By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
Conservative leaders from around the nation will gather at the site of George Washington’s River Farm in Alexandria, Virginia today to sign the “Mount Vernon Statement,” a document designed to declare philosophical war against the big government and moral relativism being advanced by the nation’s liberal elite.
CNSNews.com is reporting that the document, which will be available on-line after 3:00 p.m., takes a stand against the type of change being pushed by today’s political leaders who are ignoring the Constitution’s limits on government power.
“In recent decades, America’s principles have been undermined and redefined in our culture, our universities and our politics,” says an excerpt from the statement. “The self-evident 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,” it says.
The document was drafted by a coalition led by Edwin Meese, former attorney general to President Ronald Reagan. It includes L. Brent Bozell III, president of the Media Research Center; Ed Feulnerm president of the Heritage Foundation; Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform; Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America, and many others. More than 80 of these leaders will be on hand for today’s signing ceremony.
The statement is similar to the Sharon Statement of 1960, which was signed at the home of William F. Buckley Jr. in Sharon, Conn, and which launched an era of conservative activism that ultimately led to the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.
Speaking to CNSNews, Meese explained the appropriateness of drawing attention to the Sharon Statement, but said it was important to “update that in terms of generally how conservatives think today, which is basically the same principles restated in what you might call modern language.”
Since the election of the ultra-liberal Barack Obama in 2008 along with a Democratic majority in Congress that also leans far to the left of most Americans, a grass roots conservative movement has been arising in the form of the Tea Party that has won several convincing victories in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts.
The signers of the Mount Vernon statement hope to not only keep that momentum alive, but to help it bring America back to its roots.
“The Republican Party has been successfully when it subscribes to conservative principles,” said Meese. “You go back to 1980, go back to 1994, those were the guiding principles that provided for Republican successes.”
The full document will be posted online at www.themountvernonstatement.com after 3 p.m. today.
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