Star Parker

In the 20-plus years that I have worked as a conservative activist, I've spoken on almost 200 university campuses -- usually to Republican and conservative groups.

Over time, I have observed changes in attitude among many young Republicans -- and I believe these shifts help explain the rise of Ron Paul.

When I first started lecturing early in the 1990s, leading heroes of Republican youth were Ronald Reagan and William F. Buckley Jr.

I am from a military family -- my father was career Air Force -- and many in my immediate and extended family have been or continue in military service.

So perhaps I carry heightened sensitivities to the unique realities and challenges of military life.

Last year, a one-year cut in the payroll taxes that working Americans pay to finance Social Security was enacted in the name of so-called economic "stimulus."

But, like the rest of the economic stimuli that have come from Washington over the last three years, the only thing that has been stimulated is the growing hole of national debt into which we sink deeper and deeper.

Now, unsurprisingly, our president and his Democratic colleagues want to continue, and possibly expand, this payroll tax holiday despite its obvious failure.

Wait a second: Failure is a matter of definition.

It is encouraging news that the Supreme Court has decided to consider the constitutionality of key provisions of Obamacare -- the Affordable Care Act.

By the end of next summer we'll know if the federal government can force individuals to buy health insurance and if they can force states to comply with a newly expanded Medicaid program.

Professor Walter Russell Mead of Bard College blogs that in the debates to ratify the Constitution, it was considered a weakness "that important laws could be passed and would operate for some time before people knew whether they were legal..."

Rick Santorum has announced his "Faith, Family and Freedom" tour in Iowa.

Santorum may be dragging the rear in the line-up of Republican presidential candidates, but I am grateful to him for being the only candidate who insists that the so-called "social issues" remain an integral, explicit part of his agenda.

It's not just conservatives who are frustrated today. It is all Americans who long to see their nation regain its vitality, restoring freedom and prosperity at home and shining the light of human potential across the planet.

What is particularly frustrating is that the party out of power, the Republican Party, is supposed to be carrying the torch for these values. But it's barely happening. The Party has become bogged down with careerists, rearview-mirror thinkers and its own inside-the-beltway elite.

Nothing could speak more to this problem than establishment attitudes toward the remarkable Herman Cain.

I have a great plan for "saving" Social Security.

Today's average U.S. life expectancy is 78 years. Let's make the retirement age to collect Social Security 79.

Presto. The "system" is saved (or until life expectancy increases, at which point we can raise the retirement age again).

Pretty dumb? Sure. But if the goal is "saving" the system, nothing would work better.