Many conservatives are not afraid to speak their mind and even speak up in the public arena for their values.  But almost none of us (myself included) are consistently doing what must be done to positively impact our decaying culture.

Many of us grew up having been taught the founding principles of our great nation.  Often our parents told us of our country's noble ideals and the things that make America great.  If we grew up several decades ago, we might even have been lucky enough to be taught some of this in public school.

People who recognize the great founding principles of the United States, understand the inestimable value of personal freedom and responsibility, and cherish our heritage of limited government are usually known as "conservatives."

Even if we weren't taught these things as children, some of us have learned somewhere along the way that the liberal policies proffered by the Democrats (really Marxist policies) are antithetical to the principles of Americanism. People who didn't know this to begin with but later came to realize it are usually described as "liberals who were mugged by reality."

Sadly, few are learning these lessons today, and few have for decades.

Our public education system has acquiesced to if not embraced liberalism and has foisted that ideology on our children even as it has attempted to erase the history of our Christian heritage and origins of limited government.

Our media establishment sold out lock, stock and barrel to liberalism decades ago.  From the movies to television to music to journalism, there is only a constant stream of revisionist history, derision of traditional values and shameless promotion of liberalism as the ultimate and only reality.  Moral ambiguity is the best we can hope for in almost all media fare.

This flood of propaganda has proven very effective in producing one or more generations that are almost entirely ignorant of their heritage, oblivious to world history, and lack even the basic analytical skills necessary to sift truth from lies.

This brainwashed culture is what we face in the arena of ideas to day, and it is what conservatives must deal with as we try to turn our culture around from its headlong plunge toward the abyss.

We don't have to like it, but we must acknowledge it, deal with it, compensate for it...and then overcome it.

When we throw out the word "Marxist" or "socialist," the general public usually replies with either a blank stare of incomprehension, or sees in their mind an old image of the former Soviet Union and says "Uh uh. That's not what the Democrats are pushing." They are intellectually incapable of making the connection between principles of socialism and their ultimate fruition as carried out in the Soviet Union and other communist nations around the world.

If conservatives desire to warn the American public about the dangers and pitfalls of what the Democrats are offering, we must first start at the basics and educate the public on fundamental social studies and philosophy.

The average American, being a product of a failing education system, must be taught the basics of worldview. Americans have forgotten their legacy and heritage of individualism, personal responsibility and limited government. They also no longer have the example of the Soviet Union in the daily headlines; they don't have a tangible, living example of why Marxism is bad. And the "mainstream" media is unwilling or incapable of helping the average American connect the dots.

We must also become more engaged in our public education system to do what we can to hold it accountable and make it better.

As Warner Todd Huston explained in his recent piece Conservatives, Obama's Win is Your Fault, part of that solution means having teachers and other educators in the public system where they can make a difference.  While my family homeschools, I applaud those conservative teachers who work day to day in the public school system trying to make a difference.

Another part of that is the fight for vouchers and educational choice. The only way our system is going to improve in quality is if there is competition to drive that improvement. As long as government schools have an almost total monopoly on education, educrats have no incentive to get off their hands and provide a quality product.

But the effort will have to operate at an even more fundamental level than this.  Conservatives need to help restore this lost knowledge to other Americans in their social sphere.  We can't rely on either public or private education institutions to do the work; we must start the work ourselves, and it must be on a very basic level.

People no longer understand the law of cause and effect, nor do they understand the law of consequences.

The socialist elites have for so long sold the notion that there are not or should not be consequences for poor decisions that many people have bought into it.

They are unable to make such connections as...

- poor work ethic = lack of a good job

- inability to get a good job = my fault, not the governor's or the president's fault

- substance abuse = dependence and poor economic outlook

- welfare state = breeds generational sloth and dependence

- demand more govt services = govt demands more of your money to do it

- give gov't more power = it'll take away more of your rights

- a govt that can decide another person has too much money = a govt that can decide YOU have too much

- moral choices = practical consequences

Tomorrow: more on what it will take to repair the foundations...and it will take more than just education...