Remember the story of the talents in Matt 25:14-30,“To one he gave five talents, to another two and to another one, each according to his own ability,” Afterwards, the Master judged each recipient of talents by what he did with what he received. Remember that the servant who hid (out of fear) his single talent was called “worthless and tossed out into utter darkness?” Christ was making the point, His servants are only useful if they are actually doing something with the gifts each has received. A servant who does nothing is worthless. Sounds like a pretty hard Master, or does it? Ask yourself what good is an employee of business if he/she does nothing? Why keep that employee?
I submit the same holds true for our conservative movement. Individually we are American citizens, thus each of us should be doing something to further the cause in preserving American freedom and liberty. But each of us needs to understand there is much more at stake than you or I doing nothing.
When Christ was leading and instructing his disciples many were initially passive in their faith. Remember Peter denied Christ 3 times. But revisit Christ’s disciples after Christ’s resurrection, they had become very passionate believers many dying for their faith. They became vigorous evangelists, spreading the gospel everywhere. Paul spent much of his apostleship in chains or in prison and under guard and yet wrote much of the New Testament. These disciples experienced the “Good News” it was redeeming breaking the power of eternal death. As we know their commission (as is ours as believers) was to spread the Good News to all people. Christ knew Satan (the other side) would be active in attacking and deceiving God’s creation, so Christ’s disciples must also be active. The scriptures tell believers that we are in a war. You see, doing something matters because the other side is doing something whether we are doing something or not.
You may not be expanding the kingdom of Christ on earth or the conservative movement in America, but have you ever considered that the counter cultures to each are not resting and are very actively expanding each of their domains? Let me ask, “Do you think America’s freedom and liberty is in jeopardy?” If so, why is this any time to rest or be apathetic? Frankly we need all hands on deck. The other side has not been passive, they’ve been very busy. America is on the tipping point of completely collapsing and we will all fall because we have not been vigilant like our Founding Fathers instructed us to be. America is about to hand over every last vestibule of our freedom and sovereignty to a global governance system under treaty agreements like the U.N. Climate Change Treaty. If America falls, it falls on “our” watch.
Whether virtuous or criminal causes, the essence of every successful social and political movement began with a single person. Someone decided they would do something and lots of other someone’s played a noteworthy role to help further the cause. Every movement good or bad is a collection of a “someone’s” actually doing something. But maybe you don’t feel you have what it takes?
Consider a man who failed to pass his school exams, dropped out of high school, who tried to be an artist but couldn’t get any art school to accept him and for a period of time was jailed and suffered from deep depression. We know this person as Adolf Hitler. While entirely misguided and evil, he came close to ruling the entire world and was responsible for the deaths of tens of millions. If someone this evil with little apparent aptitude can nearly rule the world, we have to ask ourselves, what is keeping each of us from applying our gifts for a good and worthy cause?
Consider that <3% of the U.S. population has successfully revised all of our laws with regards to homosexuality. In a word, they have been “activists” for their cause. Imagine what a passionate 3% could do for our conservative causes.
Einstein’s definition insanity, is doing the same thing but expecting different results. Our conservative movement can no longer afford to just rail against bad government, we must personally use whatever gifts and talents we have to make a difference in turning around our bad government. Some of you will lead, many others will help in supportive roles by providing money, labor, providing a needed service like website support, linguistic editing, research/data collection, voter mobilization, emailing friends, hosting town halls, or other undertakings. “You” have power, but only if you start the engine of your talents and put them to work.
The power and importance of a single person should never be underestimated. Everybody can be and must be a somebody doing something in furthering the conservative movement and no matter your limitations you have something essential that the conservative movement needs to recover our lost freedoms and mend the holes in the cause of liberty. Over the last 60 years, liberalism, progressivism and socialism have consistently moved forward in American politics and social thought because a few somebody’s in these movements have been doing something to further their often misguided causes. In contrast, many conservative thought people have been MIA. (missing in action)
Below is a real world Idaho example of a conservative person doing something to further the cause of freedom. See how each individual did something that helped the cause.
- CE, a local woman began sitting in on county planning meetings and learned that local zoning regulations were going to be made unnecessarily more complex. CE told other people.
- One of the people CE told was BR, a local businessman. BR began speaking out and sponsored an ad in the local paper to make more people aware.
- One person who saw that ad was BL and he began calling his neighbors.
- One of the neighbors BL called was BB. As a result BB decided to organize a formal group to fight back.
- LS told all of us that we must “take the message to the people and that we must educate them.”
- Two others, GM and JL came on as initial directors to help build the organization, together they began organizing town halls to inform citizens.
- Dozens of newly informed citizens asked GM, JL and BB to come conduct additional town hall meetings in their grange halls, schools and community centers.
- As a result, hundreds of other citizens came together and got behind the movement, each telling their neighbors to come to the meetings.
- When the zoning changes public meeting date came, several hundred people turned out to object and the massive and complex zoning program was defeated.
Many individuals in the above story line played crucial rolls, each did something and many kept on doing something. All of us lead busy lives, but we must understand that preserving freedom and liberty means doing something. It can be a phone call, it can be running for office, it can be giving financially, it can be showing up to meetings, or making quilts for fundraisers, but all conservatives must be doing something. Our conservative movement only has power and influence when we are individually and collectively start our engines and get involved.
We must reach beyond our sphere of influence. It’s ok to preach to the choir, but realize they are already in our camp. We are in a war of attrition if we do not grow our base our influence on the public will soon fade away. We must educate those outside of our camp and win back those who have faded away. So I ask, “This year, what are you going to do to help the conservative movement?”
In this 7-part series of articles, my goal is to stimulate our thoughts and to provide clarity for what being conservative might really mean and more importantly how we can be a better example of it. The take away should inspire all of us to be better at being a true conservative. Email info@bob4idaho.com Part 5 is “Essential Tasks of Successful Conservatism”
Bob Bingham is the founder of North West Property Owners Alliance and is a current candidate for Kootenai County Commissioner.
