It’s hard not to look around and feel a great sense of optimism as well as a great sense of dread.  These conflicting feelings are born from the line we’ve reached where we can either regress into government control of our lives or progress into more freedom and prosperity.

But those are the obvious reasons for the duality.  There are other things that roll around in the back of my mind as I watch the goings on in the national arena.

For instance, my optimism rings because I see conservative candidates like Ryan Frazier and incumbents like Joe Wilson.  But it sours when I think of the “Contract with America” that was born of this same state of flux under the Clinton administration only to have them leave their conservative credentials (mostly) at the door and then finally being “fired” by angry conservatives in 2006 giving the congress back to the Democrats.

I return to feeling like the future is bright when I see 2 million people marching on Washington.  But it’s tempered by the media coverage who always manage to find that one whacko who thinks that a secret Muslim cabal is running the United States from a base in Antarctica.

I continue to feel down as I watch how our side of the aisle is covered in the media but am mildly comforted by the knowledge that that monopoly is over and more people are watching the “new” media and using the blogosphere.

I hear people around me using their voices for the very first time to express condemnation of this President’s policies, but my enthusiasm runs dry when I remember my own failures such as my Conservative Pledge from earlier this year that was pushed to the wayside as the realities of self employment and fatherhood took precedent and my free time was spent being lazy while cheering on my brother and others who took to the streets, as though that was enough to keep my pledge.

I so want to be an activist.  Not the left’s version of activism which is normally a crowd of people making ridiculous demands and pontificating absurd concepts and ideas.

Activism that leads to real change.  I’m at my wits end with our government.

• Our legislators have been led to believe that their job is to legislate every day, so they create as many laws as possible.
• Our Judges have been educated with the understanding that the bench is the birth of policy.
• Our President has grown up with mentors that made him believe it was the role of the President to “spread the wealth”.

What will change these people?  Is it an opposition party?  Sometimes I wonder.  Since the Democrats took over the Congress in 2006 and then the Executive as well in 2008, the Republicans have still been weak.

They still are acting as though there should be compromise on these issues.  There are many I grant, that are not wavering in their conservatism or at least their Right leaning tendencies.  But there are still alot of Rino’s out there.

But do these problems mean that an opposition party ISN’T the answer?  That our only hope is to just scream in the streets all the time and hope that the politicians will at least do something resembling what we ask so they can stay in office?  That we can’t hope for lower taxes, only for taxes to not be raised as high as some want?  That we can’t get rid of global warming alarmists, only hope we can limit the damage they cause to our economy?  We can’t actually get Schools to not need ever more money every single year but rather just try to get a handful of people to escape via vouchers?  We can’t actually do what’s necessary to fight wars and battle terrorism but instead must settle for the best compromise?  Is this the best we can do?

I think not.  An opposition party IS the answer, but has to be created, monitored and managed by the people.  We of the online conservative community are part of the problem.  I know I am.  As active as we are, we aren’t always active in a way that will produce a party that actually represents it’s members.  To me it boils down to three things:

1. Donations to our candidates AND our bloggers.
2. Primaries, national AND local.
3. Involvement in local politics.

Donations - The left has just creamed us on this one at least as it relates to the blogosphere.  Kos, Aravosis and others on the left are making dough spouting socialism.  Hell, Dailykos has paid writers for pete’s sake!  Conservative blogging isn’t built that way.  We don’t seem to have the network of rich people willing to pony up the dough to finance bloggers so they can create enough buzz to create huge memberships like Kos has.  Most of the front page contributors that I see on here are super active, but imagine how active they could be if they were ALL full time?  It’s up to us to keep these guys afloat.  But also our candidates who can only survive with cash.   And I’m not talking about incumbents here.  We’re always throwing money at incumbents, but what about the primaries?

Primaries - Support the conservative in the primaries BEFORE you know if his campaign is going to go anywhere.  Maybe we’re the reason it’s not going anywhere?  If there isn’t that much information on him, then work with the redstate community to try get a phone interview or do some investigating.  These guys conservative credentials have got to be vetted.  We can’t just keep waiting to find out who our candidate is going to be.  We have to pick him and we have to get people who vote in elections but not primaries to pick him too.  And incumbents have to know that in the primaries they could lose our support if they don’t stand for what they campaigned on anymore.

Local Politics - But this can’t just be a national thing.  Barrack Obama as we all know was a State Senator first and a lot of national candidates come from the “minors”.  So let’s make sure that the guy who’s raising money for his campaign while making contacts as a state representative is somebody we believe in.  And we have to stay involved so we find the right people.  Organizing activist groups etc.

SO.  That’s my three point thought process for how to enact change, but it involves something that I started this post admitting I fall short on.  Am I un-lazy enough?  I guess that remains to be seen.  But today I voted in my local primary for a local conservative as my State Representative, I provided financial support to a blogger and I wrote a call to arms blog at my favorite political networking site.

At the risk of sounding arrogant or self-righteous….what did you do?

I’ve gotta say, trying to start a petition is like throwing a party.  You hope for a good outcome but risk the humiliation of inviting everyone and no one attending.  (My brother is the famous RedState contributor Caleb Howe if that will make me more popular!)

