I’m tired of “business as usual” in Washington, D.C. I know a lot of you are as well. It is this reaction to the status quo that gave rise to the tea party movement.

In spite of the 2010 election results, we see a lot of Republicans continuing to act as if they owed nothing to the tea party movement. How do I know this? By looking at bills like HR 1380, the Natural Gas Act, and seeing over 80 Republicans, many of whom you helped get elected, signed on as co-sponsors.

For those of you unfamiliar with the bill, I want to recommend our sister organization, American Majority Action’s, memo on the bill and the inherent flaws found in it. I also penned an op-ed for the Washington Times recently on the subject, found here.

Let me be honest. I am all for ending our dependence on foreign oil and for getting out of the Middle East. I am all for exploring our domestic natural resources so that we can be energy independent.

What I am not for is Washington, DC attempting to manipulate the free market and creating an artificial demand for something like natural gas when there is no demand for it. I am also against crony capitalists like T. Boone Pickens who look to Washington, DC to further burden the American taxpayer with billions of dollars of credits and subsidies to create this artificial demand. Who absorbs all the risk in this scenario? You and me, the American taxpayer. Who gets all the reward and earns all the profit? T. Boone Pickens.

It is rare that American Majority engages in issues like this one, but this one is so important I could not pass on the opportunity to inform you about it. Will you join with me in holding Republicans in Washington, DC accountable? If your member is on this list of co-sponsors, will you call them today and ask them to get off HR 1380, the Natural Gas Bill, as a co-sponsor?

Tell them you are tired of Washington, DC trying to manipulate the free market.

Tell them you are tired of business as usual. It’s time for change.

We are proud to announce that more than 500 groups have now taken the New Leaders Pledge since the launch of this first-of-its-kind national program late last year. Those local tea party and activist groups have agreed to recruit and train more than 5,000 new potential candidates in advance of the 2011 and 2012 elections. This brings the program more than half way to its goal of engaging 1000 organizations each to recruit 10 new leaders in their local communities to run for state or local office.

American Majority and tea party leaders from across the nation launched the New Leaders Project (NLP) to combine policy, education and grassroots infrastructure in an effort to sustain Tea Party momentum across America. The NLP is helping community leaders identify quality, liberty-minded candidates while fostering a new era of accountability between voters and elected officials.

“This is how we build a farm team for the future,” stated Ned Ryun, President of American Majority. “These new leaders have been identified as people who will be committed to fiscal responsibility, free enterprise and limited government. Thousands of them will now be trained to be effective advocates for the kind of reform that is necessary to save this nation from an unresponsive and unmanageable government we cannot afford.” In addition to the more than 500 groups that have signed the Pledge, more than 500 individuals have already committed to running for office.

To support the groups that take the Pledge and the work of local tea party organizers, American Majority will offer its proven policy, campaign and candidate training to the new leaders. More information about the New Leaders Project can be found at www.NewLeadersProject.org.

“Political parties do little to ensure their candidates, especially incumbents, adhere to fiscally responsible principles,” states Jason Hoyt, founder of the Tea Party of Orlando, FL. “In Florida, we the people will utilize the New Leaders Project to not only ensure we have the right candidates, but that they’re equipped with the tools necessary to win elections.”

“This is a crucial time in our nation’s history. We do not have a government that serves the American people and tea party organizers at the local level recognize that,” states Ryun. “Statistics show that the longer a government official remains in office, the more prone they are to grow government. These new leaders will have the tools to break the cycle of incumbency and not only win, but passionately support the solutions we need.”

With the New Leaders Project fast reaching its goal, American Majority and local activist groups are keeping what has become one of the most potent grassroots political forces in American history strong, focused and ready for 2012.

Read the full text of the release here.

