Photo by Michael A. Beck. Poster of this photo is available at FreedomWorks.org.
We are no longer engaged in the traditional national argument, with conservatives advocating for limited government while liberals tax and spend their way to bigger government. The bad news is we are now fighting liberals who seek unlimited government. The good news is we’re on to them. – Rush Limbaugh
Forced unlimited government, and the creation of an unconstitutional government economy in place of a free-market economy, birthed the Tea Party movement. A “citizen tsunami” began in April of 2009 then, in September of 2009, crashed on the shores of Washington DC.
This spontaneous outpouring of citizen anger at the threat of tyranny, and the passion to protect the freedom of men, women and children, is a gut-level instinct. It is the instinct to survive. We know in our gut that human life is without value to those who would enslave us. Therefore, most political party affiliations and philosophies rally around the fundamental right to freedom.
The Constitution
Study the Constitution and Be Informed of Founding Principles
National Center for Constitutional Studies: nccs.net
The Heritage Foundation: heritage.org
Heritage online newsletter: morningbell@heritage.org
Founding Fathers Education Association: foundingfatherseducation.com
Tea Party
Find Tea Party groups, support for starting a Tea Party group, and opportunities to participate.
COLORADO
Northern Colorado Tea Party: www.northerncoloradoteaparty.com
A tight band of people working in representation of at least 1000 members. This group’s leadership committee/think tank works in partnership with the Loveland 9-12 , Fort Collins We Will Not Fall, and all conservatiave grassroots groups in the area who are willing to come together and fight for freedom in our state and country. We created Candidate Search 2010 as a model for states to get involved in the caucus and local political process in order to get truly conservative candidates elected and to help return conservative principles and people to the Republican Party: www.candidatesearch2010.com. Video of the first event in November, 2009, as well as interviews with the candidates are found on the CS2010 website.
NATIONWIDE
American Liberty Alliance: americanlibertyalliance.com
The American Liberty Alliance is comprised of hardworking men and women who represent a growing base of liberty-minded activists who want to curtail the current growth of government intrusion into our private lives. ALA is a national network of grassroots activists who are fighting to promote and defend the cause of individual liberty, free market principles and limited government. They believes in strong and effective grassroots activism in order to protect individual freedoms, the benefits of limited government, and the value of free market principles.
Tea Party Patriots: teapartypatriots.org
Tea Party Patriots are concerned American’s just like you, we have made getting involved easy! Being from every corner of the country and all around the world, we use several Internet tools to provide information, discuss issues and measure results. Google Groups is where many important discussions and debates happen. The Tea Party Patriots website is where to find events and measure results.
Philadelphia Tea Party Patriots: philateapartypatriots.com
We the Philadelphia Tea Party Patriots would welcome the opportunity to earn your trust and to do our utmost to deliver to you a format for grassroots communication, such as: *Calls to action *Important information issues *Grassroots OJT *Meeting & Event schedules *Contact information for Congressional Districts (17) members and (2) Senators who represent Pennsylvania constitutes *Contact information for Pennsylvania General Assembly (203) members and (50) Senators *Alerts to national issues of the day *Alerts to state issues of the day *Alerts to local issues of the day *Current information alerts *Coming dates for classroom type education *and more.
It is our hope that this format to be effective to attract, inform and mobilize “We the People” ordinary citizens to stand and be counted against the drastic and rapid change that is taking place in America moving away from the original intent of the United States Constitution as framed by the Founding Fathers: limited government, fiscal responsibility at all levels, and free markets individual rights.
The 9-12 Project: the912project.com
This website is a place for you and other like-minded Americans looking for direction in taking back the control of our country. It is also a place to find information that will assist you in navigating the rough waters we face in the days, weeks and months ahead.
We suggest that you start in your own homes. Talk to your family about the Values and Principles. Discuss the importance of what the Founders designed for America. Hold or attend a weekly meeting in your neighborhood or town. Communication with your neighbors is vital to the process of protecting our country. Gather in living rooms, coffee houses or restaurants. Share your thoughts and ideas. Visit this website often. Make use of the resources that are linked here. Share the ideas and resources that have worked in your home or town.
This is a non-political movement. The 9-12 Project is designed to bring us all back to the place we were on September 12, 2001. The day after America was attacked we were not obsessed with Red States, Blue States, or political parties. We were united as Americans, standing together to protect the greatest nation ever created.
That same feeling – that commitment to country is what we are hoping to foster with this idea. We want to get everyone thinking like it is September 12th, 2001 again.
Online Action Networks and Networking Resources
Discover the Networks: www.discoverthenetworks.org, is a “Guide to the Political Left.” It identifies the individuals and organizations that make up the left and also the institutions that fund and sustain it; it maps the paths through which the left exerts its influence on the larger body politic; it defines the left’s (often hidden) programmatic agendas and it provides an understanding of its history and ideas. Compiled by David Horowitz.
