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Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council issued the letter below yesterday inviting conservatives to sign the Mount Vernon Statement, a proclamation in which the conservative movement reaffirms itself to America’s founding principles (see FRCBlog). A host of conservative leaders signed it in a ceremony yesterday (see FRC news release). Many are saying conservatives have tied themselves too closely with the Republican Party. Which may be true, but was that statement possible before the Tea Party movement? Now, there are options. Conservative movement stalwart Richard Viguerie offers his thoughts on his Conservative HQ Blog (here) while OneNewsNow covers the story here.

More than 100 conservative leaders joined together today to celebrate the release of the Mount Vernon Statement — a document in which the conservative movement has reaffirmed its commitment to Constitutional Conservatism and the principles of the Declaration of Independence: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This is a significant moment as social, fiscal, and national security conservatives joined together to declare the importance of working in partnership to defend our nation’s founding principles.

You can become part of history as well by signing the Mount Vernon Statement today.

Sign the Mount Vernon Statement today to stand with us on the historic principles of Constitutional Conservatism

Sincerely,

Tony Perkins

President

Tonight, you are part of the largest crowd to ever attend a Family Foundation Gala. Thank you for joining us and for your support of our work.

Tonight is the first time that we have held our gala prior to Election Day. The past two galas, in fact, took place in the days immediately following elections, where we came together to lick our wounds and try to find solace after two miserable election seasons. Of course, we were being blamed for election loses by both politicians and pundits. Conservative principles, we were told, just can’t win. We were encouraged to shut up and go away. Frustration was growing among those of us who still believe in transcendent values, and that those values can win on Election Day.

So last year, I told you that we as pro-family Virginians had a choice. We could allow the frustration we all have felt to drive us to simply give up, see politics as a lost cause, return to our church pews and leave the field. Or, we could regroup, refocus, reshape our message, and work harder than we have ever worked before to make sure that our values are protected. We could ignore the pundits, the politicians and the naysayers and simply outwork those opposed to us.

Of course, there really was no choice. We simply cannot quit at any point, because we know that the values we share are the only values that can save our culture. They are principles that can make the lives of all Virginians better. We have positive solutions to the problems that families face.

Now, a year later, we are on the verge of an election where, perhaps, things will be different. Next week, we may elect pro-family conservatives to all three statewide offices, and even add pro-family legislators. Tonight, we look forward to Election Day with cautious optimism. One might even say we look forward to the future with hope for change. Perhaps, like me, while you anticipate electoral victory, you realize that it is just one small part of the cultural renewal that we seek. Maybe that is why, tonight, my enthusiasm for candidates is tempered by the knowledge that there is so much more to be done.

Let me make something perfectly clear. The optimism we feel, the anticipation for success, is not built on any single candidate or party. While many in this room are working tirelessly for individual candidates, our hope is not predicated on the person, but on the principles those candidates claim, and their record of action that supports those claims.

Last year, I made a commitment to you that The Family Foundation would not back down, would not quit, but would instead work harder than we ever have before. I pledged to you that we would work to reach more Virginians with the positive message of the sanctity of life, the importance of marriage, of freedom, of liberty. I promised that we would build our network of grassroots supporters. I told you that, through Pastors For Family Values, we would reach more pastors than ever before.

And that’s exactly what we have done. Just look around you this evening. Also, can I have all the pastors that are in attendance please stand so that we may recognize you?

Now, I know that our attendance tonight has just a little bit to do with our speaker, but I also believe it’s because you are committed to the mission of The Family Foundation and the work that we are doing. Tonight is simply a reflection of the value each of us places on this work. A moment of renewal; of celebration; of motivation. Leaving this room last November I know many of us had a renewed excitement, a rekindled dedication, and we got to work.

With that new motivation, this year The Family Foundation and our sister organization The Family Foundation Action undertook the largest and most expensive voter education and voter mobilization campaign in our history, called Winning Matters. Thanks to the help of an organization called Let Freedom Ring, we were given the opportunity to create Winning Matters, and thanks to many of you we met the challenge. This campaign is larger than the marriage amendment campaign of 2006 in both scope and cost. Incredibly, in a time where everyone is feeling the pinch of the recession, we raised the money necessary to meet Let Freedom Ring’s financial match.