I recently had the pleasure of having a little chat with Andrew Breitbart about his new book,  Righteous Indignation; Excuse Me While I Save the World! Sadly, since Andrew and I have been in the same place I think exactly three times over the last three years, we did the interview via email. But below is our short discussion, not only about the book, but his thoughts on the tea party movement and other topics:

Ned: What compelled/motivated you to write “Righteous Indignation?“

Andrew: The un-ironic answer is that the book tells you why I wrote the book. It is ultimately the story of my awakening, my transformation from being a default cultural liberal in the bluest, most elite part of a blue city in a blue state: Hollywood.  And over the last 15 years, I’ve increased my knowledge of what it means to be a conservative and connected it with my desire to alter the cultural landscape.  When I see a conservative movement that is solely fixated on politics, I realize that I’m in a unique position to inform and to focus on the cultural side of our political problems.  We, as Americans, are not going to win back our country if we don’t take back K-12, the humanities departments, and the graduate schools of our nation’s top higher education institutions.  We’re not going to win if we don’t neutralize the devastating, repetitive attacks on American exceptionalism, capitalism, and Judeo-Christianity from the leftist cynics in Hollywood who are too drugged or ungrateful to understand that they’re helping slowly to rot the greatest country on earth from within.  In short, I wrote this book to do my small part in trying to reclaim this righteous country, and to awaken as many people as I can to join this army.

Ned: When was the “I am going to be a journalist” moment for you?

Andrew: The book delves somewhat tragicomically into the way that my ADD-addled brain works.  And one common thread through my unfocused youth was an obsession with “the news.”  By the age of nine, I was watching every edition of local news through the nightly national news and then the 11 o’clock news, only to be buffered by my father’s subscriptions to the Santa Monica Evening Outlook, the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, and the Los Angeles Times.  That orgy of information now seems quaint compared to the information overflow I received when I logged on to the Internet for the first time.  If I’m Humphrey Bogart in the movie, the Internet was my Lauren Bacall.  Not only did the Internet provide me more immediate news data than I could possibly consume, but it also gave me a mechanism to be a participant and a contributor.  That personal revolution had immense political consequences for me.  It was clear that those who controlled the media were now losing control to highly democratic forces. We the people are now acting as checks and balances to the status quo.  There hasn’t been a moment since 1995 that I haven’t felt the raw excitement that comes from knowing that these are historic and revolutionary times and that the primary battlefront is the media.

Ned: What is the biggest threat to our republic?

Andrew: The barriers to an informed electorate (**cough**ahem**the media**cough**ahem**).  Once the truth is transcendent, if the American people are given a choice between truth and lies, I’ll have faith that they will make the right decisions.

Ned: What one book has influenced you the most?

Andrew: The politically correct answer is Whitaker Chambers’s Witness.  It had the intended effect on me–I’m drawn to apostates’ tales, and that’s what my book ultimately is, the story of how someone who once considered himself a liberal saw the light.  The apostate’s goal is to show those lost in the fog of liberalism the error of their ways.  Two other books blew my mind: One is Tammy Bruce’s The New Thought Police. Her vivid depiction of going from a lesbian National Organization for Women Los Angeles Chapter President and liberal media presence to becoming a conservative rabble-rouser possessed cinematic “reveals” of her recognizing that her peers on the left were steeped in intellectual dishonesty and an ends-justifies-the-means mentality.  Better yet, I’ve read a book that has yet to come out that is the most important book from the most important voice: master-playwright David Mamet.  While perusing Amazon.com for my book, please pre-order The Secret Knowledge, an almost too-good-to-be-true, incisively written evisceration of liberalism and a shockingly powerful defense of conservatism from one of the twentieth century’s most regaled liberal minds.

Ned: Where do you think the tea party movement will be in 5 years?

Andrew: If it’s gone, we’re gone.  The future of this country is the tea party movement.  It must grow.  It must get younger.  It must courageously defy the mainstream media’s admonition to minorities to stay away.  It must grow more diverse, but not in the name of tolerance, not in name of political correctness, not in the name of multiculturalism, but in the name of e pluribus unum.

Ned: What are the three greatest milestones in the life of Andrew Breitbart?

Andrew: Aside from the obvious—meeting my wife, getting married, and having four children—being at Kurt Gibson’s 1988 World Series home run means far, far, far more than it should.  But you have no idea how wonderful that moment was. Meeting Drudge at the beginning of his ascent; and watching the ACORN game-plan play out as devised to force a reluctant political and media class to takeJames O’Keefe and Hannah Giles’s powerful journalistic exposé seriously.

Folks, there you have it. Now go buy a copy of Andrew’s Righteous Indignation.

I keep hearing the narrative that somehow, as though it were written in stone, collective bargaining is a right for public sector unions. I would disagree entirely: collective bargaining is a privilege, not a right, for public sector unions. And you know what? About 50 years ago, the A.F.L.-C.I.O. agreed with me. The union’s Executive Council in 1959 said: “In terms of accepted collective bargaining procedures, government workers have no right beyond the authority to petition Congress — a right available to every citizen.”

