The Founders would not recognize the United States of today as the American Republic they established. Our goal is to restore the Founders’ Vision. First, we must understand what that Vision was and why it is worth preserving.
The Founders’ Vision
…no free government, nor the blessings of liberty can be preserved to any people but by firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality and virtue.
Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776)
The truth is, all might be free if they valued freedom, and defended it as they must.
Samuel Adams (1771)
Government…should be formed to secure and to enlarge the exercise of the natural rights of its members; and every government, which has not this in view, as its principal object, is not a government of the legitimate kind.
James Wilson (1792)
The enumeration in the constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
- 9th Amendment to the United States Constitution (1789)
It is critical to understand that the Founders believed:
- that our rights are derived from God;
- that the purpose of government is to protect life, liberty and property;
- that the form of government best suited to our needs is a Republic;
- that government derives its power from the people;
- that elected representatives and governmental officials are at all times accountable to the people;
- that if the people can govern themselves, they will not need much government, but to the extent the people cannot govern themselves, they can expect more and more government;
- that healthy social and economic systems function on the foundation of certain commonly shared moral and ethical beliefs; and
- that concentration of power threatens liberty.
Our government has failed. Our political parties have failed. Our institutions have failed to preserve the Republic as the Founders established it. Why?
The ultimate responsibility for this failure rests with the people themselves. In 1837, Francis J. Grund, an Austrian immigrant, professor of mathematics and social commentator, foresaw what would happen if the people ceased to be virtuous and self-reliant:
The American Constitution is remarkable for its simplicity, but it can only suffice a people habitually correct in their actions, and would be utterly inadequate to the wants of a different nation. Change the domestic habits of the Americans, their religious devotion, and their high respect for morality, and it will not be necessary to change a single letter of the Constitution in order to vary the whole form of their government.
If we want to restore the Founders’ Vision, we as a people must bring about fundamental change in our culture and our politics. Nothing short of that will do.
Restoring Politics From The Ground Up
Honor thy father and thy mother.
Exodus 20:12, Deuteronomy 5:16
…wanting good government in their states, they first established order in their own families; wanting order in the home, they first disciplined themselves….
Confucius, The Great Digest (c. 500 B.C.)
Those who want to restore the Founders’ Vision for this American Republic have a difficult fight ahead. It cannot be done by the political methods that are so common today. We cannot assume that our elected representatives will radically change their behavior unless there is radical change in the behavior of their constituents.
We can restore the Founders’ Vision and have limited government, respect for life, liberty and property, and a stable Republic only if the people are willing to sacrifice and to find ways to govern themselves and to solve problems confronting them without turning to government. It is unrealistic to believe that we can reduce the scale and intrusiveness of government if we do not take appropriate actions to deal with our problems on our own, beginning in the communities where we live, worship, work, play and educate our children.
Pressure politics has carried us only so far. The Left may thrive by using the tactics of MoveOn.org, labor bosses and special interests. We cannot. We are not interested in expanding government. Ours is a different task. We want to re-energize families, voluntary associations and local communities that deal with the whole person in ways that are consistent with traditional values.
Focusing on public policy has not advanced the conservative cause. The lawmaking and rulemaking processes have come to be too heavily influenced by special interests. In part, this is due to the concentration of power in Richmond and Washington. Conservative values will never again prevail until we reverse the tendency of Virginians to cede responsibility and authority for our problems to distant governments. So long as problems are left to the state and federal governments to solve, the proponents of ever-expanding government will have the upper hand. The notion of a conservative legislative program over the long-term is fanciful unless the people themselves become less dependent on government, in which case they will not require much legislation, taxation and regulation.
Conservatism is not limited to the preservation of the private enterprise system. Conservatives embrace that system because it fosters freedom and justice, but the perspective of a conservative is much broader. The conservative perspective contemplates a society that assures equal rights and treats each person as a distinct personality entitled to dignity and having God-given rights and responsibilities, not as a cog in an abstract economy or society or a creature of the State, deriving whatever rights he or she enjoys from the government. Conservatives advocate freedom not only for themselves, but also for their families, churches and voluntary associations.
We believe in Almighty God and transcendent Truth. We are humbled by the knowledge that we have the capacity to do both good and evil, and recognize the need for personal and social restraints on our behavior. To the extent we can restrain ourselves and limit our passions, we will not require much government. We oppose centralization and expanding government. We reject the notion that man is perfectible. We resist governmental programs that enforce a leveling equality, but instead favor a society that allows every person to achieve in accordance with his or her abilities, effort and willingness to accept risk. For these reasons, conservatives approach life with a perspective that is fundamentally different from that of the Left.
Mission
[W]hen the Americans lose their republican institutions, they will speedily arrive at a despotic Government….
Alexis deTocqueville (1840)
The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.
Thomas Jefferson (1790)
We should commit to restoring the Founders’ Vision. Our mission is to raise cultural awareness that our rights come from God and that liberty and limited government are possible only if we recognize the source of our rights and assume more responsibility for ourselves, our families and our communities; put our shared conservative values into practice; and hold those in power accountable for their policies and decisions.
