For Your Consideration: Conservative Beliefs, Values and Principles

(10 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Today a group of 80 Conservatives are meeting in Mount Vernon, VA to sign what is being called “Constitutional Conservatism: A Statement for the 21st Century”:

The Mount Vernon Statement

   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.

   These principles define us as a country and inspire us as a people. They are responsible for a prosperous, just nation unlike any other in the world. They are our highest achievements, serving not only as powerful beacons to all who strive for freedom and seek self-government, but as warnings to tyrants and despots everywhere.

   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.

Would that these Conservatives could get their facts straight, the Constitution was penned in 1787. Do they even know the difference between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution? Details aren’t important to these guys, nor is history, so long as it doesn’t interfere with their agenda, the continued corporate strangle hold on America and the government.

H/T to Demonsheep who is “off to sign the Mount Vernon Statement, in your blood.”

None of the signatures, of this document of self promotion based on their twisted interpretation of the US Constitution, are politicians.

This analysis from Gabriel Winant at Salon

It seems notable here that the group at Mount Vernon, quite consciously, includes no actual politicians. The statement is being pitched as a warning against the temptation of centrism. But however many insults can be lobbed at elected Republicans, it’s hard not to take their side here. Elected officials do actually have to deal with the obligations of gaining and holding office. This is the reason that many are viewed by the GOP’s activist base as sellouts: Because they’re somewhat responsive to the actual demands of the electorate, and more broadly, the imperatives and strains placed on the government by modern life. A prime example of this is how the Republicans in Congress have rallied to the defense of Medicare in recent months. Medicare is classic big-government socialism as far as the conservative base is concerned, but it’s also popular and basically necessary.

The GOP activists can get away with wishing it was 1776 because they don’t actually have to go home and face angry electorates after acting out an anachronistic fantasy. Congressional leaders like Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., can’t afford to play pretend all the time. Back in 1776, nobody needed Medicare, because the average lifespan was around 35. In 2010, just citing “self-evident” truths ain’t going to cut it.

(emphasis mine)

Well it is an election year