Americans for Limited Government: www.GetLiberty.org, a project of Americans for Limited Government, gives you the resources to stand up against the tyrannical government. They offer free expert analysis from people who have spent their career fighting to reduce the size of federal, state and local governments across the nation. Additionally, they are working on several great projects to strengthen democracy and bring an end to the political culture of corruption.
Take Back Medicine: takebackmedicine.com is a great action center for physicians and is a project of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), a national professional association of physicians in private medicine. Since 1943, the mission of AAPS has been to preserve the sanctity of the patient-physician relationship from third-party intrusion. A member-supported organization, AAPS accepts no government grants, or pharmaceutical or other corporate funding.
Resistnet: Resistnet.com, Home of the Patriotic Resistance: ResistNet.com is the official social network of Grassfire.org’s Patriotic Resistance Campaign. With Obama and the Democrats in Congress already embarking on the implementation of their agenda, Grassfire.org and hundreds of thousands of citizens across this nation unashamedly announce our Resistance. We will resist — in a peaceful, patriotic way — Obama’s efforts to move our nation away from our heritage of individual liberties toward “brave new world” of collectivism. ResistNet is designed to give citizens a new level of networking resources to organize the Patriotic Resistance.
Grassfire: Grassfire.org is one of the nation’s fastest growing conservative online action networks involving more than 1 million citizens across the nation. As a non-profit 501c(4) organization, our goal is to rally and equip concerned citizens to take a proactive stand on the key issues of the day. As an organization, we are committed to providing cutting-edge tools that enhance the power and influence of grassroots citizens
Contract from America: ContractFromAmerica.com (a project of the Tea Party Patriots)
The Contract From America is the ultimate grassroots democratic experiment. The tea party movement has the potential of completely reshaping American politics. But to achieve this goal, we need to be proactive, rather than just reactive. The Contract From America project allows you to play a key role in developing a 10-point economic conservative plan that we can use to push for real reform in Washington. Submit your ideas and vote and comment on those of other fellow patriots.
Freedom Works:FreedomWorks.com Founded in 1984, FreedomWorks is headquartered in Washington, DC, and has hundreds of thousands of grassroots volunteers nationwide. The organization is chaired by former U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Armey and the President is Matt Kibbe. FreedomWorks members know that government goes to those who show up, and are leading the fight for lower taxes, less government, and more freedom. FreedomWorks believes individual liberty and the freedom to compete increases consumer choices and provides individuals with the greatest control over what they own and earn.
Project Vote Smart: vote-smart.org “Would you like biographies, issue positions, and voting records on 40,000 candidates, from president to city council members? Nonpartisan Project Vote Smart provides this and more, for free…information that would make the Founders weep with joy.” U.S. News & World Report
Picture this: thousands of citizens (conservative and liberal alike) working together, spending endless hours researching the backgrounds and records of thousands of political candidates and elected officials to discover their voting records, campaign contributions, public statements, biographical data (including their work history) and evaluations of them generated by over 100 competing special interest groups. Every election these volunteers test each candidate’s willingness to provide citizens with their positions on the issues they will most likely face if elected through the Political Courage Test.
This project is an historic undertaking. Citizens come together, not in selfish interest or to support one candidate over another, but to defend democracy. It is an extraordinary gathering of people committed to one purpose: to strengthen the most essential component of democracy — access to information — even as it suffers grave attacks from candidates and political parties, many who are now willing to manipulate information and deceive voters.
Education: Children
John Taylor Gatto, author and teacher (see Book List): johntaylorgatto.com. (Below is an excerpt from Gatto’s book Dumbing Us Down.)
What , after all this time, is the purpose of mass-schooling supposed to be? Reading, writing, and arithmetic can’t be the answer, because properly approached those things take less than a hundred hours to transmit—and we have abundant evidence that each is readily self-taught in the right setting and time.
“Why, then, are we locking these kids up in an involuntary network with strangers for twelve years? Surely not so a few of them can get rich? Even if it worked that way, and I doubt that it does, why wouldn’t any sane community look on such an education as positively wrong? It divides and classifies people, demanding that they compulsively compete with each other and publicly labels the losers by literally de-grading them, identifying them as “low-class” material. The bottom line for the winners is that they can buy more stuff! I don’t believe that anyone who thinks about it feels comfortable with such a silly conclusion. I can’t help feeling that if we could only answer the question of what it is that we want from these kids we lock up, we would suddenly see where we took a wrong turn. I have enough faith in American imagination and resourcefulness to believe that at that point we’d come up with a better way—in fact, a whole supermarket of better ways.
