The Mount Vernon Statement, A Poor Man’s Manifesto… VERY Poor

-By Warner Todd Huston

A group made up of some of the biggest names in contemporary conservatism got together a few days ago and crafted what they are calling the “Mount Vernon Statement,” a manifesto of sorts meant to give direction to today’s conservative movement. Put succinctly, it fails to fill the bill.

Taken as a whole this statement is fine as a short history lesson. It explains pretty clearly what the founders had wrought when their basic work was done with the adoption of the U.S. Constitution. But as a statement of principles that might guide today’s discussion I do not think the letter works.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that this effort is harmful. In fact, I think every young person should read it for its explication of our historically conservative American principles. The problem is that this thing doesn’t seem to speak directly to what we are facing today like a statement that perhaps aims to become boilerplate should.

Some of those involved with the statement said that the 1960 “Sharon Statement” served as their inspiration. The Sharon Statement, intended to give some ideological umph to Goldwater conservatives, is an effort that works much better as a rallying cry to action. Sadly, the Mount Vernon Statement falls a little flat in this respect.

Historically I have two minor qualms about the newest effort. First of all its name doesn’t resonate. Yes, George Washington was the indispensable man of our early republic. Without him the warring factions facing off in political battle during our early republic just might have strangled this baby in its crib. But, as steadying a force as he was, Washington was not really the ideological or intellectual father of our nation. He was the father that kept the kids from beating each other up, the father we looked up to as a model of comportment, the man we looked to as the solid rock of the family, certainly, but he wasn’t the idea man. For that we looked to men like Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams among many others.

So, naming this letter after George Washington’s estate seems a bit odd. Better that these folks should have met in Independence Hall, Philadelphia and called this the Philadelphia Statement, the Independence Statement, or some such thing. The words “Mount Vernon” are obviously meant to lend historical heft to the document but they just don’t succeed as a meaningful ideological association. In fact, it’s sort of hollow. Are we naming our bedrock ideological principles for the man that didn’t craft them? That seems a bit odd to me.

Secondly, I find fault with this paragraph (my bold):

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 word “recognizes” is not the correct word to use for what the founders thought about the word “virtue.” They didn’t merely “recognize” virtue existed. They built their entire political edifice on the insistence that our political leaders practice virtue and that they base their every move on the need to be seen as civically virtuous. This is an idea about which few of our political leaders today have the slightest clue, not to mention that the public is generally ignorant of what the founders meant when they discussed public virtue. Sadly, this letter doesn’t help us regain a proper perspective on the founder’s idea of public virtue.

The Mount Vernon Statement missed an opportunity to better explain what virtue in government could mean as a rallying cry for today’s conservative movement.

The Mount Vernon Statement is a fine little history lesson but compared to the Sharon Statement, it just doesn’t seem to as immediately take on the issues that we face. Where is the discussion of the destruction of our educational system, where is the warning against our worst foreign threat, where is the assertion that our system of jurisprudence has been undermined? All these things are broadly implied by the Mount Vernon Statement, granted, but one wishes that today’s problems were more directly addressed.

While we don’t want a statement that names names or attacks specific policies directly -- that would detract from the essential universality of such a statement of principles -- still to my mind the Mount Vernon Statement is a bit too broad. I feel that we need something a tad more direct. The Sharon Statement was perfect for its mixture of what were then current issues and timeless conservatives principles.

Should you have signed onto the Mount Vernon Statement, or should you feel that you’d like to do so, I can find no harsh words for you. As I said, there is no great harm done by this effort. Unfortunately, there is also correspondingly little succor that this effort can lend to our cause. It seems like a nice history lesson but as a manifesto to rally around it is more like a staid assertion than a battle cry. It is eminently forgettable.

Part Two

Yes, it’s easy to criticize. Surely it will occur to the minds of many readers of my criticism here that I should offer solutions along with my criticisms. So I offer the following basic idea of what I’d consider a better “statement” than what resulted from the efforts at Mount Vernon, Virginia. I’ll call it the “Huston Statement” for lack of a better title and since, well, I’m the one writing the thing.

Remembering that I am one man, not a committee of 80 some high-powered conservative operatives, here are the ideas I thought of while reading the Mount Vernon Statement, humbly offered as a basis upon which to further the discussion:

The Huston Statement

Since our political climate has long since drifted from the first principles of our founding and since we now face a crisis threatening to tear down our American moral center we commit ourselves to re-establishing our American character.

