Now that we've suffered such serious setbacks in the elections of '06 and '08, the question is, what do we conservatives do now?  I think that the current situation represents a great opportunity for conservatives to take back this country, if we play our cards right.  So I'll describe what I think we can do over the course of a series of posts.  

First, I think we have an opportunity to take over the media and entertainment industries.  Right now newspapers around the country are going bankrupt.  The new media is surging.  I think Hollywood will also suffer from this economic downturn.  So some really good buying opportunities may exist or soon exist for conservatives to take over these industries for pennies on the dollar. 

The media industry and Hollywood have destroyed millions of young minds over the years with their socialist propaganda.  I really believe that we won't get a long-term conservative majority until we take control of and/or eliminate the political propaganda arm of the socialists.  There's no reason for young people to be socialist minded when their parents aren't.  You've heard it said that when you're young you're liberal and you get conservative as you get older and get out into the real world.  Well, I for one don't believe that this has to be true.  If we stop the socialists from pumping our children full of their garbage, I believe the result will be a much more responsible youthful population that doesn't have to relearn the mistakes of their elders.

Think about the benefits of eliminating the “drive-by” media as Rush calls them. No longer would the socialists get free campaign advertising in the form of “objective reporting”. No longer would all of the special interest groups like PETA, and Code Pink, and the environmental movement get unquestioning coverage and promotion. The light truth will cause these socialist organizations to wither on the vine. 

It should also be noted that an important part of this process is not to take over the old media for the purposes of running it as is with a conservative point of view, rather, the old media's format will have to go away in favor of the new, internet based, media. The new media is where it’s at, but it lacks some of the resources of the old media. 

What we need to do is buy the old media, move it into a new media format, but utilize their substantial investigative resources with people who share our common values of what's right and just.  In doing this, we might have a chance of slowly educating people away from this disastrous experiment of socialism that the left has been taking us down for decades.

For the 5^th Christmas in a row, Target stores continues its ban on Salvation Army ringers. Never mind that Target does give a substantial sum of money to the SA. The whole point of the ringers is to motivate us shoppers to freely give our OWN spare change to the poor and needy as we so choose. I like the ringers because they help spread a little bit of the Christmas spirit of giving, not just to each other, but to those who are truly needy. We’ve even got a tradition here in Northern Colorado where someone always puts a Gold coin in one of the buckets each year in secret, and the news media was always trying to figure out who it was.

But Target Stores banned the ringers in 2004 because they felt that if they allowed one group to solicit at their stores, they’d have to allow other groups as well. Never mind the fact that they are a private business and should have the right to decide who can solicit and who can’t for any reason they choose. The bottom line is that they are too spineless to fight for what’s right and stand up for what has become an American tradition. So, they just decided to banish solicitations altogether.

I’m tired of the spinelessness of corporate America. Why couldn’t Target just stand up and say that “the Salvation Army ringers are an American tradition, and we fully support the assistance they lend to the needy by allowing them the unique and sole privilege of soliciting donations at our stores.” 

So, as a result of their cowardly actions, I avoid shopping at Target if at all possible. I’ve only been to Target a couple of times over the past 5 years, and at this point, I don’t think there’s anything I would want, that Target has, that I couldn’t get from another store.

It’s up to you as to where you want to shop, but I prefer to grace Wal-Mart stores. They’re have affordable goods and services, and they have products that are just as good as Target’s, for a reasonable price. And they’ve at least had enough spine to allow the Salvation Army ringers at their doors, to spread a little sense of giving and take a little of the raw commercialism out of the Christmas. 

I heard an explanation for the government’s failure to address the illegal immigration issue on yesterday’s Glenn Beck show. I’ve heard this idea stated in the past from various other sources as well.

The idea is that our open borders policy is a quid quo pro relationship between our government and various elements of Mexican society. Basically, the Mexican government and drug cartels (and perhaps other powerful corporate interests in Mexico), keep terrorists from entering the U.S. in return for our government turning a blind eye to illegal border crossings and doing certain favors for these interests such as prosecuting two border guards who were doing their duty to protect this country, among other things.

I certainly think that this is a probably reason why our government doesn’t do anything about illegal border activity. After all, our government has done this sort of thing in the past. For example, during WWII, the government allowed criminal elements at our seaports to get away with illegal activity in exchange for making sure that no German spies were allowed to infiltrate the country.

Now, when I first heard of the Mexican-US quid pro quo idea, my thought was that if we’d just dedicate resources to shutting down illegal boarder traffic and controlling our borders, this relationship would be unnecessary. 

But one of the things I try to do is put myself in the decision makers’ shoes in Washington to understand their reasoning. I don’t believe the automatic cynical assumption that all leaders are corrupt or stupid. And so I have to ask myself that if the real reason for our border policy is this relationship, then there must be a belief within the powers that be that control of our borders to the extent that we are able to stop all terrorist traffic, may not be a viable option.

If we consider human nature, and the challenges associated with running an organization of the size needed to control the borders, it seems quite likely, that within the thousands of border patrol agents needed for such an endeavor, one or more of them could be corrupted by Mexican elements. 

Furthermore, if our government did shut down illegal border traffic, the impact to these nefarious elements would be highly destructive, such that they would have nothing to lose by making an example, and thereby help a terrorist element sneak into the US, via a weak point on the border and some help from the inside.

So the bottom line is that this does seem like a logical reason for our border policy.

But if this is the real reason for our border policy, it does nothing to address the fact that this continued illegal border activity is exerting a substantial negative influence on our society. It leads to massive amounts of illegal drugs and other illegal activity coming into the United States as well as threatening our sovereignty and our American culture.

While Mexicans and Latin Americans bring entrepreneurial spirit and a socially conservative culture, they also bring a tendency towards socialism and corruption born out of desperation within the societies they’ve left (notice how they tend to vote Democrat in overwhelming numbers). 

So all this leads me to some questions that I think we need to consider: 

What’s the solution to this threat of corrupt socialism from the south?

Is terrorism a greater threat than cultural corruption?

And, is any policy for the greater good worth the injustice of what's happened to innocent border guards who were just doing their jobs?