Unity

Yesterday, in a bold move that directly addresses the need for unity and a true bottom up leadership approach to the problems facing America, American Majority and American Majority Action unveiled  an ambitious plan to take back America.

"On the heels of an historic mid-term election, and amid speculation about the future of the Tea Party movement, American Majority along with local Tea Party leaders from across the nation, announced today the launch of The New Leaders Project and the drive to identify 10,000 new, credible candidates in advance of the 2011 and 2012 elections.

American Majority believes that this project, when combined with policy education and grassroots infrastructure development, is the surest way to sustain Tea Party momentum across the nation.

This first of its kind national effort will seek to have 1,000 local Tea Party leaders sign onto The New Leaders Project, committing themselves and their groups to identifying 10 new leaders in their local community to run primarily for state or local office in 2012.  Representatives from Texas, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Colorado, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Florida, Virginia, Arkansas, and Ohio on hand at a press conference this morning to be the first signers of The New Leaders Pledge."

American Majority president Ned Ryun delivered a powerful statement about the overall mission of the The New Leader Project:

"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.

American Majority, and the Tea Party movement, are not interested in change for one or two election cycles. It is interested in generational change, but for that to happen, the work must begin as locally as possible.

Today, we are here to send a message – that 2010 was just the beginning.

The next cycle begins now. 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."

According to Ryun, over 80% of incumbents at the federal level won -  and over 1,000 state legislators were not even challenged in the 2010 general election. The New Leaders Project takes a page directly from the Left's playbook. Groups like ACORN, SEIU and even Obama's Organizing for America have long realized that all politics is local.

Over the past four decades the left has systematically installed handpicked politicians like Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villagairosa and the ethically challenged Congresswoman Maxine Waters across the country. As noted earlier this year in regards to California, corrupt local politicians can easily become a national problems as they seek higher office.

Not surprisingly, mainstream media outlets like Politico have completely ignored the true significance of this initiative and choose to instead use it as another opportunity to bash Sharron Angle and Christine O'Donnell:

"No more Christine O’Donnell’s or Sharron Angle’s.

That is the implicit goal of a million-dollar program intended to build a farm team of tea party candidates that was announced Tuesday morning by a pair of linked non-profit groups called American Majority and American Majority Action."

A Tea Party leader tried to set the record straight about the goals of the New Leader project:

“Voters will have the ability to not choose (between) the lesser of two evils, but to champion a genuine candidate who believes like we believe; that is detached from the political class, because they didn’t come from the political class,” said Chris Littleton, co-founder of the Ohio Liberty Council..."

The question remains if our traditional two party system is ready for this new movement. American Majority aims to take the movement away from DC centric orgranizations and place it back in the hands of the local leaders. Power brokers and pay for play politics are not as easy once people realize that change can happen outside of Washington, DC.

Anita MonCrief is the National Spokesperson for American Majority and the Editor-in-Chief of a new website, Emerging Corruption. She is also known as the ACORN/Project Vote Whistleblower. MonCrief attended the University of Alabama where she majored in political science and history. She has worked with the American Bar Association’s Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative; (ABA CEELI), the International Crisis Group, the Grameen Foundation and American Rights at Work. She also partnered with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe on their mission to Macedonia as an election observer In 2005, MonCrief joined the Strategic Writing and Research Department of ACORN Political Operations and its affiliate Project Vote. In 2008, MonCrief came forward, first as a confidential source of The New York Times and, after The New York Times backed away, publicly, to expose the damage that ACORN has done to the impoverished and marginalized communities, as well as its rampant voter fraud. She also began to blog and write about corruption within the ACORN/Project Vote network of corporations. In June 2009, Project Vote/ACORN filed a lawsuit against MonCrief in an attempt to silence her. MonCrief has appeared on numerous radio and television programs including, The Laura Ingraham Show, The O’Reilly Factor, The Sean Hannity Radio show and Fox News programs. In March 2010, the ACORN/Project Vote lawsuit was dismissed. MonCrief is a regular contributor to Big Government, Hot Air, NetRight Daily, RedState, and other Conservative news websites. MonCrief and her family live in the Washington, DC metro area. You can follow Anita here on Twitter.

Citizenship is not something people think about, until its underlying attitudes are lost to the culture. Its notable that in socialist paradises like Canada and the U.K., governments are having to teach active citizenship in the schools to combat the natural lesson of socialism--citizenship is about entitlement.

