Almost a month out from the election, it's time for conservatives in Maryland to stop focusing on politics and start spending their time, energy and money on culture. Why? No get-out-the-vote drive or mailer can ever be as powerful as millions of people who believe a certain way almost without thinking.

That takes time. "Fairness," for example, did not morph from meaning a level playing field to taxing people of a certain income level overnight. It took years of media support, movies, community organizing, public school curricula and higher-education policy to demonize those who create wealth while simultaneously sanctifying those who accept government aid.

It's no surprise that as that cultural shift was occurring America became an entitlement nation. As American Enterprise Institute political economist and demographer Nicholas Eberstadt said in his new book, "A Nation of Takers," American spending on welfare of all types rose from less than one-third of government outlays in 1960 to more than two-thirds by 2010. "Thus, in a very real sense, American governance has literally turned upside-down by entitlements -- and within living memory," he writes.

Because of that ensnarement in government cash, it has become nearly impossible to imagine life without taxpayer-funded aid for about half of Americans -- and worse, many have begun to think that life without government is evil.

Remember candidate Barack Obama's comments about how entrepreneurs did not build their businesses, government did?

And remember Julia? She is the fake woman created by Barack Obama's campaign who grew up on Head Start, received government loans for college, great health care, business loans and then retired with government help. She chose to have a child and not to marry, according to the storyline. She is the success story now.

Locally, Gov. Martin O'Malley is busy remaking how the state measures success with the Genuine Progress Indicator. Instead of analyzing money created and spent as a measure of Maryland's prosperity, the GPI measures income inequality, forest cover, the pervasiveness of volunteerism and 23 other items that have nothing to do with the number of paychecks in the state.

It doesn't have to be that way. As Pajamas Media host Bill Whittle said recently, conservatives have an eminently better story. Progressives hold as their vision of America "a bunch of people sitting around in thatch huts ... eating sustainable algae cakes and having organic bake sales to raise money for the Guatemalan water snake."

Conservatives, on the other hand, see the idea of America as "unlimited" and "believe that everyone should live like they have $250 million."

But up until this point conservatives have thought that their ideas should win, and have not put money behind ensuring our culture values industriousness, religiosity, marriage and honesty -- the "founding virtues" according to author Charles Murray -- aside from talking about those things every two or four years at election time and putting eagles and flags in their commercials.

The technology, branding, media and other tools used by progressives to dominate U.S. culture are out there for the taking by conservatives, too. They just need to start using them to win.