And it is a privilege that has been badly abused for years; U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics show that public sector employees, many of them unionized, make nearly $40 an hour in combined wages and benefits versus roughly $27.50 for those in the private sector.

So I applaud what Scott Walker is doing in Wisconsin, but I actually feel he didn’t go far enough. All his Budget Repair Bill is doing is addressing the public sector unions’ right to collectively bargain over pensions and health care. I think it would have been nice to address the right to collectively bargain for wages, and here’s why: at the end of the day, the public sector unions are not collectively bargaining for a greater share of earnings, as do the private sector unions. They are bargaining to get a bigger slice of the pie of tax dollars, which the government has taken from the American taxpayer.

Now to be clear: paying a certain amount of taxes is a part of being involved in an organized civilization. If you want to make sure you have roads and national defense, you’re going to have to pay taxes. But that being said, taxes are removed through a threat of force from the taxpayers by the government (yes, I mean force. Try not paying property or income taxes and see what happens). So the government is run off of money earned in the private sector. Government does not create jobs; when there are reports of more jobs, but they’re all government jobs, the government is not creating anything: it is merely funding even more government jobs off the backs of the private sector. Which compounds the problem because by taking capital from the private sector to create government jobs, you’re not creating jobs that create more capital, as private sector jobs do.

So, public sector unions, unlike their private sector union counterparts, are not creating more capital. Do they provide services for the public good? Absolutely. Are they creating capital? Absolutely not.

So here you have public sector unions negotiating for more pay in tough times, soaking more from the already overburdened American taxpayer. I keep hearing this drivel of, “Well if Walker is expecting the unions to make sacrifices, is he going to ask others to make sacrifices by increasing taxes?” Memo to those saying that (Mika Brzezinski, I’m thinking of you): The American taxpayer has been gouged for years, and years, and years, by higher taxes, and I’m not talking just income taxes. I’m talking the hidden taxes on gas, food, etc. Yeah, add up all your taxes sometime and you’ll realize you’re probably paying well over 50%, sometimes 60% or more of your wages, in taxes. So you’ve kind of already done your part.

I’m at the point where I feel like the public sector unions, and their partners in crime, their allied elected officials, are like vampires on the American public, sucking the very blood out of them. Worse, they are dumb vampires.

Smart vampires suck just enough blood out to satiate themselves and then leave the victim alive so they can hit them again for a quick infusion down the road. The public sector unions and elected officials haven’t quite learned that lesson and keep sucking the blood out of the American people. At some point, there ain’t going to be any more blood to suck, and then everyone is dead.

And a word on the unions allied officials. These officials, standing between the taxpayer and the public sector unions, are supposed to serve the American taxpayer. It’s a little something called a government of “We the People,” with power originating from the people. But in fact the elected officials are serving the public sector unions because the unions collect millions off the forced-dues from government employees and then reward the officials, their “bosses,” by funding their reelection campaigns. This is precisely backward from how this country was meant to work. It was originally meant to work like this: power originates from the American people, is given to elected officials, who then manage the bureaucrats and federal employees, on behalf of the people, i.e. taxpayers.

Now we have this bizarre scenario where the public sector unions have the power to dictate to the elected officials, who then dictate to the American people. The only way any of that last scenario makes sense is if you detach yourself from reality and enter a land of unicorns and pixie dust.

Now I know for most, none of this is a revelation at all. But it does defy logic: ultimately what we’re doing by increasing benefits and pay for public sector unions is removing capital from the private sector (i.e. us) via taxes and crushing our economy in a time when we actually need the private sector to create more jobs.

What Scott Walker, and many others are doing is appealing to common sense, especially in tough economic times. I have no problem at all with public sector unions making the equivalent wages and benefits that their private sector counterparts do. Of course that means a shaving down by about 30% on the combined wages and benefits of the public sector unions, but it has to be done. And I applaud those officials who are willing to step up to the plate and do it. The American people are applauding and cheering you on.

[Crossposted on BigGovernment.com]

Almost immediately after the awful tragedy in Tuscon, Arizona on Saturday, people, particularly those on the left, tried to score political points. I was stunned at the total hypocrisy, and the asinine comments being made. Some were saying that the shooter of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords must have been a tea partier incited to violence by Sarah Palin or others on the right. I think Erick Erickson over at RedState.com had a nice post touching on this subject, and I don’t want to dwell on that too long, because the point of this post is not about what whether the shooter was right or left wing, even whether his motivations for the shootings were political at all (though I must say, people who read Mein Kampf and the Communist Manifesto are typically not tea party types).

