This letter is somewhat administrative in nature, as it gives us a time-saving link so none of us will have to keep saying the same things over and over again, as we start collecting feedback on one of our "get into the Fight" campaigns with so-called conservative bloggers.
    It started a year ago when Bernie Chumm published an article here, "Beating Back the Blog Armies of the Left". I just reread it and it is as fresh today as it was prophetic then. After writing that piece, he and his coterie of friends (the Scat Army) began emailing conservative blogs asking them to join them in being a bit more aggressive with their internet counterparts on the Left (we call trem the dailyCuss). Most (over 80%) never bothered to reply, which records a level of bad manners. A couple replied disagreeing with our thesis. Since it has since been proved right, we'll try those again. But at least they were brought up well. And one replied that he found that sort of debate unseemly. Again, polite, but definitely a member-in-waiting for the Casper Milquetoast wing of the Republican Party. Fortunately, they saved the emails and have forwarded them to St George Frederick, who will put them to use.
    Round two began last week when St George, our full time director at GreatAmericanzeroes.com began emailing conservative bloggers, first from a list compiled by UrbanConservative, called "The Best Conservative Blogs on the Internet", which as best I can tell, is a fairly slick scheme of self-promotion (Remember those vanity books you could get yourself listed in back in the "80s, "America's 1000 Best Engineers, Businessmen, etc"?)...but virtually empty of any true grass roots conservatives. (More on that as it develops, we still have about 200 mailings to go.)
    StG's email was a request to conservative bloggers to look in at GreatAmericanzeroes.com as a way to become more actively engaged, as we plan to build a web platform with local interest published nationally, by "hanging" local and state officials for the crime of lying. Our thinking was that with a player at the local end who can contact local media, and proliferate the story throughout their own network of friends, a national exposure can give these stories legs, and begin to cause local politicians and bureaucrats some concern. Unlike national politicians, who could care less about being exposed as liars, locals are still a bit skittish about seeing their names thrust up in lights that way.
    StG's email also provided links to articles on this site about the failure of the many conservatives in meeting the challenge posed by what clearly has proved to be a much more active, and dedicated Left. I wrote one and Bernie Chumm, who's been much closer to this issue-within-an-issue, wrote a scathing attack on the general passivity (to put it kindly) of conservative bloggers as witnessed by the election victory for the other side. StG even received an idiotic response from one blogger who clearly had not read his letter, thinking it was a request for money.
    At this writing Bernie is of the opinion  that we should just chuck the whole idea of reaching out to conseravtive bloggers..."their heads are so far up their..." and go out and build a new network. I am of the opinion that we should let StG complete phase one, at least, of the plan, but with a proviso. I have authorized him to open a new galley at GreatAmericanZeroes.com, called the Eddie Slovik Gallery, for those who desert under fire. Unlike other galleries, this one is like Purgatory, for you can bail yourself out.
    So brace yourselves. If we send an email and you send it to File 13, you'll find yourself unceremoniously hung in the Slovik Gallery. To be sure, right now that may not sound like much. But in a year from now, or in the lead up to the 2010 midterms, trust me, you'll wish you were not on a "real" conservative website's crap list.
   
    That said, my open letter to you is this:
    We don't know who you are, what your educational level is, whether you work, go to school, live in Mom's basement or a deluxe apartment in the sky. We don't even know your sex (being old scholl, we consider "gender" to be something that has to do with language).
I know you may post many of these things in the About Me section of your site, but hey, this is the internet. Nothing can be verified to be real, anymore than our real names here at the Sands Institute.
    More than not knowing these things, we also don't know how politically active you are in reality. You may have worked tirelessly for a host of local, state and congressional candidates...and by tirelessly I mean ringing doorbells and licking envelopes and taking shut-ins to the polls.
    But we assume, in fact, are fairly sure, you're not. At least the vast majority of you. Other than exchanging notes with your mates and pards and friends, over beer, coffee or butter beans, the extent of your political involvement is probably limited to the 3-4 hours a week you spend reading other blogs, then citing them, and adding a few lines of your own. Mark Twain would have called you "professional conservatives".
    More than anything else, and Bernie has stressed this, I don't even know if you are true conservatives (pay attention to our comments about how the New Left of the 1960s defined themselves by who they were not), or even know what conservativism really is.
    If you are not a part of this stereotype please set us straight. But what you can't have any longer is a positive stereotype just based on your self-naming nomenclature.

    Oh, and none of these things do you have to prove to us. That face in the mirror will do...and we all know the myriad of pathologies that visage can provide.
    You do have to prove these things to yourselves, for henceforward, ye shall be known only by your deeds. Words no longer matter. That is the new reality caused in part by the elevation of an army of spoiled, foul-mouthed narcissistic storm troppers into a genuine political force. They now have the force of the State behind them. You don't.
    We know that the greatest disadvantages conservistism, and by that I mean Constitutional republican (little "r") democracy, has are 1) the absence of full time, 24/7 warriors able to organize, scheme, plan, conspire, lead, and are willing to fight back, and 2) an army of like-minded enthusiasts from our Good side of the coin willing to meet these goose-stepping stormtruppen head on. The big money conservatives need to take care of Disadvantage #1. You can't do that. We only have one full-time employee, since like you, we have bills to pay and clients to keep all warm and cuddly.
    But Disadvantage #2 is something you can do something about...and is a fight that has to be fought, for quite simply, it is generated by a fire few of you probably know or understand (a hole in the soul, if you will) and it is the one thing Congress fears above all other things.
    We only have a few suggestions as how to best fight this army. Brighter minds could come up with many more, I'm sure...but that will require those "other heads" to put their whole minds to it in the first place. Some of you don't like the tone, still others the heat, still others think this phase too will pass. Others of you quite honestly, are just otherwise engaged.
     It's not my job to sort that out. It's my job to try to raise an army.
     When we write, if uninterested, say so.