As I have mentioned in several posts before, I began the Twelve Points as an update to the "Seven Points" that my conservative student organization, Grand Old Cause, created at Indiana University about seven years ago. I have now posted both the text of the Seven Points and an image of the Seven Points from the old GOC website. In November, when I salvaged most of that web page by tracking it down on the Internet Archive's "Way Back Machine," the archived page itself did not seem to be able to display properly. I noticed last night that it now appears to display as it was supposed to display, so the idea of posting the link to it now is more appealing to me.
Now ... Let's briefly revisit the year 2003. Many people (including liberals, libertarians, disenchanted conservatives, and others who cannot be neatly sorted into the familiar categories) now seem to be under the impression that by 2003, the conservative community as a whole had become indifferent or hostile to liberty, the rule of law, and the idea of fiscal responsibility. Many conservatives actually did this, of course, including quite a few with influence or formal authority. Other conservatives, however, remained sincerely supportive of liberty (which necessarily involved supporting meaningfully, constitutionally-limited government), protective of the United States Constitution and the rule of law, and committed to fiscal responsibility. Since we did not control the federal government or the national Republican Party, most of the evidence of our existence is anecdotal, but I do not believe this prevents that evidence from being persuasive. Some conservatives may have turned their backs on freedom, but there clearly were many of us who did not. Otherwise, in 2003, when a young group of Indiana University conservative student activists drafted and adopted its own statement of conservative principles, it would not have created these Seven Points.
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