The point is that sometimes crazy people do awful things, and what took place on Saturday was a seriously deranged young man committing a horrible act of murder. As the father of three young children, hearing the mother of Christina Greene, the nine year old girl who was shot and killed, describing what took place was gut-wrenching. We would be best served to pray for those who lost their lives, pray for their families, for Congresswoman Giffords as she fights for her life, and not debase ourselves with crass, hypocritical attempts to score points.

I posted this on RedState on Monday:

At American Majority, we have believed since the Tea Party movement began that in order for it to remain a potent force for real and lasting change, it must grow from the ground up. The movement always has been, and always will be, about the local leaders and organizing as “close to the ground” as possible.

I, and many in the Tea Party movement, am not interested in change for one or two election cycles. I am hoping for generational change, but for that to happen, the work must begin as locally as possible. Let’s face it: the political movements that are long-term and sustainable over time go down to as local a level as possible and organize, not only organizing precincts, but running candidates for every level of office.

Less than two weeks ago, American Majority and local tea party leaders from around the country launched the New Leaders Project. The Project is aimed at getting 1,000 local tea party and 9.12 groups to identify 10 new leaders in their communities to run primarily for state and local office in 2011 and 2012. In the effort, there will be some identified that will run for federal office. Another key aspect of this project will be training campaign managers to run effective campaigns, and continuing to train activists on how to be effective grassroots workers in hardiwiring precincts, doing GOTV, and conducting voter registration drives.

Since the launch, nearly 150 groups in 36 states have signed the Pledge, because if we are serious about real change, 2010 was just the beginning. As I posted several weeks ago, this year’s elections were just the opening salvo in the long war that will determine who will control America’s future: the American people or a ruling class of elite incumbent politicians who have driven this nation down the road to statism for too long. The future of our Republic, our democratic process, the free enterprise system and the power of the individual are all dependent on activated citizens committed to accountability.

Despite the successes in 2010, over 80% of incumbents at the federal level won - and despite the seismic shifts in the state legislatures, over 1,000 state legislators were not even challenged in the 2010 general election. If the American people, of which the tea party movement are the first adopters, hope to truly win, that cannot happen again.

Still others see the movement being defined by candidates in the last election that were not perceived as credible. At American Majority, we have done our best to protect the integrity of the movement and improve its effectiveness through our training programs that have educated thousands of local tea party members helping them better promote the policies of limited government.

Building upon the first component of active citizenship – we now, as part of a strategy to sustain those groups for future elections – move toward identifying future leaders of America’s communities. We have sought together to take the movement from protesting to action - and now onto identifying credible, liberty-minded leadership. New leaders must be found – starting right now- who have the ability to effectively communicate the ideas of free enterprise, limited government, fiscal responsibility and individual freedom while at the same time running sound campaigns, because let’s face it: politics is policy. Those who win elections implement policy.

American Majority will train these new leaders on the nuts and bolts of running for office; since our launch in 2008, we have already identified and trained over 1,200 candidates for state and local office. These leaders will also be trained on how to articulate their message effectively and continue to raise awareness in their communities right through Election Day. As more and more leaders come into the process at the state and local level, not only will they impact those levels of government, they will also be creating a farm team for higher office. We will also be training people on how to run and manage campaigns so that these leaders will run the most effective campaigns possible.

Another aspect of this project is accountability. We seek more leaders that will realize they serve the American people first, not the political class or party leadership. We also believe that as all politics is local, all accountability is local as well. The New Leaders Project is about breaking the hold of incumbents who continue to vote for more spending, more programs and more government intervention in the free market.

The New Leaders Project is also about empowering the local tea party organizers: it’s important to remember that the movement would not exist, or be successful, without the local leaders. As I mentioned on Fox and Friends this morning, this movement, and its success, is about Chris Littleton and the Cincinnati Tea Party and the Ohio Liberty Council, Lesley Hollywood and the Northern Colorado Tea Party, Catherine Engelbrecht of the King Street Patriots, Ana Puig and Anastasia Przbylski of the Kitchen Table Patriots, David Crow of the Faulkner County Tea Party, Tim Dake of the Wisconsin Grandsons of Liberty, and the Jason Hoyts and Colleen Conleys and hundreds of other like them.