Well, at the risk of sitting alone with a party hat on, here goes:

Nothing used to anger me more than when Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid or Howard Dean or Hillary Clinton or Al Gore or any number of other high level Democrats would call Bush a liar.  It would boil my blood and make me think twice about being friends with anyone that would vote for them.

But my anger was always related to my belief that they were knowingly trying to confuse Americans at a time of war in order to appease the liberal base that provided so much of their funding and power.  It was NEVER because I thought they shouldn’t be allowed to do it.

Little did I know that apparently there actually is a rule in the Congress barring Senators or Congressmen from calling the President a liar or saying that he’s lied.  Only recently was this revelation…er…revealed when the racist, nazi Rep. Joe Wilson from my state of South Carolina dared to accuse President Obama of something that only Republicans are allowed to be accused of: Lying.

Now the Democratic leadership is demanding a 3rd apology from Rep. Wilson to be coerced expressed on the House floor for breaking this rule.  In fact they are threatening punishment if he refuses.

Beyond the fact that we ALL know that Rep. Wilson is awesome for doing what he did, and that we can’t allow the Democrats to send this message of fear through the ranks nor score the political points of getting him to apologize there is a very important reason that he must retaliate NOW and it’s bigger than his career.  It’s the debate itself that is in jeopardy.

The public is so easily confused on some things it seems and if the democrats get this apology, it will be used to shift the balance of people who believe that the Health Care proposals are something to fear to believing that the Republicans have simply been using scare tactics that aren’t true.

I can hear them all now on their various tv spots.  ”Well, this is just another scare tactic from the Republican party similar to the smear that Joe Wilson recently apologized for….” or “…even their own party alarmists are having to admit that these accusations aren’t true as seen for example when Joe Wilson apologized on the floor of the House for distorting the facts of this plan…”.

We can’t allow Joe to do this and I think I know a way out.  He and other REAL Republican House members need offer a counter-proposal: Joe Wilson will apologize saying the President lied if the various Senators and Congressman will apologize for calling President Bush (hell, go back to Reagan too if you want) a liar or that he lied.  It may sound tit-for-tat or “i’m rubber your glueish” but it has a great result.  It will NEVER happen and while it’s being debated a lot of the old tapes showing the Democrats being hypocrites and politically distasteful will have a new reason for being aired right at the time that they most need to look like they are trustworthy.  And in the end, a rule is a rule is a rule.  If Joe Wilson broke the rule then so did they.  I think that at least Fox News could latch on to the story if he does this and that’s like 50% of news viewers so that’s good enough.

We as a movement or a party or whatever you want to call us have got to stop being on the defense.  We have got to take the fight to them every time.  Any time they hit us we have to hit back twice as hard.  Every accusation must become an opportunity for us to make them look foolish.  To call them out.

Reply to this thread if you agree.  If anyone wants to create an actual petition page I would be more than happy to pay for the URL.  This is important and must be dealt with before Tuesday which is the deadline that the Democrats have given Wilson to apologize.

We must get support and get this petition sent to Mr. Wilson so he knows that we support him.  I don’t live in his district in SC (I live in John Spratt’s district- yuck) but he is MY representative now as far as I’m concerned.  Let’s let him know that just not apologizing and accepting punishment isn’t good enough.  We need to take the fight to them and take control of this conversation.

Benjamin Howe

/signed

Here’s the email I sent after his latest “Did I do that..?” email to Erick.

Yeah, I’m not buying your “how did that email get there?” baloney.  It’s pretty clear you have a left wing agenda and from the looks of it you are an employee of that company ESIWorld.  If you are we can always start calling your office to try and get you fired so you can lose YOUR income. (you know, for using company email to push political agendas?)

I don’t mean to be rude to a dying man, and it’s not what I personally would recommend that ANYONE do.  But, in the vein of “draft the Bush twins” during the height of the Iraq war, how hypocritical is it of Senator Kennedy to demand sacrifice of American’s that he himself will fight off with every medicine and treatment imaginable?

For many months now we have sat in disbelief as our president…our Dear Leader recently referred to in the media as God, has traveled the world apologizing on behalf of a people who for the most part, hadn’t thought they’d done anything wrong.

We’ve watched as he groveled in the mid-east and Europe and has done his classic “other hand” equivalencies to paint a picture of an America that has been a blemish to this planet as opposed to a beacon of hope.

As I listened to El Rushbo discussing these facts recently, something he said got the gears turning in my conservative brain.  Speaking of Obama’s recent speech in Cairo, Rush focused in on a part where Obama claimed that we cannot impose our values on others which invoked the following response from Rush: “We can’t impose our values on the rest of the world, right?  That’s what President Obama said.  Sure as hell sounds like the rest of the world can impose their values on us.  They don’t like Gitmo, we have to shut it down.  They don’t like what we’ve done, fine, Obama will run around and apologize.”

As I pondered WHY Obama would do this, my mind went to the obvious place at first: liberals hate America and blame Her first.  But the way that Rush responded had really gotten my brain going and I considered another option.  Reverend Jeremiah Wright.  Reverend Al Sharpton.  Reverend Jesse Jackson.