We believe that our Constitution and the principles espoused in the Declaration of Independence form the best guide by which to nurture our American character and provides a firm bedrock upon which to build a government.

We as Americans believe:

That as individuals we have the right of self-determination, to be free of overweening involvement in our lives by government at all levels from local, to state, to federal.

That as free men we must strongly assert that we are responsible for ourselves, our family, and our property and that others owe us nothing but to observe our rights as we observe theirs.

That our liberties depend on our civic virtue and that it is up to each of us to become informed citizens.

With these God-given liberties in mind, that our representatives must strive to keep government out of the lives of the people to the greatest extent practicable and that they should honor the principles of limited government as handed down to us from our founders.

And we assert that adherence to these principles will act as a beacon of freedom to the world, that we should actively promote them abroad giving succor to all those that would follow in our footsteps, and that we should not lend legitimacy to foreign bodies or nations that retreat from them.

We affirm that:

Private property is sacrosanct

The market-based economy free of government meddling must be preserved

Employees must be free of compulsory associations

Governments must be accountable to the voters not to judges and unions

Communities have the right to draft standards without federal approval

Education is a local responsibility solely under local and state control

It is freedom of religion, not freedom from religion

And that our Second Amendment rights are God-given and cannot be infringed

Additionally, we as Americans also reaffirm that legislation is the rightful duty of our constituted bodies of representatives and not the venue of capricious judges. Ruling from the bench is no better than the ill-considered tyrannies from the throne from which we so long ago rebelled.

Finally, let us understand these principles to be an affirmation of our American character one that has made our nation the richest and strongest nation in human history. Any force, whether domestic or foreign, that wishes to materially alter this character is an enemy to our nation and one that should not be treated lightly but faced squarely and with resolution.

Well, this is how I see a statement of principles that are geared to today’s issues but are still the sort that attest to our timeless conservative ideals.

I hope this can serve to continue the discussion that the Mount Vernon Statement started.

Anti-Gun Government Tyranny in Canada And Our Founders

-By Warner Todd Huston

Unlike the U.S., Canada does not have the right of self-protection enshrined in its laws. Where we Americans have the coverage of the Second Amendment to protect our God-given right to self-protection, the Canadians have to rely on the occasional good nature of their overlords in government to determine how their right to own a firearm is treated. Sadly, their ownership of firearms is usually mistreated rather than upheld.

A writer for the Toronto Star wrote an article recently that showed the capriciousness of government thugs where it concerns privately owned firearms in Canada. Joe Fiorito had a retinue of Toronto's finest stormtroopers come beating on his door one day this month to confiscate his old rifle because the columnist had the temerity of forgetting to re-up his registration of a disassembled, 30-year-old, small caliber bird gun.

Involved were multiple police cars, half a dozen officers, judge's warrants. All sorts of iron, jack-booted automatons of the state came down on Mr. Fioritto. It was as if he were public enemy no. 1. All of this over a beat up old rifle that was disassembled, locked in a basement, and stored in a house in which no ammunition existed.

You might laugh at this absurd overreach. It might amuse you that all these thousands of Canadian dollars in state funded policing assets were wasted for this practically useless old rifle in the possession of an obviously unassuming and powerless citizen. You might utter a guffaw at the Canadian's follies.

But be forewarned: Canada is but one step ahead the U.S.A. if the American left has by hook or crook gotten its way and outlawed our Constitutional rights.

Mr. Fiorito calls himself a "social democrat who wears his bleeding heart on his sleeve," and one that agrees with the Toronto gun registry... or at least used to. He says he agrees that no one but cops should be allowed to have handguns or "military-style weapons." But what threat, he wonders, did his little bird gun present to society?

I am and have been a supporter of the gun registry but now I'm not so sure, not when ownership of a two-bit little bird gun – legally acquired, lawfully used and stored in pieces in a trunk for the past 30 years – is sufficient reason for three cops to come to my door and snatch it, after threatening me with a search warrant.

Look, I registered the damn thing. I simply neglected to renew. A sin of omission?

Send in the troops.

Fiorito then reported that even days afterward the Toronto police were seen in cars idling in front of his house. What a waste of government resources not to mention an outrage against this man's god-given rights.

