In light of the challenges facing the country and the need for clarity in the age of Obama, The Mount Vernon Statement, modeled on the Sharon Statement issued on Sept. 11, 1960, is a defining statement of conservative beliefs, values and principles penned by a broad coalition of conservative leaders representing a wide spectrum of the movement including fiscal, social, cultural and national security conservatives.
We recommit ourselves to the ideas of the American Founding. Through the Constitution, the Founders created an enduring framework of limited government based on the rule of law. They sought to secure national independence, provide for economic opportunity, establish true religious liberty and maintain a flourishing society of republican self-government.
Each one of these founding ideas is presently under sustained attack. In recent decades, America’s principles have been undermined and redefined in our culture, our universities and our politics. The selfevident truths of 1776 have been supplanted by the notion that no such truths exist. The federal government today ignores the limits of the Constitution, which is increasingly dismissed as obsolete and irrelevant.
Some insist that America must change, cast off the old and put on the new. But where would this lead — forward or backward, up or down? Isn’t this idea of change an empty promise or even a dangerous deception?
The change we urgently need, a change consistent with the American ideal, is not movement away from but toward our founding principles. At this important time, we need a restatement of Constitutional conservatism grounded in the priceless principle of ordered liberty articulated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
The conservatism of the Declaration asserts self-evident truths based on the laws of nature and nature’s God. It defends life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It traces authority to the consent of the governed. It recognizes man’s self-interest but also his capacity for virtue.
The conservatism of the Constitution limits government’s powers but ensures that government performs its proper job effectively. It refines popular will through the filter of representation. It provides checks and balances through the several branches of government and a federal republic.
- It applies the principle of limited government based on the
rule of law to every proposal. - It honors the central place of individual liberty in American
politics and life. - It encourages free enterprise, the individual entrepreneur, and
economic reforms grounded in market solutions. - It supports America’s national interest in advancing freedom
and opposing tyranny in the world and prudently considers what we can and should do to that
end. - It informs conservatism’s firm defense of family, neighborhood,
community, and faith.
If we are to succeed in the critical political and policy battles ahead, we must be certain of our purpose.
We must begin by retaking and resolutely defending the high ground of America’s founding principles.
February 17, 2010
Edwin Meese, former U.S. Attorney General under President ReaganWendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America
Edwin Feulner, Jr., president of the Heritage Foundation
Lee Edwards, Distinguished Fellow in Conservative Thought at the Heritage Foundation, was present at the Sharon Statement signing.
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council
Becky Norton Dunlop, president of the Council for National Policy
Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Center
Alfred Regnery, publisher of the American Spectator
David Keene, president of the American Conservative Union
David McIntosh, co-founder of the Federalist Society
T. Kenneth Cribb, former domestic policy adviser to President Reagan
Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform
William Wilson, President, Americans for Limited Government
Elaine Donnelly, Center for Military Readiness
Richard Viguerie, Chairman, ConservativeHQ.com
Kenneth Blackwell, Coalition for a Conservative Majority
Colin Hanna, President, Let Freedom Ring
Kathryn J. Lopez, National Review
We the undersigned join in our support of the guiding principles of The Mount Vernon Statement.
Current count: more than 4,000 signers.
Including mine. Will you sign it too?
Oh Andrea, THINK AGAIN!
http://www.debbieschlussel.com/17635/cpac-tea-party-launch-event-hosted-by-anti-semitic-israel-hating-islamic-terrorist-buddy/
“The Tea Party activists, who claim they are anti-establishment, are actually very establishment, after all. So establishment that they’ve embraced the same anti-Semitic, Israel-hating, Islamo-panderers that the conservative movement has embraced. No, I’m not talking about Sarah Palin telling FOX News’ Chris Wallace that she takes the advice of Hitler-fan Pat Buchanan’s syndicated columns (she did say that).
I’m talking about Grover Norquist, whose Americans for Tax Reform is a major sponsor of the Tea Party launch event, Tea Party Patriots’ manifesto, at today’s start of CPAC (the Conservative Political Action Conference). Norquist bragged to Politico that he is behind the tea party activists’ presence at CPAC. That’s braggadocio the tea party people would run away from if they truly abhor anti-Semitism, anti-Israel activism, and Muslim extremism. But they aren’t running the other way. They are embracing Norquist. And Norquist isn’t just embraced by Tea Partiers in Washington or in town for CPAC, but by key Tea Party leaders, organizers, and activists in every state, whom he’s traveled to meet and who also embrace him and ask him for guidance.
