What I'm left with, unfortunately, at the end of this year is what feels like a huge coating of yuck. It is hard to feel any other way.

We are a hair's width from having nationalized health care imposed on this country. We are but a few months from having taxes imposed on individuals and corporations that will further restrict economic growth. We are conceivably but a few months away from Cap and Trade legislation that will impose on America a literal guilt of prosperity so profound as to transcend all political borders on Earth. We have government reaching onto private property to seize cigarettes, fatty foods, water, sugary drinks, and evil bulbs of light. Soon even our hemorrhoids might belong to the macabre Harry Reid. (Who else is going to vote for that guy's reelection?)

In a world of madness, it would be easy to get just as mad in response, and easier still to pick up the toys and go home.

This is precisely why the conservative movement must stay firmly rooted in its ideals and conservative principles--the only thing standing between the America envisioned by our Founding Fathers and the vision of American Utopia as divined by Jennifer Granholm, is the steadfastness of conservatives.

This is not a time for the weak willed conservative. If we throw up our hands and retreat from this fight in disgust, regardless of all the disasters of the past year, we are going to like even less the results that a retreat from political action on the part of conservatives will produce.

Backbone. Steadfastness. Diligence.

There are a lot of words out there that could describe what the conservative movement must have in the year ahead as we approach the 2010 elections.

I have to admit, I was not a huge fan of Jimmy Valvano until after his battle with cancer became public. I quickly learned that he was a man of steely resolve. There were times that I believe that Jimmy V. felt the fight itself was what it was all about; that he couldn't sweat the details of his disease on a daily basis, but that he knew that if he fought with everything that he had on every single day, that he was doing all that he could, and doing nothing less than what should ever be expected of him.

"Don't ever give up," were simple words of wisdom that he delivered behind many tightly gripped podiums beamed across all of America, and, until after he took his last breath, he never did. Conservatives could find few better people from which to take a life lesson.