Because of many of you in this room, we currently have eleven Winning Matters staff, nine of whom have been working with churches across Virginia, meeting pastors, attending community and political events, using social networking — every tool we can think of — to educate and mobilize our voters. Together, we have contacted more than 4000 churches, distributed over 100,000 GA Report Cards — more than twice as many as ever before — conducted or initiated hundreds of voter registration drives; we’ve identified over 40,000 pro-family Virginians who weren’t registered and mailed them forms and encouraged them to register and vote.

Over the course of this week we will be doing several Get Out The Vote Phone calls with Chuck Colson, Mike Huckabee and Alveda King, the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King. And we will be mailing thousands of voter education pieces to key House districts where pro-family conservatives are on the ballot. As we speak we are distributing nearly 1 million voter guides in 38 races to educate voters, including a Spanish statewide Voter Guide. For the first time this year we have also created a video Voter Guide to distribute virally through social networking sites.

We know that pro-family voters make the difference in every election, either by showing up, or not. We can honestly say that this election season pro-family voters have no excuse. They will be registered, educated and mobilized like never before.

But while we anticipate the success of pro-family candidates one week from now, we must remember that this is not the conclusion of our work, it is the beginning. One need only remember that just a few short years ago many of us celebrated the reelection of George Bush, anticipating the success of our principles. And while we were rewarded with two principled Supreme Court justices, we also became frustrated by someone who saw government as the solution to our economic troubles instead of the cause. We must remember that the terms “bailouts” and “stimulus package” didn’t start with President Obama, but instead with someone that many of us in this room helped get elected.

Unfortunately, that isn’t the first time we’ve been let down by those we’ve supported, and it may not be the last. But it is up to us to make it harder for those who claim our values during election season to abandon them once elected.

We expect, we demand, we deserve better. Let me be clear:

We expect that the first budget introduced by the next Governor of Virginia will ban taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood.

We expect that the first budget introduced by the next Governor of Virginia will fund roads, not the destruction of innocent human life.

We expect that the next Governor of Virginia will restore right of state police chaplains to pray in the name of Jesus.

We expect that the next Governor of Virginia will not stop at Charter Schools, but will open the locked doors of a quality education for all children in Virginia by providing real school choice.

We expect the next Governor of Virginia to reduce, not increase, the tax burden on Virginia’s businesses and families.

We expect the next Governor of Virginia to care more about the culture of Virginia than the road to the White House.

And we will not accept anything less.

But we will not simply leave it in the hands of the elected officials. Honestly, we cannot expect politicians to change the culture alone. I heard a pro-family leader recently who made a very strong statement about politically active Christians. He said that the first people to quit when we lose elections are Christians and the first people to quit when we win elections are Christians.

Again, let me be clear. Regardless of what happens next week, The Family Foundation will not quit. Winning Matters is not the end, it is the beginning.

The Family Foundation works at the place where our culture, our faith, and our politics intersect. While Winning Matters has concentrated on the political side, it is just part of our mission. We know that the only way we can be sure that our values are truly protected is by winning more people to our cause. There are still too many people who share our pews but don’t share our values or that have not joined the battle. We must reach them. One way we are doing this is our new partnership with Focus on the Family to bring The Truth Project, a comprehensive, transformational worldview-training program, to Virginia. We hope that through The Truth Project thousands of Virginians will be challenged to not just confront the culture, but to transform it. Anyone who has been through the Truth Project, or had the privilege of leading it as my husband and I have, know the impact this program can have.

We will continue to build our grassroots networks across Virginia, one chapter, one county, one Virginian at a time. We will continue to challenge pastors to speak truth to power through Pastors For Family Values. And let me just say how thrilled I am to announce tonight that Bishop Earl Jackson has agreed to be the new Chaplain for The Family Foundation and in that role the new leader of Pastors For Family Values.

Of course, we will continue to do what we do best. We will be there on January 13th when the General Assembly comes to town, advocating for your values in the hallways of the General Assembly building. Legislators can count on seeing our faces as they walk through the capitol building. We will continue to generate tens of thousands of e-mails from people just like you to our elected officials on the legislation, the issues, you care so passionately about. That isn’t going to change.

On the day the Declaration of Independence was signed, John Adams wrote a letter to his beloved wife Abigail. His words ring as true for us more than two hundred years later:

I am well aware of the toil and blood and treasure that it will cost us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the gloom I can see rays of ravishing light and glory. I can see that the end is worth more than all the means.

