Liberals come in all shapes and sizes, from the anti-nuclear power protestors to the Code Pink crowd. They have many individual concerns that fire their political passions, but there is always an underlying philosophy that unites them, no matter their personal political projects. Because at heart, liberals all believe in the same thing; government should strive to meet al of the needs of the people from cradle to grave, no matter whether or not there is any actual authority for the government to do so. And when push comes to shove liberals recognize that they all need one another in order to achieve the big government goals they have set for the nation. It is rare to see liberals divided over matters of ideology and even rarer to see even the most contrarian liberals culled from the left wing flock.

Conservatives like to look on liberals and say that they are disjointed, or just a loose amalgam of different pressure groups seeking political power in order to serve their specific ends. That is very true of the Democratic Party in general, as well as the GOP, but what we often miss is the fact that liberals almost always unite when the need arises. Look at the current healthcare debate as a prime example; nearly any plan that is passed will eventually have negative impacts on union members and their healthcare plans. Yet the unions have set aside, for the most part, their individual concerns to push for President Obama’s plan in a show of liberal unity. And it is this type of unity that allows the liberals to carry the day on so many important political and policy fights in the country; they will stick together through thick and thin.

On the conservative side, however, that unity does not seem to exist. When people look at the conservative side of the aisle, they do not see a movement made up of people pulling together to reach a single destination. What they see instead is a much fractured group that can hardly stop bickering long enough to even make a show of opposing the left wing agenda being promulgated by the current presidential administration. “National defense conservatives” are at odds with “paleoconservatives” over national defense strategy, while “border security conservatives” clash with “free market conservatives” over whether we need secure borders or a steady stream of sla…uh…cheap labor. And it seems that every other conservative faction seems to have a bone to pick with the “religious conservatives”, who by the way, seem to always bear the blame for the electoral failures of the GOP. The ultimate unity of purpose that is found on the liberal side of the spectrum just seems to be missing from the conservative side.

What I have noticed among conservatives is that whenever conservatives start adding qualifiers to their ideological leanings, there is going to be some internecine battles about to be fought. It seems that many people that want to identify as conservatives also want to claim the mantle of “true conservatives” and wrap themselves in it, while diminishing their fellow conservatives. Case in point: After the 2006 midterm elections when the GOP lost control of the Congress, what was the loudest complaint from many conservatives? The complaint, which as echoed in some quarters after McCain was beaten by Obama, was that the “religious conservatives” or “social conservatives” had cost the GOP the elections, and that they should be jettisoned from the movement. Little time was spent on figuring out what conservatives could do to win back public trust, while finger pointing inside the conservative movement ran rampant. Many conservatives were more concerned with attacking other conservatives that they did not agree with than opposing the massive government intrusions into the financial life of the country.

What conservatives of every stripe should be doing is what the liberals always do when it counts: Focus on the unifying characteristics of their ideology instead of picking fights within the group. There are certain characteristics that should be part of the political DNA of every conservative: smaller government, fiscal restraint, strong defense, secure borders, judges who actually respect the Constitution, and a fair chance for everyone to succeed or fail on his own merits. Whether your particular passion is national defense or fiscal policy, all of the other conservative characteristics are there in you as well. If we can learn to put aside our petty fights and differences when big issues are on the table, we can stall the list to port of our ship of state, and maybe even bring her back to starboard. But we have to be unified to do it, because we are facing an adversary that is relentless, aggressive, and above all else, unified. Only with a similar unity from conservatives can the slide towards socialism be arrested; to continue on a fractured path is to condemn the country to the continued ravages of the left and its ideas.

So to borrow a phrase from the left: Conservatives of the world unite! Because as one of the Founders so succinctly phrased it, “Either we all hang together, or we will all hang separately.”