“One thing I do know: most of us who’ve had a taste of loving families, even a little taste, want our kids to be part of one. One other thing I know is that eventually you have to come to be part of a place—part of its hills and streets and waters and people—or you will live a very, very sorry life as an exile forever. Discovering meaning for yourself, and discovering satisfying purpose for yourself, is a big part of what education is. How this can be done by locking children away from the world is beyond me.
All Mr. Gatto’s books are worth reading.
Home Education Magazine: homeedmag.com Owned and published by founders Mark and Helen Hegener and their third-generation homeschooling family. Home Education Magazine provides focused and extensive coverage of homeschooling and the issues of importance and concern to homeschooling families, advocates, and supporters. HEM has also been turned to as a source of information about homeschooling by legislators, educators, researchers, and the media.
Since 1984, Home Education Magazine has brought homeschooling parents the most timely articles, in-depth interviews, and regular columns about the issues homeschoolers deal with; and the joys of a family life that homeschooling makes so easy.
Through the HEM blogs, forums, and social networking connections like Twitter, FaceBook and other social networking media, we take a dynamic and interactive approach to exploring issues of importance to homeschooling families, and networking homeschoolers for communication, support and encouragement, and HEM’s respected presence serves as a point of reference and important information when homeschooling freedoms are challenged.
The HEM back issue archives provide an unequalled perspective on homeschooling’s history, and a valuable collection of articles and columns on the topics homeschooling parents want their children to learn: reading, writing, math, history, science, nature, the arts, travel, world culture, socialization, technology and more. Selected articles and columns from 1997 through 2009 are currently online and available free, and they are working to digitize and move all of their content – from 1984 through 2009 – into online archives for access with paid subscriptions.
Home School Legal Defense Association: HSLDA.org is a nonprofit advocacy organization established to defend and advance the constitutional right of parents to direct the education of their children and to protect family freedoms. Through annual memberships, HSLDA is tens of thousands of families united in service together, providing a strong voice when and where needed.
Education: College Students
The thesis I venture to submit to you is as follows: That during the past forty or fifty years those who are responsible for education have progressively removed from the curriculum of studies the Western culture which produced the modern democratic state; That the schools and colleges have, therefore, been sending out into the world men who no longer understand the creative principle of the society in which they must live; That deprived of their cultural tradition, the newly educated Western men no longer possess in the form and substance of their own minds and spirits and ideas, the premises, the rationale, the logic, the method, the values of the deposited wisdom which are the genius of the development of Western civilization; That the prevailing education is destined, if it continues, to destroy Western civilization and is in fact destroying it.
“I realize quite well that this thesis constitutes a sweeping indictment of modern education. But I believe the indictment is justified and there is a prima facie case for entering the indictment.” –Walter Lippman, two-time Pulitzer Price recipient, author, journalist and political commentator, speaking before the Association for the Advancement of Science, December 29, 1940
Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, MI: Hillsdale.edu You may have noticed how our college students are indoctrinated with an endless barrage of moral relativism while being taught to march in lockstep alongside clueless academics with an axe to grind. And how students who dissent are subject to unfair treatment, sometimes attacked, their academic careers ruined. Check out Hillsdale. They been pursuing truth and defending liberty since 1844. They continue to teach the history of Western civilization, the merits of the free market, the precepts of limited government, an unapologetic belief in the leadership role of the United States, and the most essential attributes of great leadership: intellectual and moral virtue. Best of all, Hillsdale does not accept any federal or state taxpayer funds!
Education: Everybody
Liberty Ink Journal: www.libertyinkjournal.com Dedicated to the restoration of the Republic and our birthright of Liberty. We provide analysis of current events as well as legislative activities at all levels of government, always illuminated by the principles upon which this nation was founded.
We will openly advocate for a return to constitutionally limited government that protects rather than infringes upon our rights.
National Black Republicans Association: www.nbra.info Our vision is that black Americans will become power players in the political arena so that they can seize control over their own destiny and move into our ownership society through small business and home ownership.
MISSION: The mission of the National Black Republican Association (NBRA) is to be a resource for the black community on Republican ideals and promote the traditional values of the black community which are the core values of the Republican Party: strong families, faith in God, personal responsibility, quality education, and equal opportunities for all.
GOAL: The goal of the NBRA is to return black Americans to their Republican Party roots by enlightening them about how Republicans fought for their freedom and civil rights, and are now fighting for their educational and economic advancement.
OBJECTIVES: The objectives of the NBRA are to conduct a nationwide grassroots educational campaign in black communities; champion school choice opportunity scholarships to give black parents educational options and access to a quality education for their children; and provide training and resources for grassroots activists and candidates for elected office.