So-called national groups could cease to exist tomorrow, and the movement would still continue. However, if the local leaders went away, the movement would end. American Majority has made it its goal to empower local leaders, to highlight them, to help in whatever way we can to make them more successful.

This project is also about breaking the cycle of incumbency at all levels, local, state and federal, and devolving political power out of DC and state capitols. It is also about much more: the conservative movement has become too DC-centric, despite stating beliefs in federalism. This project is as much about devolving power in the conservative movement back into the states by empowering local leaders.

There will be those in the political establishment, regardless of party, who hope that the Tea Party movement will fade away after 2010. But the Tea Party has proven it can be a sustainable political force – first by activating citizens – then creating privatized political infrastructure – and now identifying credible leadership for America’s communities and ushering in a new era of accountability.

So Andrew Breitbart was asked by ABC News to be part of its broadcast for election night, but also to be part of its townhall in Arizona. But then the left flipped out and the George Soros-funded Media Matters started whining in yet another attempt to quell views that are opposite to its leftist, statist thinking. Now ABC New is stumbling all over itself, and right now, Andrew’s role seems to be up in the air. So here’s an idea: Call Jeff Schneider at ABC News at 212-456-3587 and tell him, for the sake of the First Amendment and equal time, you’d like to see Andrew Breitbart on ABC News’ coverage tomorrow night.

The 2010 primary season was, for the most part, a good one for limited government, freedom-loving conservatives. Most of the high profile challenges against the incumbent or establishment candidates, with Mike Lee, Ken Buck, Joe Miller, and Sharron Angle ended with the grassroots candidate winning. The American people clearly demonstrated that they are tired of long time incumbents, the ruling class, ignoring the will of the people and growing government spending and the role of government in people’s lives.

But we need to put things into perspective: the 2010 primary season must be seen as simply the opening salvo in the American people’s war against statism. It is the first battle in many to come in the war over whether the American people, or the ruling class, will control the American system of government.

Sure, there are reasons to celebrate, but let’s be honest: nothing has been won yet. The primary victories are just that: primary, not general election, victories. And while it’s humorous to see the befuddlement of the establishment as yet another one of its candidates goes down in defeat, think about this: of the 472 U.S. Representatives and Senators running this fall, it is almost guaranteed, in a supposed “anti-incumbent, anti-establishment” election that 80% or more of the incumbents will win this year.

Those statistics are just at the federal level, but they hold true even at the state level: roughly 80% of state house and state senate incumbents will win this fall. The good people over at Ballotpedia.org have even compiled a list of state legislators who will not even be challenged in the general election. The list is uncomfortably long, which is staggering given that this is a Congressional re-districting year due to the census.

All of this to say to the grassroots: there have been great victories, and progress in the right direction. But we must be honest: in 2010, with 80% of the incumbents winning, the ruling class will actually win the first battle in the war. What will be the true test is what the grassroots, and I would say the American people, will do in 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014; quite frankly for every election, every year, for the next 10-15 years.

What it comes to is this: If the American people are truly interested in winning the battle over who will run our form of government, if they truly believe that all power inheres in the people, not the ruling class, then they must break the power of the incumbents at all levels of government. If the American people can control the nomination process of a party, or parties, they will control the party, and quite frankly, the system of government.

What those of us who believe in free enterprise and limited government are confronting; an out-of-control bureaucracy, out-of-touch leaders, and fiscal irresponsibility, did not materialize overnight, and will not be changed overnight. It will take time to shift the massive ship of the American state and get it back on course.

I would say that until we see a losing percentage of 50% or more for incumbents at all levels of government we cannot truly say that there is an anti-incumbent wave and that the American people are winning the war against the ruling class. That percentage will not happen in the next election, or even the next after that, but I believe it should the conservative movement’s goal to increase by 5-10% every year the number of incumbents beaten. The starting point is to simply challenge incumbents in primaries (between 2000-2008, a GOP U.S. House member had a 98.3-99.5% chance of winning his or her primary).