For years now, the claim has been made that discrimination from minorities is not possible because one must be in a position of power in order to impose discrimination upon anyone.  Obviously, rich white men are the only people who possess power…right?  Well, not anymore.  So, great, a minority is the most powerful man in the world.  What will he do?  How will things be different?  What does a representative from a group of people who had never wielded power before do when power is finally in their hands?  Well, if you just watch Obama, you get the answer.  He’s going from the playbook of the aforementioned reverends and what they demand for the white aristocracy to do.  Reparations.

See, Obama is living out what the white power structure never did for African Americans and other previously oppressed groups.  Sure we made a concession here and there.  We apologized for the wrongs that people we never met committed against other people we never met.  But we didn’t REALLY get down and grovel.  So Obama is just doing it for us.  He’s showing us the way.

Change.  It means many things.  It’s not always good.  In this case, it seems to be the fulfillment of the race profiteers and class envy groups dreams of submission and the shedding of power.  Finally, those in power are hanging their heads low and begging for forgiveness for sins they did not personally commit or worse yet, weren’t commited at all.  Finally, the smug power that is the United States, which to the Jeremiah Wright’s of this world had been merely a proxy for the continuing slavery of blacks, has been brought down and is apologizing for being who they are.  Twenty years of Jeremiah Wrights sermons and wisdom is in the oval office.  How could it NOT influence his foreign policy?

It’s disgusting.  I am NOT ashamed of my country.  I don’t know what country Obama thinks he’s representing, but the role of the president is not to “level the playing field” with the rest of the world and attempt to prove how sorry we are so people will like us.  This is not leadership it’s pandering.  This is not evenhandedness this is moral equivalency.  This is not conviction it is submission.  And for Reverends Wright, Shaprton & Jackson, this is not an apology tour….it is a reckoning.

• Government funded abortions world wide
• Trillions of dollars in deficits
• Higher spending
• Higher taxes
• Single payer government run healthcare
• Vet benefits cut
• Acorn benefits raised
• Terrorists coddled
• Effective interrogators impugned
• Cigarette Taxes
• Tax Dodging cabinet
• That moron press secretary
• mandatory ”volunteer” work for kids
• Soft drink (fat) taxes
• Releasing of top secret documents to appease the liberal base and embolden our enemies
• Closing of Gitmo
• Attacks on private citizens like Rush Limbaugh
• Free cell phones for the poor
• Free mortgages for the irresponsible
• Free company ownership to the unions
• Fairness doctrine (it’s gonna happen, believe that)
• Did I mention taxes?

http://www.myspace.com/presidentialpledge

To the pledgers in this video:

Where were you for the last eight years?  Where were you when we were attacked on 9-11?  Where were you when the world agreed that Saddam had WMD’s?  Where were you when the media was lying about our President?  Where were you when the Iraqi’s were suffering?  Where was your compassion for them?  Where was your desire to be amicable with people you disagreed with these last eight years?  Where was your “Understanding”.  Where was your friendship?  Where was your bipartisanship?  Where was your hope?  Where was your restraint?

For eight years I’ve seen hatred, loathing, anger, ignorance, violence, suppression, oppression, blacklisting and all together a bunch of meanies.  I’ve seen Bush called a Nazi.  I’ve BEEN called a Nazi.  I’ve been told that I support blood for oil, that my beliefs are archaic and that I’m a racist.  I’ve seen my God spit upon.  My beliefs mocked.  My heroes destroyed and my integrity impugned.  I’ve seen my country’s soldiers used and spit out for political gain.  I’ve seen marches and been told that dissent is the highest form of patriotism.  I’ve been told that everything I stand for and believe in is murder, greed and fascism.

And now.  After all this YOU are pledging to me that you will change because of one man?  One man will make you different and cause you to be reasonable and you fully expect that I should and will reciprocate?  You expect us all to come together after this and act like the last 8 years didn’t happen?  As Obama steps forward and has the same reactions to Gitmo & Iraq and NOW you understand the complexities?  Now you can have intelligent debate without insulting everything I stand for?

I will make a pledge to you.  I pledge to spend every free moment working to counter your efforts.  Not simply for the sake of countering them, but because they are not what our country stands for.  They are not less government.  They are not liberty.  They are not justice.  They are not FREE.  I will not, I cannot allow compromise on these issues.  There IS no compromise for me on abortion.  There IS no compromise for me on Terrorism.  There IS no compromise for me on socialism.  There IS no compromise for me on much that you stand for.

Unlike you I will not fight unfairly.  I will not lie about you.  I will not toss insults carelessly and endanger my country and it’s brave soldiers.  I will not hope for a bad economy.  I will not invest myself in my own defeat.  I will not call our President a Nazi, or a Stalinist.  I will be a person of reason.  But I will be relentless and unforgiving.  I will use my mind and my faculties and everything at my disposal to squash this ideology that your anointed one has brought to bear.  I will work to protect this country’s ideals and prevent the destruction of our morals.

You created me these last eight years.  I pledge that I will become your worst nightmare because of it.

Ben Howe