Americans for Constitutional Liberty (ACL) was founded in 1974 as The Conservative Caucus (TCC) in the belief that conservatives could win in Washington only by mobilizing conservative strength at the state and Congressional district level. The name was changed to ACL in 2014.
Here is a list of our key accomplishments since 1974.
The key to success is still to let people know what is happening in government, and to tell them how they can have an impact on the decisions to be made.
ACL uses many methods to make conservative opinion felt in Congress and the White House.
We encourage members and all citizens to call, visit, or write their elected representatives; and to alert other Americans by calling talk shows and writing letters to the editor. Often petitions are collected and delivered to key decision-makers. Testimony before Congressional committees, meetings with members of Congress and their staff, video commentaries and programs, and Member's Message all help communicate to the public and make sure that elected officials hear what conservatives have to say.
Mr. Peter J. Thomas is the Chairman of ACL; read his biography. ACL was founded by Howard Phillips in 1974, and he was the Chairman of TCC from 1974 to 2011.
Board of Directors
Mr. Charles Orndorff, Administrative Vice Chairman, is ACL's resident Constitutional scholar, with decades of experience in public policy and historical research. He is a policy analyst on issues including taxes, spending, Federal budget and deficit, the Constitution, American founding, Civil War, DC Statehood.
Mr. Art Harman is the Executive Director, who has worked as a Legislative Director in Congress, produced TCC's long-running, nationally-televised public affairs television program, "Conservative Roundtable," and directed major grassroots lobbying and outreach programs.
Statement of Principles of Americans for Constitutional Liberty (The Conserative Caucus)
I. Right To Enjoy The Income From One's Own Labor:
There should be a ceiling on the proportion of income which government may take away, in taxes, from any citizen. Graduated taxation, combined with inflation, places an especially unfair burden on working Americans, whose tax rates increase automatically as inflation pushes them into higher tax brackets.
II. Right To Personal Security:
Citizens have a right to the security of their persons, their homes, and their property. It is the first task of government to protect the law-abiding from those who break the law. Concern for the rights of crime's victims must be emphasized over the privileges of those who commit crimes. The goal of law enforcement should be to apprehend, punish, and isolate those who criminally violate the rights of others.
III. Right To Educational Freedom:
The right of parents to define the conditions and content of their children's education must outweigh the power of government to interfere in the selection of textbooks or teachers, or to use the schools to advance the political, cultural, and social objectives of government officials. There must be no forced busing.
IV. Right To Religious Liberty:
The government should not be permitted to interfere with the freedom of individuals to pray to God in accordance with their own beliefs; nor should there be any officially established orthodoxy, religious or secular.
V. Right To Life:
No government resources should be used to encourage, sanction, or assist in the taking of innocent human life.
VI. Right To National Sovereignty:
The defense policy of the United States should be based on a goal of strategic and tactical supremacy on land, in the sea, in the air, and in space. Our foreign policy should have as its sole and overriding purpose safeguarding the national interest.
VII. Right To Economic Justice:
The government should be required to hold the level of its expenditure to the level of its income and not print or coin new money to meet governmental obligations, thus inflating the currency and deflating the value of money already in circulation. The principal victims of government over-spending are the working men and women of America whose income is reduced in value and whose jobs are threatened by the inflation and unemployment which results from a public sector grown too large.
VIII. Right To Be Individually Judged:
Quotas, based on characteristics inherited at birth, are both discriminatory and arbitrary, wrongfully disregarding individual merit, achievement, and successful competition in favor of collective classifications. The government should not apply or encourage the use of quotas as a basis of selection in education, employment, or conferring of benefits. Individual rights must, in such instances, transcend bureaucratic determination of group interests.
IX. Right To Political & Economic Liberty:
No citizen should be obliged, either by taxation, by regulation, or as a condition of employment, to support candidates, organizations, or causes with which he disagrees. Government resources ought not underwrite policy advocacy or political activity.
X. Right To Self-Government:
Grants of power from the people to their government should be so limited and carefully prescribed as to assure that such power will be exercised in behalf of those from whom it is derived, rather than to serve those in whom it is concentrated. The vast power of the Federal bureaucracy should be dismantled, with control over public policy and government spending returned to elected officials at the local level. Local self-government, in small communities where property ownership is widespread, encourages the existence of an independent, self-determining citizenry, whose diverse control over their own affairs is itself a check on the arbitrary power of distant bureaucrats.
"If to please the people we offer what we ourselves disbelieve, how may we then afterward defend our work? Our job is to raise a standard to which the wise and honest may repair, recognizing that the event is in the hands of God." George Washington
The Conservative Caucus is a public policy organization, contributions to which are not tax deductible. The IRS has determined TCC to be a 501(c)(4) organization, exempt from Federal income tax. TCC can receive corporate donations.