I was asked by a reporter the other day if the “civil war” in the Republican Party was over. I told him I didn’t believe that there was a civil war: what’s taking place is people expecting Republican leaders to actually adhere to the principles of the party, and if they don’t, we can find leaders that do. He asked if I thought we’d see more of what took place in the 2010 primary season play out in the future. I told him we were just getting warmed up and to expect more of the same in 2012 and beyond. There are six Republican U.S. Senators that might need to be challenged in 2012. There are dozens of House members, and untold numbers of state legislators, county commissioners, city council and school board members who should also be primaried.

The process of breaking the incumbents’ hold over the American system of government will not be an easy one, but it will be well worth it. A farm team of conservative leaders at all levels of government needs to be identified and groomed, and American Majority is in the process of doing just that. But that is only part of the solution: the American people have to stay engaged and demand greater transparency and accountability from their leaders and government. Furthermore, we must have leaders sent to Washington, DC who believe that power should be devolved from DC and back to as local a level as possible-concentrated power was never what the Founders intended, and in fact, it is precisely what the Founders feared.

If the American people can beat the ruling class, and regain control of the government of “We the People,” they can renew the Founders’ vision for America. If we will renew the great principles of free enterprise and limited government, then we as a nation can rise to even greater heights of freedom and prosperity for all in the 21^st century.

Independent Women’s Voice and American Majority Action are combining forces on The Repeal Pledge, which is calling for the de-authorization, defunding and repealing of ObamaCare. The hope is to get as many incumbents and candidates to sign the pledge to get them on the record. Rush Limbaugh has begun talking up the pledge, saying that ObamaCare must be repealed, and you can see the clip of Rush talking about it here at American Majority Action’s site. The Wall Street Journal wrote an editorial about it on Monday, and the entire editorial is here.  Now people will say that pledges are meaningless, they accomplish nothing. But that’s if they don’t have any muscle behind them to enforce the pledge. I have a feeling that there will be some real “muscle” behind this pledge, and once incumbents and candidates are on the record, they can be, and will be, held accountable. I would strongly encourage those reading to sign the pledge themselves, but also to get the incumbents and candidates in their districts to sign it as well. There are specific pledges for both incumbents and candidates, with the incumbent one being here, and the candidate one here. I believe that ObamaCare is, and should be, a major campaign issue this fall, so get ahold of the candidates in your area today and get them to sign the pledge.

I posted this earlier in the week on RedState.

I posted this earlier today at RedState.com:

I’ve been studying the Progressives the last few months, and I think this post will be the beginning of a series, or at least a conversation starter for another post or two. It’s struck me in my studies that the Progressives and America’s Founding Fathers are on the polar extremes of two very important issues: the nature of man and the role of government. And if you’re coming from two diametrically opposite worldviews, it of course leads to opposite conclusions. The problems we face today are a direct result of the fact that Progressive beliefs and the Founders’ beliefs, as found in the Declaration and Constitution, are like oil and water: they will never mix.

Progressives view man as perfectable, essentially good, and see centralizing power in national government as necessary for the advancement of society. You might even say the Progressives thought the state in the hands of an educated elite was, and is, a benevolent force for good. Because of their views on man, and government, the Progressives were, and are, utopian statists. By that I mean they believe in the goodness of the state for the advancement of society; but such beliefs, and the belief that man is essentially good, are utopian: such beliefs are not rooted in reality. For empirical evidence, look no further than the 20th century, which is full of evidence as to why virtually every form of statism attempted not only did not work, but also eventually resulted in the deaths of hundreds of millions. The word “utopia” literally means “nowhere,” and utopian statism has never worked anywhere. It never will because those who hold to such ideas fail each time to understand the actual nature of man and the proper role of government.

The Founders’ views on man and government were diametrically opposed to the Progressives: they knew man is not essentially good, nor should a government made by man, and ruled by men, have great centralized powers. Why? Alexander Hamilton wrote in the Federalist Number 6 that: “Men are ambitious, vindictive and rapacious,” with James Madison writing in Federalist 51, “But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” Nor did the Founders view centralized power, even government, in the most positive of lights: Washington would write, “Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”

This is not to say the Founders were cynics. Instead, they were optimistic realists. While they believed that man is capable of great good, they also felt that he is not capable of sustained good; in their view, man is an imperfect creature in an imperfect world. So how could one realistically provide for the greatest amount of freedom and prosperity in this imperfect world? That was the challenge of the Founders when writing our founding documents. They were ultra-realistic about the nature of man and the nature of man’s governments–and yet created a form of government that was able to give America the most freedom and prosperity any nation has ever seen by limiting the role of government and providing for, and protecting, individual freedom.

