About The Twelve Points are a statement of conservative principles, objectives, philosophy, and additional guiding considerations, composed by Karl Born, a young Indianapolis writer and attorney, beginning in early 2008, completed on July 2, 2009. The idea for the Twelve Points, along with several of the points, came from the "Seven Points," an older statement of conservative principles, created by a group of young conservatives at Indiana University, in 2003: Grand Old Cause. The purpose of the Twelve Points is to serve as a delivery mechanism for distilled, concentrated conservative thinking, offered in order to return completeness and clarity to popular conservatism, to spread knowledge of the true principles of conservatism throughout the conservative community, and to focus and promote agreement among conservatives. Over the past two decades, the conservative movement has lost its uniting sense of direction, which has rendered it confused, frustrated, and impotent. Certain crucial conservative principles and concepts have faded from our common memory and lost their rightful influence and, consequently, our fellow conservatives (including conservative leaders) too often can no longer be relied upon to understand them, to be committed to them, or to apply and advance them in a coherent way. No conservative should be satisfied with the results that this has produced in American public policy. The Twelve Points will help to solve this problem, this statement of conservative principles being an instrument by which we may frequently recur to these fundamental principles and keep points of conservative thought freshly in our minds, teach conservative thought to the newer and younger conservatives, and provide all conservatives with a means of together affirming that, yes, we still care about these conservative principles, and conservative principles still define this movement. Send your questions or ideas to the12points@gmail.com! | SUNDAY, JULY 4, 2010 The following is an incomplete edition of an old, far longer draft of the Twelve Points.
That governments are bound by law, and constitutional deviations and violations are illegal and dangerous whether they are perpetrated by the federal government, in any of the three branches, or by the states;
That governments should maintain economic freedom through low tax rates, free trade, preservation of the freedom of contract, stable monetary policy, balanced budgets, fiscal restraint, honest budgeting, respect for the investment of private property, and by avoiding unnecessary and unnecessarily burdensome regulation;That we live in a world of relative scarcity, and that while a healthy economy continually expands the frontiers of wealth and causes this scarcity to recede, even the best economic system cannot eliminate unmet needs altogether;That the liberty to pursue material well-being, security, and independence -- inside the just framework of the free market economy -- is not only an essential right, but one deserving special care; That governments should maintain economic freedom through low tax rates, free trade, preservation of the freedom of contract, stable monetary policy, balanced budgets, fiscal restraint, honest budgeting, respect for the investment of private property, and by avoiding unnecessary and unnecessarily burdensome regulation;That we live in a world of relative scarcity, and that while a healthy economy continually expands the frontiers of wealth and causes this scarcity to recede, even the best economic system cannot eliminate unmet needs altogether;That the liberty to pursue material well-being, security, and independence -- inside the just framework of the free market economy -- is not only an essential right, but one deserving special care;That governments should maintain economic freedom through low tax rates, free trade, preservation of the freedom of contract, stable monetary policy, balanced budgets, fiscal restraint, honest budgeting, respect for the investment of private property, and by avoiding unnecessary and unnecessarily burdensome regulation;That we live in a world of relative scarcity, and that while a healthy economy continually expands the frontiers of wealth and causes this scarcity to recede, even the best economic system cannot eliminate unmet needs altogether;That the liberty to pursue material well-being, security, and independence -- inside the just framework of the free market economy -- is not only an essential right, but one deserving special care;
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