David Franke: The Mount Vernon Declaration in Historical Perspective
[David Franke was one of the founders of the conservative movement in the 1950s and 1960s, when Democrats and liberals were the ones who believed in big government, fiscal recklessness, and an imperial presidency. This article originally appeared on LewRockwell.com.]
...[D]ozens of top conservative muckamucks met on February 17 at an estate that was an original part of George Washington’s Mount Vernon. There they signed “The Mount Vernon Statement” with the subtitle: “Constitutional Conservatism: A Statement for the 21st Century.”
A companion statement issued to the press explained that “The Sharon Statement, signed at the home of William F. Buckley, Jr., in Sharon, Connecticut in September 1960, helped launch and define the conservative movement…” Now, 50 years later, “today’s leaders will unveil and sign [a new] declaration of leadership.”...
The Sharon Statement was adopted in 1960, when the “conservative movement” was in its infancy and was still defining itself as something apart from the Old Right of the World War II and post-World War II era. Bill Buckley and his National Review were trying to meld traditionalist, libertarian, and cold warrior elements into one movement – a tough assignment. This gathering-together of disparate elements was called “fusionism,” and its prophet was Frank S. Meyer, one of National Review’s senior editors. Stan Evans was a student of the prophet, and the Sharon Statement was Stan’s Fusionist Codice....
The great failure of the early conservative movement, which led to even greater failures over the past 50 years, is its belief that the lamb can lie down with the wolf and not be eaten. Conservatives of the Sharon Statement era, including Bill Buckley himself, knew that we were making a deal with the devil – endorsing an interventionist foreign policy, which the Old Right had fought tooth and nail, as a “temporary” measure to “defeat world communism....
The Mount Vernon Statement reads like a document stuck in the Sixties: “America’s principles have been undermined and redefined in our culture, our universities and our politics.” There is not the slightest hint or acknowledgement that conservatives had any part in this undermining or redefining. Nothing about people posing as conservatives being responsible for a brutal empire that straddles the world, the bankrupting of the nation to pay for this empire, the justification of torture at home and abroad, an imperial presidency, the evisceration of the Tenth Amendment, you name it. Apparently only liberals have committed these crimes against the spirit and the letter of the Constitution....
And there’s a reason why the signers of the Mount Vernon Statement are silent today about the decapitation of the Constitution in the Bush/Cheney era – almost 100 percent of them supported Bush and Cheney with their votes in 2000, 2004, and (by proxy McCain) 2008. Even if they uttered some criticisms from time to time, they ended up voting for the Republican every time because – horrors – otherwise a Democrat would win.
Read entire article at The American Conservative
...[D]ozens of top conservative muckamucks met on February 17 at an estate that was an original part of George Washington’s Mount Vernon. There they signed “The Mount Vernon Statement” with the subtitle: “Constitutional Conservatism: A Statement for the 21st Century.”
A companion statement issued to the press explained that “The Sharon Statement, signed at the home of William F. Buckley, Jr., in Sharon, Connecticut in September 1960, helped launch and define the conservative movement…” Now, 50 years later, “today’s leaders will unveil and sign [a new] declaration of leadership.”...
The Sharon Statement was adopted in 1960, when the “conservative movement” was in its infancy and was still defining itself as something apart from the Old Right of the World War II and post-World War II era. Bill Buckley and his National Review were trying to meld traditionalist, libertarian, and cold warrior elements into one movement – a tough assignment. This gathering-together of disparate elements was called “fusionism,” and its prophet was Frank S. Meyer, one of National Review’s senior editors. Stan Evans was a student of the prophet, and the Sharon Statement was Stan’s Fusionist Codice....
The great failure of the early conservative movement, which led to even greater failures over the past 50 years, is its belief that the lamb can lie down with the wolf and not be eaten. Conservatives of the Sharon Statement era, including Bill Buckley himself, knew that we were making a deal with the devil – endorsing an interventionist foreign policy, which the Old Right had fought tooth and nail, as a “temporary” measure to “defeat world communism....
The Mount Vernon Statement reads like a document stuck in the Sixties: “America’s principles have been undermined and redefined in our culture, our universities and our politics.” There is not the slightest hint or acknowledgement that conservatives had any part in this undermining or redefining. Nothing about people posing as conservatives being responsible for a brutal empire that straddles the world, the bankrupting of the nation to pay for this empire, the justification of torture at home and abroad, an imperial presidency, the evisceration of the Tenth Amendment, you name it. Apparently only liberals have committed these crimes against the spirit and the letter of the Constitution....
And there’s a reason why the signers of the Mount Vernon Statement are silent today about the decapitation of the Constitution in the Bush/Cheney era – almost 100 percent of them supported Bush and Cheney with their votes in 2000, 2004, and (by proxy McCain) 2008. Even if they uttered some criticisms from time to time, they ended up voting for the Republican every time because – horrors – otherwise a Democrat would win.