One of the great tensions we are seeing today in America is that of the worldview of Progressives coming up against the worldview of the Founders. The American people are awakening, via tea party protests and the growth of 9.12 groups, because I believe that deeply engrained in the American people are the beliefs of the Founders with regard to human nature and government. The protests we’ve seen over the last two years are a natural reaction to the false god of statism being foisted upon them, and not just by the current administration and unpopular Congress. While the Bush administration was not as egregious as the current White House (nor was the attendant Republican Congress) both those entities were statists with a small ‘s,’ preferring to not make the truly difficult choices, and instead, growing the size and role of government in our lives. That’s why I virtually ignore party affiliations, and even find the terms “conservative” or “liberal” to be almost meaningless. I choose to evaluate candidates in light of whether they are statist or non-statist: do they believe in expanding the role, scope, and size of the state in the lives of the individual, or in limiting the power of the state (government) so as to provide for the greatest freedom within the bounds of ordered liberty? Government has a role in our society: national defense to provide for protected space within which a free people can flourish, the enforcement of the rule of law and the right of contract to provide for a just society, the protection of private property, etc. But the list of where government should be is a very short one, and the rest of society should be left to the private sphere.

Americans are seeking non-statists to govern this country, and though I think this fall’s elections will be “progress in the right direction,” but let me say that simply electing Republicans is not the solution because there are plenty of Republican statists parading about. The way toward ensuring liberty is in electing men and women who have deeply held views on the role of government, individual freedom, and the free enterprise system. Some will happen to run as Republicans, but dare I say, even as Democrats in some locations—but it is only this originalist worldview (shared by the Founders) that will turn our country around and put us back on the path of prosperity and freedom.

Several nights ago, one of my bigger fans, Rachel Maddow, was raving on her show about some of the local solutions to the Gulf oil spill: local fisherman and shrimpers, parishes and towns on the Gulf Coast successfully finding creative ways to stop oil from hitting their shores or marshes. She talked about how collaborative it all was, and how solutions that were working were local solutions, and it really struck me that these localities were laboratories of invention.

It was fascinating to listen to, and I’m not sure Maddow knew entirely what she was actually advocating, but she was on to something: the best decisions for localities are best made by local leaders, not dictated from afar. The liberal narrative, that of course Maddow trotted out as well, is of course that evil British Petroleum is failing to solve the problems with the spill. But it is also equally true that the federal government is even more powerless than BP to successfully intervene at a local level, partly because it does not have the technology or ability to solve the spill. But at the same time, I’m sorry, a federal official being flown in to the Gulf coast does not have a vested interest in solving the problem. That’s not to say that there are not federal employees currently spending long hours trying to solve the mess. But at the end of the day, no one knows how to clean up his or her own locality like someone who lives and breathes there.

This all got me thinking about what American Majority is about: encouraging people to go local and come up with solutions to clean up their towns and states from irresponsible leaders and government. We’re encouraging leaders in the various states to start talking with each other, collaborating on ideas that work, possibly even working on joint projects. We encourage them that they need to organize their communities for freedom: take over school boards, city councils, county commissions, even state legislative chambers, creating robust and muscular grassroots organizations that can help elect the right leaders and then keep them accountable.

American Majority is focused on the state and local because we believe the closer decision making and power is to the people, the more efficient, effective, and responsible it is. But we also believe that the groundswell that will change the country this direction is headed begins with local involvement and change. A true national groundswell from the bottom up will bring about generational change: I’m not interested in changing things for one or two election cycles. I’m interested in changing things for several generations.

There are other reasons why not only we are focused on state and local, but also why all conservatives should be as well. First, most government spending takes place at the state and local level. Granted, some federal money is pushed into state and local, but the facts are that over 50% of government spending is state and local. Second, most government employees are state and local. Of the roughly 23 million government employees, only about 3 million are federal. Which leads to another implication: state and local government employee pensions.  But that’s a topic for another post.  And on a last point, 69% of the current U.S. House began in state and local politics, and 74% of the U.S. Senate did: state and local is where the overwhelming majority of political careers begin.

It’s time to go local, folks, without of course ignoring the massive federal issues like healthcare and cap-and-trade. But if we in the liberty movement will go local, become community organizers for freedom, and have local leaders network nationally with other likeminded leaders across the nation, we will bring about massive change in this country.

