Boomers:  Want to really feel your age? Picture yourself at age 11, gathering anxiously with your classmates at your school’s entrance every morning, waiting for your pals.

Voters in four states—Maryland, Maine, Minnesota and Washington—will have same-sex “marriage” on the ballot November 6. In Washington and Maryland, state legislators took it upon themselves, as did other states earlier on, to pass laws expanding “marriage” to include homosexual couples. Now their citizens will decide whether to let the laws stand. Poll-watchers say at least one of the four, Maryland, appears to be a shoo-in, and two more are leaning in the same direction. Some 32 states have rejected the legitimacy of “gay” unions at the ballot-box, but the measure has a habit of reappearing even when voters balk, as in Maine.

Republican nominee Mitt Romney has coined the term “trickle-down government” for audiences, beginning with the first debate. The term aptly describes the Marxist-based logic of the liberal-left:  the notion that government must expand so as to impact more activities of everyday life—via programs, regulations, entitlements and mandates. Only then, so the logic goes, will all Americans enjoy a “level playing field.”

Republican nominee Mitt Romney earned kudos for repeating the terms “jobs,” “Tenth Amendment” (state prerogatives) and “trickle-down government” multiple times in his first round against President Barack Obama on Wednesday, October 3. He smiled in the right places and kept to his themes — to the evident annoyance of his teleprompter-less challenger. 

Several news stories the week before Thanksgiving underscored the perception that America’s present approach to immigration policy is not working. "There has been no significant movement toward federal immigration reform since a bipartisan effort died in 2007...." Today, immigration is a battleground for legislation at the state level, and is gaining traction as a major issue in the 2012 presidential campaign.

On November 22, Americans learned, for example, that at least 40 percent of human-caused wildfires along the Arizona and Mexico border between 2006 and 2010 were set by illegal “fence-crashers”. Worse “of the 422 human-caused fires [during that period], just 77 were investigated, and of those 30 were found to have been ignited by illegal border crosses.” The Washington Times article went on to explain that illegal immigration is making firefighters’ jobs harder because they are under attack. U.S. firefighters have to worry “about their own safety” and hold back on some methods, such as “firefighting activities at night and … the use of aerial firefighting methods,” according to a 60-page report by the Government Accounting Office.

The receipt was on the floor of an Angeli’s County Market parking lot, located in the greater Denver area of Colorado. An alert fan of this columnist passed it along. This particular item got the desired attention. It speaks volumes about today’s cavalier attitude toward “public assistance,” what we used to call simply welfare — not only for the extravagances bought with other people’s tax dollars, but for the sheer arrogance of allowing such a blatant illustration of inappropriateness to slip through a customer’s fingers:  six cold-water lobsters, two porterhouse steaks, and five cases of Mountain Dew, the only purchases on the ticket, are shown paid for in food stamps.

Irrespective of party affiliation, most Americans today simply accept welfare. Many families are so addicted to government handouts, they scarcely are aware how much largesse comes to them from the labor of their fellow citizens. Somewhere along the line, “government money” lost its logical connection to “the people’s money.”

Every year, educators push harder for a longer school year — and even year-round schooling, not merely “summer school” — as standard operating procedure: Barack Obama’s 2010 interview, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s CBS/WBBM interview, best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell’s recent book, Outliers, and an assortment of respected studies, most notably from Rand Corporation and Johns Hopkins University, picked up by entities as diverse as The Washington Post, The New York Times, Education Week, Economics of Education Review, and Phi Delta Kappan, are all indicative of a notion whose time has come, across the political spectrum.

Ben Wolfgang’s piece in the conservative Washington Times for September 30 (Oct. 3 print edition), is a case in point. His article was based on a report by the National Center on Time and Learning, one among dozens of education advocacy groups favoring the concept.

Part II of this series examined how conservatives lost the “turf wars” and became increasingly marginalized in a leftist game of agenda-driven politics. This final segment will show how “new blood” conservatives are moving past the recriminations. They’re working instead to reframe the debate and recast the agenda so that the Left has to regroup.

First, these conservatives have stopped being reactive. The days of the Left continually upping the ante with ever more outrageous acts, and spinning conservatives off in a hundred directions are wearing thin. The conservatives now thinking about throwing their hat in the campaign ring seem to recognize that they have to focus on, at most, three issues—ones most likely to energize the public. Rather than merely condemning the circumstances that brought these crises, they see the necessity of outlining a corrective plan if they expect to compete—and do it in sound bites, if possible.

Take a random topic in the news:  Retraining/indoctrinating the military to accept open homosexuality, which began in earnest last March as a prelude to opening the ranks to gays. This outrage followed a reckless vote in the lame-duck session, with the Obama administration rushing to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell” before the House Armed Services Committee could hold a hearing to examine the Pentagon’s survey and official report on the subject.

In Part I of this series “Conservatives Lose Ground on Social Issues,” it was established that the Left is eating conservatives’ lunch and throwing back the Leftovers to be picked up in a desperate attempt to sustain public outrage — enough to win at election time. Conservatives have taken the bait for 35 years, and lost ground doing so. Part I ended with the quandary of how to take back the reigns of debate and, with it, the agenda. Which produced a new dilemma: Getting the Left to debate issues on Conservatives’ turf.

