When Moses Sands mounted his old hoss and rode up into the Colorado high country for the last time in the winter of  '06, I doubt he'd even heard the name Barack Obama. But he sure knew what he represented.
    He also knew America's vulnerability, and the stakes in this all-in poker game over the Constitution. That's why he called me back in 2000, wanting to dictate a book to me. I listened, collected notes, transcribed and wrote, and we argued over that book right up until the last time we spoke in October 06.
    What Mose and I shared for fifteen years were common experiences in the boiler rooms, kitchen middens and cess pits of the world. He taught and we practiced covert capitalism (I prefer "free markets") in some of the most nasty, un-exotic, and dangerous places in the world, especially behind the Iron and Bamboo Curtains; places where you could go to jail just for changing a fellow's oil and taking a kopek for it.
    It was fun.
    Moses knew America's salvation had to come from the bottom. The top was rotten clean through. And the so-called Protectors of the Constitution had failed it, and us, miserably. (More on that later in this piece.)
    Since then, with a little help from my friends, I've tried to tell the American experience as Moses interpreted it...as it all made perfect sense to me. We Americans are not special, as recent events have proved. But the idea of America is, and as long as God will listen, we will continue to plead our case to Him for letting us keep this one flame alive in America for another generation, rather than having to wander around in the wilderness for forty years waiting for it to rise in some new place.
    But I think the time for pleading America's case to each other, as conservatives are wont to do, is about to end. Events have take us to the next level of this Fight. When the ship is danger of sinking, we have to abandon the chalkboard and man the bilge pumps, or we're lost.
    Rush Limbaugh, (who still has the fire in his belly, by the way) used to say that the natural advantage Liberals (a misnomer I don't like) have over Conservatives is that liberalism is a full time job with them. Their hate is 24/7...while Conservatives love to enjoy life and the fruits of their labor....you know golf, adult beverages, piddling with the '51 Ford in the garage. While he was right in one respect, he was dead wrong in another. The Constitution always presumed there would be a special class of Protectors who would defend the Constitution and the common man full time, twenty four hours a day, just like the evil out there who attacks them.
    Alas, this class of Protectors we don't have. At the Sands Institute we are all a little long in the tooth, but also still have that fire. We're analysts, and God knows we're not writers. But we know what needs to be done, from the bottom up, and have some idea how to go about doing it. We also enjoy a good fight, and have agreed to postpone all other forms of recreation to fight this Fight until Good can once again stand up and start kicking Evil's behind, one arse at a time. Writing blogs does not figure prominently in our plans for this fight and we enjoin other bloggers and other desk-bound conservatives to look at the inanity of sitting around and musing each day for a few minutes, then going off to sit on the deck of the ship, patting yourselves on the back for the effort...while the waters slowly envelop your ship. True conservatism begins outside your front gate. (More on this later).
    To win we have to accomplish three things: 1) Actually remove from power the socialist elements of Congress and government, be they hot tub socialists or more keen-edged socialists. Over the next 8-12 years we will see a diminishing window of opportunity to accomplish this. The good news, like Sauron in Mordor, it's the little people they ain't watching. 2) We need to redefine and re-energize the Protector Class into the kind of national and regional leadership that can organize and accomplish these things through whatever means the state class leaves available to us. We need to rebuild the ranks of our NCO's, where the Left outnumbers us 100 to 1. (see Moses comments on his idol, Jim). Again, we expect such things as ordinary information gathering and communications to diminish in the coming years. 3) We need to develop ways in both the home and the schools to re-aquaint citizens with the original blueprint of the Constitution, so they can once again propagate their House and the constitutional species on their own, while keeping the popinjay-class in check. This was Moses' original mission with his book.
    We have outlines of strategies for all these, but they are proprietary in the sense that we think it near time we do things away from bright lights once again. We've even kept our land lines.

    For our part, since Moses' last meander, we opened this blog and have been publishing essays about these issues for over a year now. We also created a non-profit website, thesandsinstitute.org, and have undertaken to move a couple of fronts forward. Bernard Chumm has been trying to reverse engineer the covert manner in which this leftist takeover actually succeeded under everyone's noses (for the past eight years). There is much to be learned there, I  think.