This is an op-ed written by Bob Beauprez and my brother, Drew, that I thought was worth posting.

BREAKING THE CYCLE

by

The Honorable Bob Beauprez and Drew Ryun

Over the last few weeks, thousands of people have voted in primaries across the United States.  The most important message to those voters is that their job – and their opportunity – doesn’t end when the polls close.  The opportunity to make change happen comes today and every day.

Take the question so many conservatives are asking themselves today: How in the world did we end up here? Did voting for George W. Bush advance the conservative cause? Is voting for Republican candidates the way to achieve conservative policy victories?

No. No matter what party takes control of the House, Senate, or White House, it is simply business as usual, expanding government and empowering politicians on both sides of the aisle who concern themselves primarily with the perpetuation of their own power and the power of government.

For years we the people have fueled a system that has spun further and further out of control. But there is hope. There is now a new way forward to break this cycle. We do not have to rely on the status quo–the same players, the same insiders, the same places, or the same plays–to fight and to win.

The American people are standing up to power, corruption and politicians’ self-interest in a way our democratic republic has not enjoyed since our founding.  They deserve to win back their power and win back their country.

More are joining this movement to engage and empower the American people in a uniquely American way. Citizen control of government was the standard of the American political system for over one hundred years. That is no longer the case, but what was lost can be regained.

Right now, the John Hancock Committee and its like-minded allies are rebuilding the key functions necessary to win in politics and change the system forever. They are all privatized functions, which means we’re not relying on the Republican or Democrat Party, consultants or party insiders, to win our fights. It is the job of party insiders and consultants to protect the party. Our job, as conservatives, is to promote truly conservative ideas and leaders who are critical to preserving freedom and protecting our nation’s future.

This means encouraging free-market, freedom-loving leaders to run as candidates within the two-party system, from school board to United States Senate. It means creating a trusted source of news outside the mainstream media. It means innovating public policy and marketing political ideas. And most importantly, it means building a system to keep elected officials accountable inside and outside of election cycles. All these pieces and more are in motion from Texas to Maine and Missouri to Hawaii.

We are working where the action is and where the people are: in the states and away from Washington, DC.

For too long we conservatives have placed our trust in a party system to win elections, to carry our standard to state capitols and the nation’s capitol, and to represent us behind closed doors. That trust has been squandered.

So, we face a choice: throw up our hands up and say, ”You can’t change the system. Things have always been done this way and they will always be done this way.”

Or, realign resources, redefine the balance of power, and reinvent politics.

To give up is to deny that we are blessed to live in the greatest nation on Earth. It is precisely that belief in American exceptionalism that inspires the revolution currently afoot from coast to coast.

So, consider declaring your independence from the party system, from consultants and party insiders who want to pad their pockets with money and from losing. Try something new.

Take part in the transformation of politics as we’ve known it and take back the country that is rightfully yours.

The Honorable Bob Beauprez represented the 7^th District of Colorado for two terms and is the current Vice-chair of the John Hancock Committee for the States. Drew Ryun, son of former United States Congressman Jim Ryun, served as a deputy director in the Grassroots Division at the Republican National Committee and is the current Executive Director of the John Hancock Committee for the States.

I posted this yesterday at RedState:

Between the years of 1760 and 1776, over 400 pamphlets were written, published and distributed throughout the American colonies. Many of the pamphlets were written by laymen and dealt with inherent rights, the role of government, freedom, liberty, and even the right for the colonists to be an independent people.

Those pamphleteers sowed the seeds of freedom in the minds of the American people. In 1815, John Adams wrote to Thomas Jefferson about those pamphleteers:

What do we mean by Revolution? The war? That was no part of the Revolution; it was only an effect and consequence of it. The Revolution was in the minds of the people. The pamphlets, newspapers in all the colonies, ought to be consulted during that period to ascertain the steps by which the public opinion was enlightened and informed . . .

In a nod to those pamphleteers of the 1760s and 1770s, American Majority has released its first pamphlet in a monthly series entitled, “Why America is Great.” The first volume deals with America’s rich heritage and the transcendent principles of our Founding.

You can read a digital version of the pamphlets here: http://americanmajority.org/pamphlets/

If you are interested in obtaining hard copies of the pamphlets (they are big,  broadsheets), they are $1 plus S&H (there are bulk rates as well). Please contact us at team@americanmajority.org or call us at 540-338-1251 if you would like to order copies.