Our Time In The Wilderness

We conservatives are in a funk. Many of us feel that no matter who wins the election in November we and our beliefs will be cast aside like used Dixie cups. President McCain would be more sympathetic to at least some of our concerns than President Hillary or President Obama, but most conservatives feel that even McCain won't give us a seat at the table. In fact, many of us hate and fear McCain as much as we do Hillary. So, what are our options? What are we to do? I'll offer a humble suggestion.

Even if McCain wins we conservatives will be put into what I'm calling a time in the wilderness. We will be out of power but that could be a blessing in disguise, if we use our wilderness years right. And how do we do that? First, we must stop our pity party. Our time in the wilderness will be fruitless if all we do is sulk, pout, and whine. Rather, we must use those years to regroup, reevaluate, and reflect. We must build on our successes and strengths but also face our failures, weaknesses, and mistakes with unflinching honesty. Our biggest mistake, I believe, was relying on political power alone to uphold and advance conservatism. We believed that if we could just elect the right people we'd convert the culture but we were wrong. And the faith we put in politics has cost us dearly. While we were consumed with winning elections our children became more and more steeped in an increasingly liberal, neo-pagan culture scarcely impacted by our political "victories".

Think about it. Reagan took office for the first time in 1980. The infants, toddlers, and preschoolers from then are the young voters swooning over Obama now. The children of the conservative "revolution" are today worshipping one of the most liberal presidential candidates in recent history. They are eager to accept surrender in war and socialism at home. These are our children! And we didn't see it coming. We didn't see the continuing liberalization of the culture and that culture's influence on our kids. We didn't see that that would bode ill for our cause. We failed and failed big time. This is one of the unpleasant things we must ponder during our wilderness stay.

We were blinded by might. We won all the elections but didn't realize we lost the culture and even, I think, our personal conviction to a degree. Much of our society's continued slide into liberalism during our "revolution" was fueled by us. Some where along the way we decided we didn't have to live out conservative values in our personal lives because Reagan was president and Gingrich was Speaker of the House and that solved everything. So it was ok to keep sending our children to anti-conservative, anti-Christian, and anti-American public schools. It was ok to keep consuming Hollywood's largely degenerate fare. It was ok to "forgive" immoral pastors and to keep attending their churches. Conservatives held the reins of political power; nothing else was needed.

Hopefully, during our stay in the wilderness, we conservatives will not just admit our error but plan bold strategies to overcome it. Hopefully we'll realize that to advance our philosophy we must have a cultural foundation as well as a political one. We must invade the turf--academia, media, Hollywood--controlled by our foes and use their weapons against them. We must speak our truth to the culture using our opponents' language. And we must stop handing our children over to the other side on the proverbial silver platter. This is what we must do during the wilderness time that is coming. And onced we're refreshed and renewed we'll win again!