    Pushed by one of our colleagues, an Intelligent Design ethicist, Bernie took special interest in one of Soros' creations, the thousands and thousands of vile, screaming mimi's who made up the bulk of spiritual support for Obama on the internet, and set out to identify and fight them, in the open. We've learned much about their weak spots, and indeed, they are vulnerable to having their mouth's washed out with soap. (In public, a rolled up newspaper works, too, he says.) But on approaching conservative bloggers, we found they want nothing of getting their hands dirty with that rabble...even as that rabble kicked their butts on Nov 4. That project is still in its infancy but it is a Fight that has to be fought. So is Bernie's GreatAmericanZeroes.com project, where we plan to identify liars and lying in the public square, by "hanging" them. We think this can have a positive effect at the local level, where politicians are more skittish about being outed publicly...and nationally. This too requires an army of local conservative allies. (Respect for truth in a society is a genuine cultural survival mechanism, even as we note recent studies that lying and cheating are not only on the upswing in America, but kids no longer think anything of it as a moral misdeed. Even socialists understand the need for honesty. Only the puerile and craven don't, and for awhile at least, that's whose power we'll be under in the coming days. Since a harsher socialism, even totalitarianism almost always replaces them in the end, life actually will get worse....only, and here's another irony of socialism, people will then be more honest...when they think it safe to say anything at all.
  
     Strategies and Fronts:
     Awhile back I wrote in these pages a series of essays on Taking Back Government. One was to control the bureaucracy by putting politicians in fear of their lives. Politicians control the bureaucracy's purse-strings, and, beginning at the local level, an aroused citizenry can force them to choose more wisely. Trickle-up fear is good. This will be difficult now that the Left is in a position to consolidate its power. If the economy constricts more severely than it already is, we expect severe strain being placed on the politicians by the bureaucracy. Obama is not (yet) beholden to the bureaucracy, but Congress is. This should make for interesting observations.
     Second, to achieve this end, we suggested people make honesty in politics an absolute requirement for continued public service. It was that article that spawned the Great American Zeroes project. You lie, we hang you...publicly! This was to be the first step toward putting fear back into the hearts of politicians. Honest politicians find it more difficult to give the bureaucrats more money. Most political lies are about money. We will begin pushing this vigorously right away. If you'd like to know more, and join us, contact St George Frederick at GAZ.
     Third, and we've spoken about this often, the people must take back their schools, and in doing so, deciding what will, and will not, be taught in them. Public education is in shambles on purpose, and while we know socialists once in power will no longer tolerate slack teaching and educational standards (betcha didn't know that was coming, NEA), the things that matter in forwarding your House (versus the new collective house will be in permanent deep freeze.
     There are only two ways this can be done. First, you can render public schools helpless by forming private schools outside the system.  But we believe, unless 30% of the families just suddenly walk away from public schools into a waiting private school structure, the shock to the state will be insufficient to turn politicians around. The education bureaucracy will win as long as they continue to get their tax receipts. With Congress firmly in Leftist hands there will be no beneficial programs or school tax relief in our future from the federal government, so this has to be fought at the state and local level...which is good in one sense, for this is from where the new conservative leadership will emerge.
     We also believe home-schooling is on a short leash, especially if socialism gets that hard edge we've been writing about. Home schoolers are generally ignored now because they make no significant strain on state purses. But socialists won't care about the money as much as what's being taught at home. True socialists want every child to get that required dose of indoctrination, and certianly no mention or morality or God. The Soviets were absolute fools on this subject.
      We believe the best way is to simply take back public schools, the ultimate grass roots fight and one which give us real, seasoned leaders in quick order. (I thought this should have been the theme of the Dole campaign, that's how far I go back with this issue.) At one time we had the finest public school system in the world, especially considering the diverse population we had. That sort of commitment is required now.
      The fight over schools will be long and protracted. A national agenda needs to formulated and passed around like secrets notes ina  classroom. The fight will last longer than Junior's four years in high school, so citizens will have to be committed to more than just Junior. This isn't Little League baseball. They will have to be dedicated to better, more locally controlled schools, for Junior's childrens sake, while Junior is still listening to iTunes and roaming the mall. Citizens will have to come up with alternative curricula, for much of the public school emphasis needs to be changed, and obviously, a lot of junk simply needs to be dropped, just as with the public universities. (We have some strong suggestions on American history and government. social studies. Bring back the Three R's...and ethics.)
     As for specific strategies, we think it time to start, as they say in bridge-play "teating your cards". Some strategies require a national movement and leadership, but in the area of public schools, local citizens and local leaders will do just fine, just as it always should have been in the first place. What has to be national in scope is the sense of resolve, the sense of the long term, and the sense that you are in fight that is much, much bigger than yourself. After all, you're fighting to save the One Thing that gave you everything.
