Claremont Institute Announcement: An Appeal for your Support
The Claremont Institute needs your help--and any help that you can give us now will be magnified threefold.
A supporter of the Institute has made us an extremely generous offer. For any contribution made by December 1, and designated for our Center for Local Government, he will provide a three-for-one match. For example, a gift of $100 would actually provide a total of $400 to further the work of the Institute.
As a reader of Precepts, you know that the Claremont Institute is dedicated to restoring the principles of the American Founding to our national life. Our Center for Local Government seeks to revive the practice and theory of local government based upon the principles of liberty and limited government handed down to us by the Founders of our great nation.
Our scholarship and government experience, have convinced us that the liberals must be defeated on the powerful and financially draining local level in conjunction with the struggle against unlimited bureaucracy in Washington, D.C. Without a fight on both levels, our cherished ideals of liberty, limited, constitutional government, and reliance on individual character instead of regulation will be lost forever.
Let me give you a few examples of our concerns: Recently the city council of Santa Monica, California imposed a series of laws--ranging from rent control to the so- called "living wage"--that are economically unwise and violate the rights of the people who live there. Similar statutes have been proposed at the local level all over the country.
In addition, the arbitrary use of the power of eminent domain has essentially ended the rule of law. This power of seizing private property subjects those who wish to develop their own property to the whims of their neighbors and local bureaucrats and officials. Land prices go sky high, and many working people are denied the opportunity to own a home. Older homeowners are driven from theirs. These often covert shenanigans are justified in the name of "the public interest." To make the injustice more galling, the well-heeled friends of those in power often benefit from those seizures.
Our Center for Local Government is dedicated to addressing these and other issues. We have been writing op-eds, publishing materials, holding conferences for local officials, and will publish a college textbook on state and local government that emphasizes the importance of property rights for free government.
We hope you will agree that the work of our Center is vital and that you will support our efforts. Any support you can give would be greatly appreciated. To contribute, please go to https://www.claremont.org/1_join_member_secure.cfm. Be sure to indicate in the box that says "Please tell us what issues interest you" that your gift is for our Center for Local Government so we can receive the three-to-one matching grant.
Sincerely, Thomas B. Silver President
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The mission of the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy is to restore the principles of the American Founding to their rightful, preeminent authority in our national life.
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