The problem that many conservatives have is figuring out how to participate in a political process that has long since ceased to serve them. Unfortunately, many conservatives have fallen into the same trap that so much of the nation as a whole has succumbed to, which is failing to realize that one of the most important responsibilities of a citizen of a democracy is to actively participate in the political process. Granted, many conservatives have replaced this involvement with productive pursuit of jobs, families, and lives, but the cost has been a political system that no longer responds to their will.

So what is a concerned conservative supposed to do about this problem? Unfortunately, the answers are not always easy or clear and most of the answers inherently involve conservatives adding more to their already busy and productive lives. Nevertheless, if conservatives want to take back conservatism and re-secure the principles of republican democracy, they have no choice but to act and to take this responsibility on themselves.

To the end of helping conservatives figure out how best to take on this responsibility, I am launching a new, regular series of posts on Worldview called “What can I do about it?” In addition to this series, I am creating a page on Worldview called “Quid Facis” (roughly “What am I doing” in Latin and the name of a weblog by contributor chrispy85) where I will bookmark all of these posts as well as links to other relevant internet content on taking action.

My hope is that, over the next weeks, months, and even years, these posts will serve to create a foundation and a point of motivation for fellow conservatives who want to do something about making the political system responsive to them.

-=DLH=-

UC Berkeley researchers using the Hubble Space Telescope have produced what may be the first image of a planet outside our solar system. The amazing picture shows a several Jupiter mass planet against a debris field around the star Formalhaut.

The incredible image brings up yet another reason why the Hubble Space Telescope needs to be maintained until it can be replaced. Unfortunately, there are no plans I am aware of to replace the telescope with a more modern version, and the only spacecraft capable of servicing the telescope, the Space Shuttle, is going to be retired without a direct replacement.

It is unfortunate that programs like Hubble, the shuttle, and others will not be replaced. Curiosity is a human hallmark, and these programs have allowed mankind to extend its knowledge of its universe. We have no idea what kind of knowledge these kinds of programs might bring us, but not having them guarantees we will never know.

-=DLH=-

God bless you and God bless America.

-=DLH=-

I joined the Ohio Air National Guard and the 269th on Nov. 29, 1993. Since then, the people of the 269th have transformed from fellow military members into part of my family. Those men and women are among the finest Americans I have ever known, and I count it an honor to have been numbered among them for a time.

Why leave now?

An interesting quirk of my personality is that I tend to define myself by the things I spend the most time doing. Right now, I spend more time being a college student than just about anything else, and I consistently tend to think of myself as a student even though I spend lots of time doing lots of other things. In 1999, I began working full-time for the 269th, first on orders and later as an air technician. During that period, I came to define myself as a Guardsman to the exlusion of a lot of other things.

One of the things that came to be excluded was my desire to write. I have wanted to write, especially fiction, since I was in the seventh grade, and as time has passed since then, that desire has only grown. Since I returned to college, I have earned an associates degree in creative writing and worked for a college newspaper, both events that cemented for me the realization that writing is my future.

What resulted is the realization that I could not continue to be a Guardsman and a Writer. In trying to be both, I was doing neither of them well. I take my service to my nation very seriously, and the thought of giving it less and less attention as I pursued writing as a career was unacceptable to me.

This was a hard choice, but it was obvious to me that it was time to go. God has placed me on another path, one I never imagined even a year ago, and it is a path I want to pursue with all of my effort.

So what now?

Over the past couple of years, my pursuit of writing has slowly revealed a path to me. I want to write and get published, especially fiction, but I am not putting all of my eggs in that precarious basket. In considering what else I am willing to do as a writer, it finally occurred to me that the only other thing that I am willing to do beyond writing is to teach others how to write. Some people reading this post might be surprised by this conclusion, but I can assure you that I do not want to work for anyone else in the traditional sense unless it is by returning to public service in the military. I believe teaching, especially at the college level, gives someone like me the greatest freedom to pursue my desire and my goals.

So, from here, I will finish what I need to a the community college level, then return to the university level to finish a bachelor’s degree in creative writing. After that, it is at least a master’s degree program and probably also a PhD. My hope is that, in the next six to ten years, I will be writing, published, and teaching somewhere at the college level.

No regrets

My time in the military represents a huge part of the person I am today, and for that service I have no regrets. I hope that I am able, through my future endeavors, to give something back to the military that gave me so much. In the mean time, I have set my face resolutely to the future and whatever it may bring.

-=DLH=-

Whenever a major political party loses an election, the inevitable result in the days after is recriminations. The losing party feeds on itself as it tries to explain why it lost.

In the case of the 2008 McCain loss, we voting conservatives have no one to blame but ourselves.

You see, the reason John McCain lost is because we did not provide ourselves with a real conservative candidate. There were things to like about John McCain, but at the end of the day, he was not a candidate who truly represented conservatism.

Would a true conservative candidate have meant that he would have won? No, but frankly, he would not have lost any worse than McCain did, and in the mean time, we would not have had to compromise our principles as people or a group to support him. The recriminations would have been a lot less. Fewer of us would have needed to be eaten.

None of this needs to happen again, either. Perhaps the best thing we could do as American conservatives on Nov. 6, 2008 is abandon the Republican party to its cannibalism. In my opinion, that party no longer represents anything I stand for anyway, so who cares if it eats its own head.

Instead, we voting conservatives can take this opportunity to reorganize ourselves. Perhaps this means starting a new party. Perhaps it means abandoning parties altogether.

We have a singular opportunity to reorganize ourselves because we can do so, person by person harnessing the power of the internet. We can start email lists, weblogs, discussion boards, even entire organizations, without every leaving our beds if we like. We can communicate information among ourselves by the speed of meme, a speed Obama’s people proved defies relativity.

By reorganizing ourselves this way, we eliminate the control of the party powerful (they’ll be weakened by blood loss anyway) and make the conservative movement our own. If we do this, I believe we have the opportunity to create an unstoppable force: individual Americans united by the millions for a common cause.

I plan to reorganize whatever the rest of you decide to do. Consider this weblog the first action in this new movement. I hope you will join me in making it nationwide.

-=DLH=-

Do I have to call people?  No, not if I don’t want to, but I can stuff envelopes, volunteer at the party HQ, work “get out the vote” events, etc.  It’s called getting involved, and I guess this election was my wake up call.  Was it yours?

I think I’m going to be saying this a lot over the next 4 years, but this concerns me.  If the rest of the world is so happy happy about his election, what does that mean for us?

Please check back for post postmortems and other observations and read in the future for more quality content from Worldview.

-=DLH=-

Let me add my congratulations to those offered by John McCain to Barack Obama for his success.

Now, let’s all look to the next four years and what all of us need to do as citizens to help keep our nation successful, strong, and free.

-=DLH=-

-=DLH=-