    The major problem is that of time. The states will only be able to wield power over public schools for a few more years if the nation turns hard toward socialism, and in education we expect it will, which explains our sense of  urgency. Under socialism, the federal government is likely to preempt state control by say 2016. This is a fight that needs to begin now.
    Fourth, and this is one problem we only considered a year ago, but the recent election proved us right. November 4, 2008 proved that the last free election in America may have been in 2006, when Republicans and conservatives threw that giant no-show voter tantrum. (Talk about timing.) When an election can be stolen and no one knows how, it's time to worry. For if you can't take back power through the ballot, no matter how heinous things get in Washington, just how do you get power back? Forget the squirrel gun buried out in the back yard, the ugly fact is, you don't. Period. If you can't vote them out, you have to allow socialism to run it course, and wait forty-sixty years when it will simply dies under the weight of its own waste, sloth and incompetence. Then something else certainly will step in to fill the vacuum. I can't say what that something else will be, but what it won't be is that wonderful US Constitution, because you'll be too old or dead and almost all memory of it will have been lost. 
     About the loss of free elections, we know there was this thing called the Secretary of State Project launched by one of the Soros-funded groups, working clandestinely to get the right people in the right place at the right time. In this election, Ohio was the right place and Jennifer Brunner, instead of being indicted, has a great political future ahead of her. Likewise, Mark Ritchie, with the help of select local and county registrars, will likely steal away Norm Coleman's senate seat. But we can't over-looking local officials. Sure, south Philly hasn't counted a Republican vote since 1964. But how do you steal an ironclad Republican district? How did Congressman Virgil Goode lose in a district in Virginia that was 60% Republican? The challenger's votes just suddenly started to materialize long after polls had closed. A few each hour it seemed. It was most curious. Larry Sabato, the famous Virginia talking head, was aghast at the eccentricities in this count, but his vanity wouldn't allow him to admit an election had been stolen right under his nose. The Dem's didn't need that seat, but we believe they stole it just to prove they could. It could be helpful in future elections. Look for more.
     Cheating? Sure. How much? Who knows? But since no one knows for sure how, no one does anything about it. But whatever mechanism to cheat is there, it will be there again and again. So no matter how mad the citizens get, they will always lose by a squeaker one time, by a mile the next. Always it will be "Better luck next time". We believe all the public attention paid to ACORN, while real, was also a feint from the real skulduggery going on in this election.
     This has to be fixed, and again, it can be done so at the local and state levels. Registrars are elected officials, too. Like congressman, they need to be made very afraid. Citizens have to get hold of the election process, which, by the way, should be simple. State laws can easily be simplified so as to prevent parsing of language by sly lawyers, registrars and secretaries of state. What's required is a firm jaw and resolve.

     As I said, we're trying to reverse engineer all the things the Left did out of public sight in order to gain power. Trust me, the people who just took power, you don't know their names...or at least can't be sure of them. You can also trust that Pelosi, Reid & Company are not part of the long term plans for socialism in America. Moses Sands knew George Soros, and called him a geometric thinker. He sees things as if they were Rubik's Cubes. He likes to play clandestine, covert games with his money. In the end all you can get is a hint of a fingerprint, a whiff of an invisible hand.  By election day there were hundred and hundreds of projects, internet sites and organizations that bore the fingerprints of that invisible hand and the tell-tale hint of sulfur. We use "Soros" here a symbol of that invisible hand, since no one's done a serious study of how he spread his money around (or is waiting for that big book deal, as conservatives are wont ot do). There are others, but we do want to pass on a posthumous "thanks" to John  M'Cain (and Russ Feingold) for making all this happen. Were this only a movie, we'd come away from the theater saying "Just desserts, John."
     Finally, by way of creating a new front against socialism, and for the Constitution, we need to create a Come-to-the-Constitution, or Come-to-the-House movement in America. Assuming we'll eventually find real, dedicated leaders, we need to create an army of NCO's to carry on the fight in the street. In the old days, this was carried out by local civic clubs but that has long since passed. The Promise-Keepers men's Christian movement in a good one to be structured after, in terms of organization, local chapters, regular training and meetings (in the catacombs of Poughkeepsie?) and real action. Since the Constitution runs parallel to religion and can spark the same passion, we think a man-and-woman movement that teaches the Constitutional blueprint, as well as teaches how it can be passed on, and finally, how it could be turned into political action, is a movement mechanism that will work.

