Principles

FDL Review's intention is to provide nonpartisan news coverage. However, just as other news outlets produce editorials advancing their perspectives, we regularly publish commentary in defense our views.

For the sake of transparency, we believe:

• The Almighty God in Heaven has endowed humans with natural liberties. They include rights to self-defense, religious choice, and the fruits of our labor. However, in the process of exercising our freedoms, we cannot attempt to prevent others from exercising theirs.

• The Constitution, which recognizes man's natural rights, is the foundation for our American republic. We agree with Senator Daniel Webster's position: "I am committed . . . to the Constitution of the country. . . . And I am committed against every thing, which, in my judgement, may weaken, endanger, or destroy it."

• The Constitution, which sets limits on the size and scope of the federal government, should be reaffirmed as the public's guardrail against tyranny. The Supreme Court should overturn decisions that unconstitutionally empowered their branch of government. Simultaneously, justices should strike down big-government legislation and return power to the states.

• Economic regulations should be subjected to judicial scrutiny under the Fourteenth Amendment: "No state shall . . . deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."

• The federal government's sole responsibility is to protect the American people—and the fruits of their labor—from threats foreign and domestic. The conditional prohibition of abortion, laws prohibiting immigration from high-risk areas, intervention in foreign countries when rogue governments confiscate American property, and the prosecution of terrorism are all methods by which the government can protect Americans and their property.

• The center of American foreign policy should be the achievement of American interests, and we should reject multinational organizations that legislate from foreign capitals and subvert American congressional and state law.

• The United States should not flinch in the face of foreign menaces; we should confront them with vigor. The exercise of that responsibility may include offensive and defensive measures.

• The states' role in the national debate should be restored through the repeal of the Seventeenth Amendment, which turned elections for the United States Senate into nationalized popularity contests. Now, the Senate is not a body for deliberation or the exercise of federalism; it is a "squawk box" for political amateurs and prospective presidential candidates.

• The American taxpayer, compelled to pay for his neighbor, is routinely and unfairly pillaged. There should be a flat federal income tax, and the ultimate goal should be the repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment and the institution of a tariff- or consumption-based tax policy.

• The American educational system has been destroyed by the formation of the Department of Education, the institution of nationalized educational standards such as Common Core, and the proliferation of a culture of political correctness that refuses to uphold millennia-old standards for the development of critical thinking. Local school districts should manage American educational policy; we were number one in the world when they were in charge, but now we are average at best.

• When public schools prove incapable, there should be charter school accessibility and state-issued vouchers available for education at private schools. As Senator Rand Paul says, "Competition breeds excellence."

• One of our natural rights is the right to self-defense, and it is expressly protected by the Second Amendment. The American individual, unless he has a criminal record or a debilitating mental illness, should not be prohibited from owning a firearm.

• The United States dollar should be backed by and redeemable for gold on demand. This would rein in the production of currency, which facilitates egregious government spending, and ensure monetary security. We agree with Alan Greenspan, the former chair of the Federal Reserve: "In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value."

Our positions are based on a careful analysis of the mistakes of history, the demonstrated failures of modern American government, and the writings of Calvin Coolidge, Barry Goldwater, Friedrich von Hayek, and Ronald Reagan.