Over the past few years as I have moved from being a Republican to being a Conservative, I have noticed that many Republicans/Conservatives harbor some serious pipe dreams. They have a tendency to long for days gone by, for situations past, and they look at those times as the "good old days". Now, those days may not ever have been as good as we like to think they were, but they still stand as beacons for the way we wish things were. We also have a serious tendency to harbor pipe dreams and make them part of what conservatives want to see happen; we make those dreams part of our requirements for candidates and use them as disqualifying points for others. But those ideas and dreams are often do us more harm than good, so here is my list of the 5 pipe dreams we need to let go of and move forward:

1. Roe v. Wade: Roe may be the worst piece of "law" ever foisted upon this country, as it is entirely based on legal fictions. It is a monument to the massive egos of the Warren Court, which decided that the job of the Court was to force it's social views on the rest of the country. It was lawless, unreasonable, and repugnant to the Constitution. But with all of that said, we need to let go of the idea that Roe is going to be overturned. No matter who the President is, no matter how many conservative justices sit in the Court, no matter how long we wait Roe is going to stand. The best we can do is hope for opinions that chip away at Roe gradually and return the decisions regarding abortion back to the states, because there will be no outright overturning of this legal abomination.
2. Federal Marriage Amendment: As much as we may oppose the redefinition of marriage by the forces gathered on the left in this country, we will never see any amendment to the Constitution that allows the practice in any way, shape, form, or fashion. It has been tried before and has failed, not because of massive protests against the idea, but because of the unwieldy mechanism of amending the Constitution. There is simply not enough support for the idea to get a 2/3 vote in both houses of Congress or to get 2/3 of state legislatures in this country to call for a national convention. And honestly, this is a matter best left to the states to decide as well; the social mores of the states should be the deciding factor on whether this is acceptable or not. We just have to allow the people to decide the issue at the ballot box, and not some state court (hello Massachusetts!).
3. Internal Revenue Service: Politicians always know they can get a round of applause by going after the IRS, because everyone hates the IRS. And with good reason; the IRS may be technically a part of Treasury, but it is basically a department of its own. Not only does it have the expected tax geeks running around picking your pockets, but it has its own investigative division, and damn near has police powers! The IRS is very powerful, and very scary to most people: never forget, the FBI couldn't get Al Capone but the IRS did! So we all long for the day and for a politician to do something...anything...to reign the IRS in, and in our fondest dreams, to shut them down. After all, the existence of the IRS is unconstitutional on it's face, right? The only thing is that no one is going to do anything about the IRS because they perform a function that the federal government needs; they are the ones that do the dirty work assigned them by the Congress. The IRS did not create itself and does not sustain itself, the politicians in Washington do...and use the IRS as convenient scapegoats for their bloodsucking ways. The IRS is the face of the confiscation of American wealth to be given to the government to (mis)spent on all of its grand schemes. The IRS is never going to go away because they are the muscle that keeps the Congressional crime bosses out of trouble.
4. Department of Education: No one that looks at the educational state of America can honestly say that the Department of Education has been a boon to American education. In fact, since the federal government decided to hijack education from local school boards, America's educational standing in the world has steadily slipped despite the massive amounts of taxpayer cash that has been pumped into the system. The problem is the same as any other bureaucracy...people in Washington, DC have no earthly idea what students in Walnut Cove, NC really need. They don't know what the educational and community standards are in Axton, Va., and they have no idea if there is a need for vocational education programs in Laramie, Wyo. But you can't convince them of that, can you? And the influence of the Department of Ed. is not going to diminish anytime soon, because state and local school officials are addicted to the federal monies they receive for their districts. They have become so dependent on money for free and reduced lunch programs and Title X funds that if the fed told them to show "Debbie Does Dallas" to 4th graders as an educational tool, they would break their collective necks to do so! We may rail, with good reason, about how much of a failure the Department of Ed. is, but it ain't going anywhere!
5. Smaller government: If there has ever been an oxymoron committed to paper, "smaller government" is it! The nature of government is to expand and to grab any power that it can get without a fight. And our government is the world's greatest example of this: we have departments for energy, education, health & human services, occupational health & safety, land management, and space exploration. And in each of the areas that the government expands into, it tries to establish total control; that's why you have to get a freaking building permit to build a deck on your own property! Conservatives would love to see the government shrink, and hold fast to that idea...but  more realistic expectation is in order. Government is not going to get any smaller, so what we need to do is try to hold the line where it is. It may not be the dream scenario, but if the government is ever going to be scaled back we need to stop it from expanding any more than it has already.

So there you have it, my top five conservative pipe dreams. Let me know what you think, and feel free to add comments as you see fit!