As a principle, we believe in free markets as the best means to distribute wealth, opportunity and prosperity. But we believe free markets are also a natural state. Empirically, when increasingly restrictive policies are applied to economic systems, the result is not perfect social engineering. Rather that policy course leads to the unintended consequence of increasing percentages of the total economy being shifted into black markets.

Similarly, the natural state of man is liberty. Again, we believe firmly that, a priori, the first role of government is to preserve the maximum amount of individual liberty. The basic philosophy that underlies all modern forms of government is the social contract. Implicit in that contract is the exchange of the willing consent of the people to be governed.

How can we infer that the people willingly consent to be governed if the government can coerce us, silence us, disarm us, jail us without adequate due process or violate our privacy? The answer is we cannot.

The world is complicated and the temptation of the government to increasingly limit freedom as a means to address societal problems is ever present. But just as economic controls lead to black markets (the least controllable market economy), limiting civil liberty as a means to solve problems will not work and empirically only serves to reduce public confidence in government.

The people do not need to earn the trust of the government. The government needs to earn and preserve the trust of the people. And it does so by maintaining its commitment to preserving individual liberty at all cost.

Our goal is not to stubbornly hamper well-intentioned government initiatives. Our goal is to preserve public confidence and trust in government, in so doing preserving the legitimacy of government itself.

Therefore, we seek to educate both the public and policymakers on the impact that legislation has on essential civil liberties and to propose and support policies that protect those liberties for all of the people equally. In addition, we favor policies that protect individual privacy but limit government privacy (policies that increase government accountability, oversight and minimize the potential for corruption).

This is what our Constitution demands, what reason dictates, and what practically preserves public trust and order. Elections and democracy alone without these safeguards devolves to merely mob rule… which is the most dangerous political system that can be devised.

The safeguards of our system of government are 1) a narrow, well defined scope for government authority; and, 2) a robust, comprehensive list of civil rights and liberties that can not be stripped away.

There are many think tanks and public policy institutions heavily focused on policy research that focuses on limiting government (tax policy, trade, business regulation).

Our focus is narrower: all civil rights and liberties must be protected as both as a philosophical principle and the only practical way to preserve faith in our Republic.

Partisan political winds shift over time on key issues. Our views do not shift.