With the TEA PARTY prodding the country's conscience, conservative leaders commit to our founding principles

[PHILIP SCHNEIDER]

Finally the constant working by patriots across the nation to find a way forward has produced a "Document" of intent.

Conservative leaders commit to our founding principles

The Heritage Foundation invites you to join the nation's top conservatives in pledging your allegiance to the principles of the
American Founding.

» Join your fellow conservatives in signing the Mount Vernon Statement today!

Yesterday, over 80 of the nation's most prominent conservative leaders, led by Heritage distinguished fellow and former Attorney
General Edwin Meese, gathered at George Washington's Mount Vernon
estate to recommit themselves to the ideas of the American Founding by
signing a newly drafted conservative manifesto: the Mount Vernon Statement.

The Mount Vernon Statement is a declaration of conservative principles and beliefs. The statement does not specifically address
today's political issues or parties. Rather, it draws upon a
"philosophical foundation, based on a concept of constitutional
conservatism," says one of the document's drafters, Alfred S. Regenery of American Spectator Magazine.

This philosophical foundation provides conservatives of all stripes – social conservatives, economic conservatives, traditional
conservatives, and more – with a timeless "compass for every single
issue … social, economic or national defense," explains Brent Bozell,
nephew of the late Bill Buckley. In 1960, Buckley helped popularize the Sharon Statement, a precursor to today's Mount Vernon Statement.

But why this declaration, and why now? Can't we get by with documents like the Constitution and that already espouse these timeless
principles so well? Nobel laureate Friedrich A. Hayek explained why in
his classic book, "The Constitution of Liberty":

For almost a century the basic principles on which this civilization was built have been falling into increasing disregard and oblivion. Men
have sought for alternative social orders more often than they have
tried to improve their understanding or use of the underlying
principles of our civilization.

This is precisely the intent behind the Mount Vernon Statement: to help conservatives of any political persuasion -- of any party or
organization -- improve their understanding of these American
principles, to recommit to them, and to apply them.

Heritage Foundation President Ed Feulner chaired the drafting committee for the statement and welcomes its mission "voluntarily and enthusiastically," he wrote in Heritage's Morning Bell. Other signatories included Tony
Perkins, president of the Family Research Council; Grover Norquist,
president of Americans for Tax Reform; and others representing more
than 70 conservative groups and all strands of conservative thought.

The authors of the Mount Vernon Statement do not wish to redefine America's core principles, as many on the left would have us do. (The
radical People for the American Way issued a statement dismissing the statement of basic principles
as "yet another recitation of the same tired dogma we've seen for
decades.") Rather, their aim is to renew our nation's commitment to
these principles, which are as true today and next year as at the time
of the Founding. Signatory Grover Norquist put this very well:

What I find most interesting and attractive about the Mount Vernon statement is how simple, easy to understand and explain this commitment
to individual liberty and limited government is. The truths we endorse
once again have not changed since the American Revolution. They will
not change in another 200 years.

"The story of liberty is the story of America," Heritage scholar Matthew Spalding said last week at an event sponsored
by the New York Area Committee for Heritage.

The Mount Vernon Statement is conservatives' way of upholding the story of America and preserving
its legacy and timeless relevance

[ by restating it, not by rewriting it.]

[Kathryn Ball]

Thank you for posting this, Phillip.
All of the tireless hard work of true patriots is beginning to pay off.
This is NOT the time to rest on our laurels, however. We need to keep this up through this upcoming national election and far beyond it.
It is frighteningly ovbious that there are dark forces among us who are determined to destroy the liberty we've enjoyed for over 200 years. If we stop fighting, they will win.

[PHILIP SCHNEIDER]

I'm confident that our own Uncle Sam's, "Declaration of the Independents" was one of the important "documents" driving these conservative leaders to take their action at the site of signing in Mt. Vernon.

Continue to circulate the "Declaration of the Independents"!
We need to see the list of Basic Values, Beliefs, and commitments to the "immutable precepts" become the planks upon which the NEXT leading political party succeeds to office.

[Your Uncle Sam]