I’d echo your sentiment that Buckley and Weyrich are paragons of our conservative cause. When you and others talk about achieving the “activist and electoral” goals of the conservative movement I balk. Conservatives are not activists – we mobilize for a specific objective, once achieved allows us to go on living our lives. Activism has become a career for the likes of Ayers and Obama. Our electoral goals are defined in terms of the preservation of our country and the restoration of the morals, manners and values that define her and will carry us into the future. Far be it for the conservative movement to be so concerned with getting elected that we fail to do our duty. Otherwise this movement becomes one of the bowels, not unlike those who we oppose.

To wit, we must establish our intellectual bona fide in the New Media rivaling anything that existed prior. We know who the powerful thinkers, writers and speakers are – what we need is the academic rigor promoted above punditry when it comes to espousing our philosophy and actualizing our strategy and goals. We can have generals conducting operations and leading the charge and soldiers carrying out orders and providing intel from the field. This is our course to capture the moral and intellectual high ground.

Let us not think of the quintessential conservatives as irreplaceable – we are all expendable so long asa someone behind is willing to pick up the flag and run!