This incident shows the idiocy of government, the penchant for stormtrooper tactics by its police/military arm, and government's outright inability to consider a citizen as anything other than a dangerous threat. And these facts, the way that an all powerful government that doesn't have to fear its citizens treats those same citizens, is precisely why America's Founders enshrined our rights to self protection in the Bill of Rights of the Constitution of the United States. The founders weren't nearly as worried about thieves and marauders as they were of an out of control government.

The founders did not invent this right out of their over-ripe imagination, either. There was an awful lot of precedent for it. A book called Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws (1765) was a huge influence on the founders and this is what it said on arms ownership: "The right of the citizens that I shall at present mention, is that of having arms for their defense." And " This is the natural right of resistance and self-preservation when the sanctions of society and laws are found insufficient to restrain violence of oppression" and again "To vindicate these rights when actually violated or attacked, the citizens are entitled ... to the right of having and using arms for self-preservation and defense." This warning by Blackstone was born of thousands of years of government abuse of citizens.

With our founder's heavy use of Blackstone's Commentaries, it is clear that what the founders had in mind was that self-preservation and defense was a natural right to be protected by the laws and the Constitution. And historically what did people have to fear at least as much as criminals? Government.

James Wilson was one of only 6 founders who signed the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, he was a great Jurist, and was one of the first members of the Supreme Court appointed to that body by George Washington. He spoke on the floor of the Constitutional Convention 168 times and was one of the most active politicians of his day.

Mr. Wilson taught his laws students that the rights secured by the Constitution did not create new rights, but simply reaffirmed old ones. He said that our own documents were made, "to aquire a new security for the possession or the recovery of those rights to... which we were previously entitled by the immediate gift or by the unerring law of our all-wise and all-beneficent Creator." Thomas Jefferson similarly viewed our Constitution and principles, saying: "Government is to declare and enforce only our natural rights and duties and to take none of them from us." For his part John Adams stated that, "Rights are antecedent to all earthly government; Rights ... cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; Rights are derived from the great Legislator of the universe."

As far as our founders were concerned, the right to protect one's self was God given. What God bestows let no man tear asunder.

Here are some other quotes about firearms uttered by our founders specifically now that we have the principles of self-preservation established:

• "The right ... of bearing arms... is declared to be inherent in the people." Fisher Ames, one of the framers of the 2nd Amendment in the first congress
  
  
• "The great object is that every man be armed ... Every one who is able may have a gun. But have we not learned by experience that, necessary as it is to have arms, ... it is still far from being the case?" Patrick Henry
  
  
• "And what country can preserve its liberties if its rules are not warned from time to time that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms." Thomas Jefferson
  
  
• "To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them" Richard Henry Lee
  
  
• "The advantage of being armed is an advantage which the Americans posses over the people of almost every other nation ... the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms." James Madison
  
  
• "A free people ought ... to be armed." George Washington
  And now, what is the militia? Try these quotes:
  
  
• "The militia are the people at large." Tench Coxe Atty Gen. of Penn. and Asst. Sec of Treasury under Washington
  
  
• "Who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people." George Mason
  
  
• "The militia is composed of free citizens." Samuel Adams
  
  
• "A militia... are in fact the people themselves." Richard Henry Lee

And who is this militia? The first federal law passed concerning just who a militia member might be, the Militia Act of 1792, states that the "militia of the United States" consists of every adult male in the country. Under that act each adult male was required by the law to possess a firearm and a minimum supply of ammunition. In fact, the current law still states, "The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 and under 45 years of age." -United States code, title 10 par., 311(a)

Lastly you can check most of the early states and see that they went even further in delineating that firearms should be owned by individual citizens of the states. But that is another, longer, discussion.

So, what the heck does this all mean? Well, to be blunt, the founders would surely have agreed that American citizens should be expected to defend themselves against the sort of government thugs that pounded on columnist Fiorito's door. Yes, you read that right. There is no gentle way to put it, no softer way to massage the essential truth that the founders would themselves have been up in arms if some government official had imagined he had the power to confiscate their firearms. In fact, they did. We now call it the Battle of Lexington and Concord, one of the earliest engagements of our Revolutionary War. The colonists, our founders, took up arms to prevent British authorities from confiscating their firearms and gunpowder.

The final conclusion is that no patriotic American citizen should meekly hand over his firearm to the government (unless he's abdicated his rights by becoming a criminal). Unfortunately, if the anti-American left has its way the United States of America will emulate Canada and become meek, powerless, subjects of an all powerful, uncaring, illicit government.

Don't let it happen. Be vigilant.