Many would cite a list of well-known (at least to die-hard conservatives) think tanks and forums:  the Heritage Foundation, the Washington Times, the American Conservative Union, the American Enterprise Institute, Hillsdale College, the Weekly Standard, Concerned Women for America, Media Research Center and so on. But if one then were to ask:  Suppose one of these organizations decided to host a debate, inviting established speakers and experts from all sides. The topic could be anything:  global warming, women alongside males on submarines, gay clubs in schools, displays of Christian crosses on tax-supported properties, Medicare reform, drugging rowdy schoolchildren, private-property rights versus environmentalism, domestic oil drilling, cultural enhancement. What are the chances that any known entity on the liberal side will come to any of these debates at the above institutions?

Conservatives and traditionalists appear to be hopelessly outclassed when it comes to organizing and strategy. How else to explain the lack of bang for the conservative buck, even with umpteen nonprofits, volunteer groups and lobbying organizations devoted to promoting a traditional approach to social issues? Inboxes overflow with “urgent” admonitions to contact members of Congress over one issue after another:  the Defense of Marriage Act, gays in the military, women on submarines, pro-homosexual curricula. This past May, it was the politically-correct censorship of six year-olds (“Candy Cane Case”) and transgendered classrooms.

The very concept of marriage now appears to be in trouble—a cornerstone of the pro-family, conservative movement—even as celebrities brag on and on about conceiving out of wedlock. Focus on the Family President Jim Daly, in an interview just published in WORLD magazine, allowed that pro-family leaders probably are losing the battle for traditional marriage among younger generations of Americans, “as casual ‘hookups’ continue to replace the romance of dating”. A combination of factors has contributed to this result:  teen magazine articles; hypersexual advertising; and age-inappropriate, graphic sex education. The one in four girls reported to have had a sexually transmitted disease (STD) in 2008 hasn’t changed much from year to year—a little more among some demographics one year, a little less in others.

Baby Boomers start turning 65 this year. I ought to know; I’m one of them…

Tons of products and thousands of advertisements center on reversing the aging process—especially as it affects physical appearance. But at age 65, many Boomers are more concerned about their country’s political clock than they are their biological one.

For the vast majority of us, Woodstock and the ascendency of sex, drugs and rock-n-roll was a “them” phenomenon, not an “us” event. They had “a little help from their friends,” charismatic radicals that young firebrands inhabiting the universities on their parents’ dime really didn’t know all that well. Some of these “friends” turned out to be highly trained Soviet provocateurs–turned-“community organizers,” such as Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn and Herbert Marcuse. Others were simply drug-runners.

Growing up in the 1950s in Washington, DC, my family would walk up Connecticut Avenue on Sunday mornings after church around Dupont Circle to enjoy a brunch.  That spot also served as unofficial host to an Easter Parade, where ladies and girls strutted in their new hats, shoes and spring dresses, while husbands, young boys and other gentlemen accompanied them in spiffy suits and polished shoes.  A frequent sight on various occasions would be the black car carrying Dwight D. Eisenhower, then President of the United States, who would lean out the window and wave, or if the weather was warm enough, ride in a convertible, to the delight of tourists and local citizens.

To be sure, there were Secret Servicemen in the presidential vehicle, a police escort (mostly for show), and another two cars full of Secret Service personnel.  But these bodyguards, while they no doubt took their jobs seriously, particularly in the wake of World War II, were in the background, virtually unnoticeable to most onlookers.  There was an Irving Berlin song that crooner Perry Como used to sing (PERRY COMO - SECRET SERVICE LYRICS):  “The Secret Service makes me nervous and I freeze! / Whatever I may do or say / will be reported the next day! /.” It was mostly in jest, of course, and everybody had a good time.

Many liberals were disappointed this week when The Washington Post missed an opportunity to shore up dwindling public support for global warming (a.k.a. climate change), along with overpopulation, the Transportation Security Administration, universal health care and other increasingly unpopular initiatives endorsed by left-of-center advocates. The Post could have promoted them all — in one fell swoop.

Instead, the paper reported on a consensus among experts that the sudden, nearly simultaneous mass demise of various species of birds and fish in Maryland, Arkansas and Kentucky were natural occurrences that occur from time to time and could not be attributed either to global warming, chemical/biological terrorist attacks or man-caused pollution, much less to End of the World scenarios à la Nostradamus, the Mayan calendar or biblical accounts of the Apocalypse.

Even though the Soviet Union is technically defunct, the cultural Marxism purveyed by the Left between the 1950s and1980s did damage far beyond the dumbing-down of curriculum and Woodstock-style shenanigans. Increasingly, cultural Marxism — and even Marx’s economic theories of dialectical materialism — increasingly define America in 2011 and will be made complete by 2012 unless we move to dramatically reverse course toward the Founders’ vision.

But so much has gone wrong. We face both an intransigent political correctness reminiscent of KGB-style “political reliability,” and a governing elite determined to run roughshod over American voters. It is difficult to know where to start “turning things around,” as it were. But with the new crop of adults, age 35-and-under addicted to the tenets and strategies of the Left, usually without even realizing it, education has to be the first priority of those old enough to remember what schooling used to be in our Republic: a substantive, rigorous learning experience.