- We will not succeed in preserving our Republic through politics alone.
- Involvement in political campaigns and political parties by itself has not proved to be successful.
- Our focus and energy must be directed at the roots of our cultural decline.
- Dependence on elected representatives and government agencies to solve our problems has led to more and more government.
- Fundamental change will occur if and only if we refight the cultural battles that we lost in the 20th century.
- We must persuade others that the answer does not lie in surrendering more and more responsibility and authority to government.
The Organization Concept
[F]or many, the contact with like-minded persons in local meetings is essential if they are to be mobilized for even routine tasks.
James Q. Wilson, Political Organizations
(1995)
To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections.
Edmund Burke (1790)
These little republics would be the main strength of the great one. We owe to them the vigor given to our revolution….
Thomas Jefferson (1810)
Americans of all ages, conditions, and all dispositions constantly unite together. Not only do they have commercial and industrial associations to which all belong but also a thousand other kinds, religious, moral, serious, futile, very general and very specialized, large and small. Americans group together to hold fêtes, found seminaries, build inns, construct churches, distribute books, dispatch missionaries to the antipodes. They establish hospitals, prisons, schools by the same method. Finally, if they wish to highlight a truth or develop an opinion by the encouragement of a great example, they form an association. Where you see in France the government and in England a noble lord at the head of a great new initiative, in the United States you can count on finding an association.
Alexis deTocqueville (1840)
Pursuit of our mission requires organization. The concept undergirding our approach is that effective grassroots activity by conservatives ultimately depends upon a spontaneous, dynamic and largely unregimented approach, rather than the traditional corporate or military model or even the model commonly used in politics.
- The focus must always be on activity at the local level among people who know each other ? or should.
- By their nature and according to their beliefs, conservatives resist top-down organizations.
- Past efforts at organizing conservatives have demonstrated that programs involving the concentration of decisionmaking, fundraising and information at the state or federal level management lead to suspicion and resistance at the grassroots level.
- Bringing new participants into the effort is more successful if done on a peer-to-peer basis.
- Top-down organizations inevitably discourage participation and suppress intensity.
- Organizations that depend on command and control are unsuited to volunteer efforts.
- Circumstances differ from locality to locality, indicating that the organizational model must be flexible.
An approach that constantly emphasizes the critical role of spontaneous local efforts tends to produce a recognition, whether conscious or subconscious, that individuals and voluntary associations as close to the local level as possible possess the power and responsibility to direct their own lives and solve their own problems.
What distinguishes true conservatives from others is their belief that they can do more for themselves and solve most problems where they live – without government involvement.
Liberals, on the other hand, tend to look past problems immediately around them and focus on abstract and distant causes.
A statewide organization is needed only for those tasks that cannot be managed at the local level. The functions of the statewide organization include communication, planning, preserving essential data, raising funds, providing legal and logistical support and offering training.
The Central Organizing Precept
[O]rder generated without design can far outstrip plans men consciously contrive.
Friedrich Hayek (1988)
But the basic source of the strength of successful parties in times past, as many of the technicians and bosses themselves would agree, lay not in machinery or techniques or systems of organization, but in the sense of public purpose that moved their grassroots workers and the voters who identified with them in the electorate.
A. James Reichley, The Life of the Parties: A History of American Political Parties (1992)
For conservatives, the central organizing precept is not the promise of power or money. It is shared values. Articulating those values clearly and giving them present-day content and meaning generally determine whether conservatives will be effective.
We believe in the concept of spontaneous order, according to which individuals can address problems, without surrendering their liberty to government, through natural and self-ordering processes and generally can do so more effectively than government can.
We are joined in the belief that liberty is possible only if we take responsibility for ourselves and assume our proper roles in our families, communities and churches.
Understanding that excessive government undermines individual responsibility and the role of families, communities and churches, we are committed to re-establishing the proper balance.
The Message
The Democratic philosophy, usually unspoken but quite clear nonetheless, is that government is there to be used as an instrument of action. This philosophy has gathered together over the past half-century a varied assembly of Democratic loyalists—citizen groups who wish to use government for new departures, minority groups who want from government protection and advancement, labor groups and farmers in trouble who wish to influence or extend government’s leverage on the national economy; it has also held to the Democratic Party the largest of its old components, the Southerners, who know by memory of defeat and occupation how powerful an instrument of action is the American federal government and who seek to retain a veto power always within it.
The Republican philosophy is entirely different, clearer in metaphysical terms yet murkier in political expression. It is the belief, deep down, that each citizen bears a responsibility in private life and in community life as great or greater than the responsibility of government to shape that life and community. Part of the Republican tragedy in recent years has been the inability of its thinkers to articulate this philosophy clearly enough to draw political conclusions and programs from it.
Theodore White, The Making of the President (1962)
- The particular message that successfully captures conservative values and energizes conservatives should be simple and easy to communicate.
- Potent ideas are the most powerful propellants of political and cultural activity.
- Our message should be explicitly positive and implicitly a rejection of the culture of the Left.
“Restore the Founders’ Vision” is a message that is straightforward and powerful.
Our mission is our message.