Many in the know refer to his organization as “Arabs for Tax Reform,” for good reason. Even Norquist’s ATR business cards are bilingual, with everything in Arabic on the flip side (or perhaps the main, with English on the flip side).
Norquist, a founder and board member of the Islamic Institute (which operated out of his offices), was on the take from Gulf state emirates and laundered money for his buddy Jack Abramoff. At Islamic Institute (which operated out of Abramoff’s Americans for Tax Reform offices), he employed Khalid Saffuri, an admitted funder of “the martyrs”–he adopted HAMAS homicide bombers’ families and funded them. And Norquist and Islamic Institute accepted cash from several “charities” which laundered money for the Saudi government to Al-Qaeda. Norquist got a top Bush White House job for Suhail Khan, whose father, Mahboob Khan, twice brought Al-Qaeda biggie Ayman Al-Zawahiri into the country to raise money for Al-Qaeda at the elder Khan’s mosque. The younger Khan proceeded to invite extremist Muslim clerics, such as one who described Jews as a “dirty little tribe,” to hang out with President Bush.
And then there is my own experience with the Islamic McCarthyism that is the Norquist brand:
Norquist got the spineless Heritage Foundation (and its Islamic lobbyist chief, Edwin Feulner, whom he took on a trip to meet the emir of Qatar) and the Town Hall site, which Heritage then owned, to remove my columns, because he was upset that I wrote about Republican Congressman Darrell Issa’s embrace of Hezbollah, terrorist state Syria, and anti-profiling laws for Arabs and Muslims. Norquist, a National Rifle Association board member, who got the NRA to revoke a written invitation to me to speak at its annual national convention because he was upset that I wrote about his close friend, Sami Al-Arian’s founding, involvement in, and terrorist fundraising for Islamic Jihad (a bombing he funded murdered New Jersey college student, Alisa Flatow, a friend of my sister’s). The NRA revoked the dis-invitation only when I was about to discuss their behavior on the Howard Stern syndicated radio show.
Yes, this is the man the conservative movement embraces, and whom Karl Rove shielded from Justice Department prosecution, even though he laundered money for Jack Abramoff through Americans for Tax Reform and defrauded U.S. taxpayers who gave up the taxes on the millions Norquist laundered through his tax-deductible organization for Indian Tribes Abramoff represented and who wanted to protect their gambling fiefdom. There is no difference between ACORN’s tax fraud and misuse of its tax deductible status and that of Norquist and his ATR. Yet conservatives continue to embrace him, and Norquist brags to Politico about how he got away with it:
Norquist said he’s worked to bring on board tea party activists and hasn’t faced any backlash from those who see him as part of the establishment or who hold against him his involvement in the Jack Abramoff scandal.
Yup, Grover Norquist one of the not-so-know, same-old-establishment faces of the Tea Party movement.”
In other words, Norquist IS SLIME!
And one other thing…
“Just in case you’re wondering, CPAC organizer David Keene has appeared at Islamic events, opposing the war on terror, and, in fact, the only official CPAC event on Islamic terrorism at CPAC, also opposes the war on terror.
Then, there is the self-promotion-fest of Scamela Geller and Robert Spencer, which isn’t really about jihad. It’s about promoting her shrieking, and his bizarre lap-dogging of her shrieking. When it comes to jihad, she’s already displayed her true colors to us. Gee, I wonder how much of Geller’s and her then-hubby’s car loan fraud business (using Muslim straw buyers and resulting in the successful murder of the one informant who was talking to police–a Black car salesman) is going to pay for this event.”
Keep your friends close and your enemies closer!
Bob The Patriot
Your comments lead me to believe you are a FALSE patriot, Bob. Mr. Spencers and Ms. Geller are fighting the good fight by bringing awareness esp re: creeping Islam. Sorry if you don’t like the message, but your ploy to attack them is pure Alinsky and we don’t buy it. You are exposed for being a non-patriot.