     About our current leadership: This will sound like a criticism, but it really is only an analysis...a cold hard analysis.
     On July 4th, 1776 the Founders signed and stated to each other, "...We mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, our Sacred Honor."
     Almost 200 years later, Steve McQueen said almost the same thing, "You've never played the Game until you've played it for more than you can afford to lose."
      Moses Sands had a "rice bowl theory" about almost everything. He saw it as a natural pursuit of humankind, to be driven entirely by their rice bowls. This was both Good, as it was what allowed America to seek excellence through the free markets, and Bad, as it is also is what drives bureaucracies, in fact, most forms of evil. But Moses then acknowledged that there is a Good and an Evil that transcends the rice bowl, where the battle is always fought in ideas and ideas alone. Lately, he'd been unable to find that transcendent Good.
      Moses, by the way, did pledge his life, fortune and sacred honor, only he knew it was way too late to do much more than write that book. He did listen to Rush Limbaugh, I'm sure, but I don't know about the others. He complained about the money conservatives were getting for writing books, for he felt that their revenues alone gave them a false sense of security about where America was headed as well as a false sense of their own stewardship of the movement. You can't fight evil in between tee times or curtain calls....and expect to win.
     I don't know that he ever read Ann Colter (I have) but had seen her name pop up on best sellers lists and wondered out loud just what benefit she'd had on rescuing the Constitution. In hindsight, he was right, she's had none. Although I delight in reading her ever line, I can't think of a single new thing I learned, or new avenue opened to where the fight could be carried. Moses once mentioned the "futility of the written word" allowing that it would be 200 years before Christ's words were made known even throughout the Mediterranean, requiring every one who had actually heard Christ's words to be martyred just in order to get that Word started. It does seem he was right for wordsmiths can take you nowhere...if you need to get there in a hurry.
      A few days after the election St George Frederick called me to say that Glenn Beck had "gone 'round the bend", and had decided to turn his show off. He said he has a regular Jimmy Swaggart segment now, where, in a whispered preachy tone he extolls listeners to just get in touch with their own morality as a way to deny this new satan, socialism, to get into their lives; stiff upper lip, and all that, then things will get better...which to my mind sounds way to similar to what generation after generation of Catholic priests told poor South Americans, as how to cope with generation after generation of vales of tears under the boot of generation after generation of murderous thugs.
      We've had our own problems with Beck's show, and dropped him over a year ago. Following it was like watching two lawyers go at in the court room, calling each other names, bringing jurors and gallery alike to tears. Then, after the verdict was read, they'd put their arms around each other and say, "Hey, Bob, how about some coffee." All of sudden you realized that what you saw was a show. It was schtick.
      The same feeling comes over you when you hear one of Beck's deep searing analyses about the economy or the future for America's security. He was generally dead on right, but then, ten minutes later he's going ad nauseum plugging his stage show, his book, or ridiculing some store clerk in Green Bay. Is this real or Memorex?
      The schtickification of conservatism is something that does more than just worry us.
      That said, we have our own analysis of conservative literature, conservative talk radio, and conservative bloggers as they pertain to coming Fight that needs to be fought.
      Moses was right about the popular writings of conservatives. It is a very nice rice bowl, indeed, and we think even under socialism it will be allowed to thrive, for like NFL Sunday Football, socialism will indulge anything that can do it no harm. You see, with no free elections, making fun of liberalism is a fruitless pursuit. Moreover, it keeps an army of otherwise bright individuals and potential field generals otherwise engaged in mutual admiration exchanges.
