Conservatives at a crossroads?

Over the weekend, as a I frequently do, I did some reading of my favorite bloggers. This time around two of them stand out like day does from night, Mark Tapscott and "Captain" Ed Morrisy. Recently, both of these upstanding gentlemen have written, at length, about the dissatisfaction and disinfranchisement that many conservatives are feeling as the '06 election approaches.

Such disinfranchisement exists because a number of those that we have worked so hard in the last six years to put and keep in office have failed us in key areas, such as runaway federal spending, dealing blows to political free speech through the McCain-Fiengold attempt at election reform, and not dealing with immigration in a manner that conservatives would approve of (at least on the part of the spineless US Senate).

Now make no mistake, there have been some great things that have come out of the last six years, such as two new appointments to the SCOTUS (the Miers fiasco doesn't count), tax cuts and doing all that is possible to make them stick, and the ousting of Saddam Hussien - good can come out of dark and evil circumstances. From another angle, I apprecaite the fact that conservative social values and faith have taken center stage once again - for the first time that I can remember in my young life.

So both good and bad have happened in the last six years under Bush and a GOP led congress (for at least the last two). Some however, may think that the answer for the malcontent on the part of conservatives would be to sit out come November. This is not the case, and I am glad that Captain Ed and Mark have both made a point of stating that fact. To disengage is to admit defeat. To disengage is to hand the victory over to those who would seek to take the country down a road that I do not want to see it go down - as Hugh Hewitt stated when he was at The Heritage Foundation recently, "If the Democrats win, we will lose the War on Terror because they will withdraw the troops from Iraq"

I see the time in which we live as a time to engage - for conservatives to engage is politics like never before, just as those that follow Christ should engage the world, not withdraw from it - the controversey surrounding the DaVinci Code film that comes out this Friday being a good example.

Here is what conservatives don't want to do when something bad happens or politics don't go their way: approach life as Tom Cruise's character Mavrick did in Top Gun after his rear and best friend Goose died - they would put him in the cockpit and he wouldn't engage. Above all, engagement is what is needed at this point in time, more than ever. As Viper, Tom Skerrit's character, said to Mavrick - "A good pilot is compelled to evaluate what's happened, so he can apply what he's learned."

That is what needs to be done here and is being done - evaluation of what has happened so far and where things are going. The question then is this, what have we learned?

If you ask me, we've learned that we must engage instead of going off into a corner and crying ourselves a pitty party.

Just like Mavrick we've got to get back in the seat and buzz the tower, so that the world knows we're still here.