Before he passed away, Bob Ross, the frizzy-haired host of the PBS painting show, "The Joy of Painting,” became a somewhat iconic figure for his soothing, sedate voice and repeated references to "happy little trees.” Ross didn't believe in errors, often stating "we don't make mistakes, we just have happy accidents." Ross would often tell his audience that they could have as many trees as they wished in their world but that he preferred a lot of trees in his.

The modern American conservative movement is dead; punched-out by pugnacious neo-cons intent on imposing their purified conservative strain on all Americans. There's no recognizable there there remaining in conservatism. When Senator Barry Goldwater strode to the microphone in San Francisco's Cow Palace to accept the Republican Party's nomination for president in 1964, he effectively struck the death knell for the party's liberal, Northeastern, Rockefeller wing. Although trounced in the general election, Goldwater's principals of limited government, individual liberty and adherence to the Constitution, advocated in the campaign and his groundbreaking book, "The Conscience of the Conservative,” ultimately became the mainstream political belief.

In a new television advertisement for General Motors' H3, two men stand in a grocery store checkout line while the cashier scans the first man's items. The cashier prominently tilts a large package of tofu for the camera while man one sheepishly turns to man two as if embarrassed by his purchase. Man one then notices man two's grocery items, which include red meat and charcoal. Humiliated, man one spots an H3 print advertisement, burns rubber out of the parking lot, leases a new Hummer and ends the ad contentedly driving along while the catch-phrase "Restore Your Manhood” is prominently splashed across the screen.

In November 2001, motivated by a grab-bag of ideals, I enlisted in the military and took a position as a Counterintelligence Agent. Soon after, I left for basic combat training and later served in Afghanistan, for which I was awarded with two Bronze Star Medals. I've been fortunate to garner valuable lessons from my experiences. However, on that first day of basic, with the platoon assembled in a horseshoe configuration inside a sweltering third-floor bay, I had a palpable sense of trepidation. The stereotypically crusty drill sergeant paced the middle of the floor and barked out orders, which he expected us to execute without question. Implied, however, was that he would always put us in a position to successfully execute those orders. That was the bargain that helped maintain order.