      Talk Radio has a different set of problems, along with their own rice bowl issues. Rush, Glenn, Sean, and some others all make lots of money. Sadly, they are now more beholding to their rice bowls than the Fight. We're not sure the Fairness Doctrine will be reimplemented by Congress. (Wouldn't it be a hoot if Congress passed it and Obama vetoed it? I can think of all sorts of short term political objectives Obama would gain if he did. Can't you?) Like conservative literature, talk radio may be valuable to socialists just like it is, with only one proviso added, for it keeps the most powerful conservative voices in America engaged in almost mindless repetitious pronouncements about what listeners already know, namely the evils of "liberalism", as Limbaugh calls it. If you are a socialist in power it is the perfect diversion, allowing a few very wealthy people to continue to rail against you, without any solutions while all the listeners, millions of them, can come away each day thinking they have done their duty just by listening in. It's like buying those T-shirts at a BandAid concert. Or better still, as Mark Twain described the difference between "professing" and "professional" Christains. Porfesional Christians can take their morality and park it at the church house door, ands pick it back up when they come back next week for another hour of self-congratulation.  Limbaugh even acknowledged this, sort of, during the campaign, when so many people, seeing the possible/probable outcome, called asking what more they could do to prevent it. I doubt he knew, or had even given it much thought, but I know he couldn't find the time, or wanted the interuption in his own lifestyle  to have to undertake a leadership role in leading peopel toward some sort of attainable objective. (I can't know his thinking here, only the outcome.) He stated more than once that his job is just to get the information out, not lead the Fight. We've taken him at his word.
     The value of Talk Radio has always been to inform, and it is our belief that 1) information alone ain't worth squat and 2) people have taken a false sense of security by having that information and nothing else. It has become a substitute for action.
     Still, the continued access to information is vital to the men and women who will rise to lead this new Constitutional movement. My one proviso (above) about allowing talk radio to continue (and Obama's ace in the hole) is the government's ability over the next three election cycles (when Limbaugh will be in his 70's with less fire in his belly, and I will most likely be sleeping in that same snow cave Moses Sands found) to limit access to information. The Chinese already do it, so we know Yahoo, Goggle and the like will always go along to get along, so it's easy. Not overnight, but we know plans are already on the table to limit the breadth of communication and information in this country. When Limbaugh has fewer and fewer facts to back up his opinions, things will die out of its own accord.
     For you see, the value of talk radio has always been in Rush's "stack of stuff", actual facts, actual occurrences about what government is proposing, doing and saying. His analysis of those events remain important, but as to the why, the politics of the matter, which he revels in, are becoming irrelevant, inasmuch as they are designed to make us angry, when, as we've already stated, socialism doesn't care how mad we get as long as we can't win elections. In the end, one should never bring a microphone to a shillelagh fight.
     We can't speak to many of the others who we don't hear, but all this ugly analysis laid at his feet, Rush Limbaugh still has the fire in his belly. He may simply have convinced himself that his ability to speak over the radio is indispensable to keeping the fires of liberty alive in America, when that is increasingly becoming not the case. But Limbaugh, like Soros, is also a geometric thinker. We know he has a Plan B, and even C, with regard to his viability as a constitutional voice and political analyst. As long as those plans are directly related to his rice bowl, we think they are vainglorious and will be of no benefit to anyone other than himself. But if he has other plans out that that pertain to the Fight, and which must remain unspoken for obvious reasons, we continue to salute him, and the others.
    But somewhere there has to be plans being drafted, and money spent (though not as much as Soros spent is required) and I hope some of the things we've written here will lay out an agenda that those monies can be directed toward. At least we'd like to stir the creative problem-solving juice among the people who can actually make things happen.
     As for conservative bloggers, the more prominent have their own followship and usually have their own regional or nationals shows. Just look at the line-up of names that headline TownHall.com. Or Michelle Malkin and Drudge.What I've already written applies to them as well.
     But underneath is an army of bloggers, mostly young, that we've tried to engage in mutual activities. We're old and they're young, and that may explain it all, but we've noticed among young conservatives a strain of narcissism that at one time defined the Left from my generation...as defining themselves almost entirely by who they are not. I see a mutual dislike and disregard for the common man among young conservatives as I once did among young, about-to-be-radicalized liberals in the late 60s. This is not good for the future of conservatism and I'd just as soon as identify them quickly and drop them as quickly as David Duke from our ranks.
     For whatever reason, they seem to think that their internet musings is their participation in the Fight. It's a vanity, along the lines of that one a week "professional Christians" spend in church. We've tried to enlist them to go fight the dailyCuss crowd, face to face (a battle that needs to be fought, by the way) and they demur...don't like the language, don't want to get involved in give-and-take, that sort of thing. Even though this was the same bunch that kicked their butts in November, still, they have no stomach for a fight. Rather, they like the idea of  "I write, you read, and comment if you like...while I move onto to my next thanatopsis."
     This is an army we really need, but you can't bring a keyboard to a shillelagh fight. In their current configuration, they are as useless as teats on a boarhog.
     Laisser les bons rouller! (That's Cajun by the way.)
Vassar Bushmills