Nowadays we discuss democracy in terms of elections, but its power lies in the the personal sense of ownership, the individual's sense of responsibility towards the community. The famous tale of Thermopylae in which three hundred Spartans defended their country against thousands of invading Persians is really a demonstration of the relative power of citizens over royal subjects. The Persians were willing to kill for their emperor, but the Spartans, Thespians and Thebans were willing to die to defend their communities, Moreover, the Greeks elevated their sacrifice to a supreme expression of democratic virtue. The citizen had transcended the ancient tribal paradigm. A man would naturally give his life to protect his family, but the Greeks sense of family was transformed--their countrymen were now their family.

The Romans understood the power of this concept and incorporated it into a symbol of the Roman Republic--the Fasces. Its symbolism is obvious--strength through unity. The Romans forged a durable empire less through conquest (which of course every transient empire had done until then...), then by extending Roman citizenship to conquered people. The concept was so powerful, it has been copied universally, although imperfectly every since. American national symbolism is replete with fasces (the arrows in the eagles claw, the pillar's of Lincoln's throne within his monument, 'E Pluribus Unum" on our money...)

Yet symbols are only reminders of abstract facts. When the facts disappear, the symbol becomes meaningless--or worse, available for hijacking. The Swaztika used to be a good luck charm and was used on maps to mark temples, but its modern meaning is altogether different these days.

This is a long, but necessary prelude to understand something Dallas News columnist Rod Dreher wrote.

Dave was hot. And Dave was pretty much right on the money. We talked for a while longer about Bernie Madoff, AIG, the government bailouts, how the responsible are going to have to bear the burdens for the irresponsible – and how those most to blame for this catastrophe are likely to get away with it.

"My dad, he's in his 80s now," Dave said. "He's only got a fourth-grade education and has been a working man all his life. Even now, he can't wait to get up in the morning and get out to work on appliances. I talk to him every night, and we talk a lot about this economic mess. Sometimes he'll get to crying, saying he doesn't know where this country is going, and it scares him."

My wife came outside with a check. Dave put it in his overalls pocket, picked up his toolbox and went to his next job. I thought about him all day long. Dave is just one ordinary working stiff, but he was onto something, and he was onto something big.

What happens when people like him become convinced that the system is set up to reward lobbyists, lawyers, rent-seekers, developers, corporate interests, special-pleaders and sundry freeloaders lining up to nuzzle the ever-expanding government teat – all at their expense? What happens when the repairman loses faith in the institutions of government, of commerce, of civil society? When the kind of man who makes up America's backbone concludes that nobody else seems to believe in the common good anymore, so why should he?

I fear we're going to find out before too much longer. And we're not going to like it.

We may find three hundred men to stand in the breech to defend their countrymen with their lives, but we will consider them suckers rather than heroes. AIG employees, many of them no longer with the company, received "retention" bonuses, and for all the grandstanding by Barney Franks etal, the Democrats knew about it, in fact, they engineered it. Rome was looted by its "citizens" long before Alaric and his Visigoths appeared at the gates, and so it is with this country as well. The top to bottom corruption of our democratic institutions has destroyed the real source of our power--our unity.

I am 24, I am an evangelical Christian, but mostly because of what i have seen the last 8 years I am a democrat.

I made an argument on the left side, that the current generation, (the boomers and the one replacing them) are teaching my generation, that Post Partisan unity is bad.

so I ask the other side, is it?

anyone here in their early 20's or have teens? what do they think of politics?

if you saw a school election go the way current presidential elections go, would you be proud of us for conducting our politics they way you have conducted yours?

and do you think its just a silly idea that there will one day be a generation of American's that is truly united, not by just the name of our country, but in the common goal of bettering ourselves and leaving the next generation a better country then they were handed.

with the retirement of the boomers a new generation is coming to power, did the boomers leave them a better country then what was given to them?

and as you see your party and the democratic party as they are now, will you leave my generation a better country then what was given to you?

last I will close with what I closed there

Unity is basically believing not just saying, but believing

there isn't a red state or a blue state.

I mean are we united by nothing more then the name of our country? that is all that binds this country together?

and is it so wrong to hope that a future generation will be bound by more.

can I tell you what, no, but that's because what has the previous generations thought me about Unity in this country?

I understand it's idealistic and that right now it can't be done

but if you had the choice is it something you'd want for future generations and if not, what sort of government and country do you wish for me and my generation and my kids to have?