake up with a knot in my stomach for another 4 years!!
Permalink Reply by Alfonso Barrs on Permalink Reply by Rebecca Lee Mull on Permalink Reply by Pam Pinkston on SPOT ON, JUDSON!!!!!! I am a co-leader of the Carmichael, Citrus Heights and Fair Oaks (CA) Tea Party Activists. I am going to send a copy of this post out to every member of our group (especially the inactive ones) in hopes this inspiring message will bring them back into the fold. Recruiting conservative candidates for the 2012 race is our group's signature project, as well as circulating a petition that will break the stranglehold unions have on our State Capitol. PLEASE PRAY FOR OUR SUCCESS!!!!!!!!!!!!
Permalink Reply by kevin harrison on 
Permalink Reply by Doug Kolonia on Permalink Reply by george gallo on Yes term limits, Yes part time unsalaried and un-pensioned legislatures.
Yes sunsetted departments and budgets for same, and for "projects."
No for public sector unions. These appear in GOOOH objectives. How
does the audience of this blog and this organization view their mission?
Permalink Reply by george gallo on The schools are unquestionably the cesspool petri dish for
pernicious strains of activism. Problem is you cannot both
home school or privatize your own kids while running for or
attending the PTA of the locality you surrender your property
taxes to. Or is that not correct?
Permalink Reply by wayne herrod on © 2013 Created by Judson Phillips.
