The Mount Vernon Statement

On February 17, 2010, a number of well-known and influential people met at President Washington's home, Mount Vernon, to sign The Mount Vernon Statement, billed as Constitutional Conservatism: A Statement for the 21st Century.

Liberal groups, said the Vancouver Sun, dismissed the Mount Vernon Statement as a rehash of right-wing ideas better suited to the 18th century than the 21st.

"The Mount Vernon Statement," reported the Sun, "appears to be yet another recitation of the same tired dogma we've seen for decades," said Michael Keegan, president of People For the American Way.

No explanation was given for why the U.S. Constitution is "better suited to the 18th century than the 21st". But it appears clear that the signers have comitted themselves to one error. Throughout the Statement they refer to the Constitution as a "conservative" document.

"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," reads the Statement. "The conservatism of the Constitution limits government’s powers...A Constitutional conservatism unites all conservatives...It reminds economic conservatives [and] social conservatives [and] national security conservatives [that] Constitutional conservatism based on first principles provides the framework for a consistent and meaningful policy agenda."

The error is in the attempt to label and to categorize the U.S. Constitution as a conservative document. It was not a conservative document in 1787. It was not debated nor established in a conservative atmosphere.
A "radical act occurred when 55 representatives of the 13 colonies gathered to improve on the Articles of Confederation and instead locked the doors, posted sentries, and proceeded to discuss, debate, and develop the most unprecedented document ever created as a blueprint for governing a nation.

"This radical document we know today as The Constitution for the United States of America. Never before in the history of mankind had such an approach been suggested, and then ratified....This was truly revolutionary, radical, bold in vision, and bolder in application." Gary Wood

So, "why does the New York Times label Ron Paul as the most radical congressman in America for calling for a return back to our constitutionalist ideals?" Through the Magnifying Glass

Because the American people have no idea what freedoms they would once again own as individual, sovereign entities under Federalist principles governed by the ideal of a republic. To roll back the clock to such a moment when men were again "Citizens of their several States" instead of "citizens of the United States" under the 14th Amendment; to go back to a time when the Interstate Commerce Clause did not give the Federal government the power to control nearly every aspect of industry and commerce, would be radical in and of itself. It would require legislators in every State and in Congress who understood Originalism. It might require a Constitutional Convention, because to right some wrongs would require Amendments. We cannot simply "go back" without unintended consequences. Laws that put legitimate criminals in prisons are sometimes not legitimately "laws" according to Originalist interpretations of the Constitution, and yet we cannot let dangerous people out of prison.

President GeorgeW. Bush was not the first to declare certain captured enemy soldiers by the title of "enemy combatants"; Lincoln did so during the Civil War, and there are those who would perhaps be correct to say that both Presidents were wrong to do so. Yet there are men detained at Gitmo who would kill another 3000 Americans (or Spaniards or Malays or French or British or Germans) if they were released.

The Constitution is not the "conservative" document the Republicans would like us to believe. It is more important than that, more primary, more principled, more limited than most Conservatives would want to see.

We got into this messy situation of ignoring and going around the Constitution because Republicans as much as Democrats and Progressives wanted the power to control the forces of law.

We don't need "conservatives", Tea Party or otherwise, controlling our nation. We need the radicals who will state without equivocation, "I swear to abide by the Constitution as it was given to us, not as I would have it through subversion."

© FAMN LLC (MI)