As we gaze into the future it is clear that the work we have before us is great, and will cost us dearly. Yet while we have been called to this arena we call politics, while we work day in and day out to affect our culture though civic activism, and that means asking our elected officials to battle on our behalf, our hope, our trust, cannot rest entirely on them. Our trust, our hope, must be on the One who is greater than any. The light and glory that John Adams spoke of came from a recognition that the new nation he was part of founding was birthed with a reliance on God.

The foe they faced was so much greater than we could ever imagine. This rag tag group of independent colonists that bickered among themselves and could agree on little was facing the greatest nation and greatest army on earth. No one in their right mind thought they would be victorious. But we know on whom the Founding Fathers relied.

I am reminded of the words of Psalm 20:

Some trust in chariots, and some in horses; but we will remember the name of the LORD our God.

Tonight, as we look toward the future, while we anticipate new successes, as we hope for a renewal of our culture with the values we hold dear, let us do so with the knowledge and comfort that comes from knowing the one true God of the universe. Yes, we have a duty to carry His banner not just in our homes and churches, but also in our offices, our communities, and our government. And carry that banner we will, with truth and with grace. We will fight with chariots and horses, but we will trust in our God.

Thank you and God bless you.

Today is the day that John Adams wrote would be our national day. For good reason. Today was the day in 1776 that the Continental Congress passed a certain Virginian’s resolution declaring independence from Great Britain.

Not Thomas Jefferson. Richard Henry Lee. This resolution broke the bonds with the mother country. It was incorporated into the document that stated the reasons for our revolutionary break and our principles upon which the new country would stand — the Declaration of Independence.

The Lee Resolution said:

That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be, Free and Independent states; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown; and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.

The Declaration, including this phrase, was adopted later, and not made official until signed by Congress’ president, John Hancock, on July 4. Many of the Signers did not affix their names until August, and others still later.

Today, as well as the 4th, is a time for reflection on this country — its past and the blood spilled and toil given to create and preserve it — and prayer in thanksgiving for the greatness that it has become and for those who have guaranteed it through their sacrifice, as well as for its future. It’s a time to think about the meaning of our country’s founding and its founding principles. For us Virginians, it’s also a time of pride and reflection on our Commonwealth’s great contributions to the creation of this blessed country and all those since — and that continue today — that have so enriched America. 

On behalf of The Family Foundation of Virginia, we wish everyone a safe, fun and patriotic Independence Day Weekend. 

STATEMENT OF DELEGATE BOB MARSHALL, PATRON OF HB 1541, DURING THE 2003 SESSION OF THE VIRGINIA GENERAL ASSEMBLY

The most fundamental purpose of government is to protect human lives. The court did that here.

It is telling that it was Virginia’s Thomas Jefferson, who criticized abortion in his Notes on Virginia, and who affirmed in the Declaration of Independence that the first natural right of persons is the right to life which comes directly from God, when he wrote that, “all men are created equal,” and that Jefferson didn’t say all men are born equal for a reason.

I wanted a law that upheld the right to life of children near birth, would expand the legal protections previously denied such children by other federal court decisions, and which would be constitutional.

Delegate Marshall concluded his statement by quoting from the concurring opinion of Judge J. Harvie Wilkerson:

The fact is that we — civilized people — are retreating to the haven of our Constitution to justify dismembering a partly born child and crushing its skull. Surely centuries hence, people will look back on this gruesome practice done in the name of fundamental law by a society of high achievement. And they will shudder.

We are in a great location, if not a great space, in downtown Richmond, less than a block from perhaps Virginia’s most enduring landmark, its Jefferson designed capitol; and perhaps a mile yonder east in Church Hill, St. John’s Church, identified with another Revolutionary hero, Patrick Henry, who also knew well the grounds of Shockoe Hill.

When people think of Richmond history, they think Civil War (or War Between The States). It’s a shame in that it obscures the city’s Revolution-era history.

During this fast approaching Independence Day weekend it is easy to ponder our ancestor Virginians’ lives and for all they stood. Doing such, I ran across a quote from Henry that pairs nicely with a Jeffersonian quote with which I was already familiar.

Both men were key instruments in the Revolution: Jefferson the Pen, Henry the Tongue. They fought for a democratic republic, free from the chosen few to lead, but open to all — that is to say, open to all. Not just open for all to seek public office, but open to all to participate; and not only to participate, but to know what the people’s government was doing, lest it no longer stay the people’s government.

So it is on this occasion that we again call on the successors to Jefferson’s and Henry’s General Assembly to consider ways to further open our government: In particular, through the use of modern technology, making available the Virginia budget online via a Google-like, easy-to-use search engine. (What better way to honor Mr. Jefferson, who was no slouch inventor himself and who was keen to the latest technology of his day?) As the General Assembly reconvenes to consider what they might take from us during this ongoing Special Tax Session, shouldn’t we be able to easily learn how, what, when and with whom they our spending our money?

Said the first governor of the commonwealth, Mr. Henry:

The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.

Said the author of the Declaration of Independence, Mr. Jefferson:

Information is the currency of democracy.

Before the General Assembly runs off with what remains of our financial currency, remind them we have every right — rather, it is their responsibility — to keep the operations of the people’s government open and free to easy examination. To be sure, that’s what this weekend commemorates, for if the people’s sovereignty is subjugated to the “rulers” who are few, we become less free; less the sovereign over the elected that our Revolution guaranteed, and more the subjects to new, modern-day monarchs.

It was today, in 1776, that the United States was born. The 13 soon-to-be states represented in the Continental Congress, voted unanimously (with New York abstaining) for Virginia’s resolution, introduced by Richard Henry Lee, that claimed:

These United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States. 

A concise, but full political decapitation from Great Britain and its monarchy. Separating from a royal sovereign was unprecedented in the history of the world and its causes. Who can suggest what it must have felt like for those men to literally put their necks on the line? For as Benjamin Franklin said:

We must now all hang together or most assuredly we will all hang separately.

There must have been at least a momentary silence in reflection of the magnitude, then the chill of the what have we done and what do we do now?, before these very learned yet practical men regained themselves to muster the practical duties of initiating a new nation: For how many people in all of mankind can claim to have broken absolutely with all that had been known of governance to establish something something completely different, something not yet even contemplated, and chart for themselves and future generations an unheard of self governance?

More than 230 years later, we take light-hearted amusement at Dr. Franklin’s humor. At the time, it was gallows humor. When the 5o-plus who amended, then voted to adopt, the Declaration of Independence two days later (it wasn’t signed by all until August), their lives truly were at risk. By participating in Congress and signing the Declaration, they created their own treason warrants, knew it, and offered all for what they believed . . .

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

These men are very easy to take for granted today, reduced as they are to portraits, cash and actors portraying them. What they did seems so easy, so inevitable, as if watching a movie where we’ve seen the ending. But it was nothing like that. It truly was uncommon courage to tell the biggest guy on the block to leave, we’re taking over and leave the signed note on his door. The World Turned Upside Down, indeed.

John Adams and many others figured this was the day that would be celebrated for generations:

The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epocha in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forevermore.

Separation was no result of political machinations as we know them today. This was a long, thoughtful, evolutionary decision. The Continental Congress met in 1774, after years of British abuses, to bring a unified front for the colonies’ grievances and petitions to Parliament. The Continental Army was created and engaged the British long before ”Independency” was decided. There were many in Congress who fought against separation and, in the country, many were opposed or at least indifferent to the notion. In the end, Independence was the only course. Only today does it seem predestined. The Declaration was the legal brief explaining to the world — complete with the “Facts” of the case and the jury’s decision — the action of July 2: 

. . . a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. 

And:

The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

If possible, read the Declaration in its entirety this weekend, preferably on the 4th. It puts that July 2 vote into perspective, puts you into the minds of those who adopted it and gives you an appreciation of what they did, how they did it and who they stood up to. It will give you pause and reflection and meaning, and kindle your nerves and a subtle emotion.

Then, when you can steal a minute of thoughtfulness as the fireworks explode overhead, during the band’s patriotic medley, a moment away from the grill or during a break in the game, just ponder its words: “When in the course of human events . . . .” and what and how those events unfolded and what they mean for us today. It will bring fulfilllment and meaning to your holiday, whether you partake in celebratory festivities or cool relaxation.

From The Family Foundation of Virginia, please accept our wishes for a safe, happy and fun Independence Day weekend.