Last weekend I spent a couple of days in Washington, DC at the Defending the American Dream Summit, sponsored by Americans for Prosperity. It was a unique experience to be at an event with so many liberty-minded people from all sorts of backgrounds, all united by a desire to bring our republic back to the principles on which it was founded. Although AFP is technically a non-partisan group, I found myself mostly in the company of Republicans who were battered and bruised by the difficulties of the presidential campaign and events of recent days, but above all they remained unbowed and determined not to allow our nation to perish at the hands of reckless government or sacrificed on the altar of greed and irresponsibility.

This conference was the centerpiece of a series of similar regional conferences that Americans for Prosperity has hosted around the country. The idea is to bring together political leaders and the liberty-oriented grassroots to develop a dialog and build a movement to make liberty issues the focus of the political process, especially on the right and in the GOP. The conferences include sessions for bloggers and community organizers, working with groups like the Sam Adams alliance to educate and inform attendees and help them find the resources and learn the skills to be more effective. It’s sort of like a right-wing version of DailyKos’s Netroots Nation conference, which I attended a few months ago.

One of the things that struck me was how many of the attendees were surprisingly young … far younger than the GOP blue hairs who dominate the state parties and younger than the Netroots Nation denizens who average in their mid-fifties. There were students and soccer moms and reformed hippies and a surprisingly large number of African-Americans. It was a diverse and interesting and highly motivated group.

There was a great schedule of speakers, including Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, who has earned a career rating of ‘libertarian’ from the Republican Liberty Caucus and was one of the 25 heroic Senators who voted “no” on the Bailout bill. Inhofe spent most of his time talking about the downfall of the global warming movement and talking about sensible energy policy, but he was very impassioned and well received. Also impressive were radio talk show host Herman Cain, TV libertarian John Stossel and former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell. What surprised me about the speakers was how strongly dedicated to liberty these politicians are. Having heard them speak I understand more than I ever did before that not all politicians are the same and that there are men of principle who are worthy of our support.

Of all the speakers the most impressive was columnist George Will, who gave the keynote address on Friday. Will spoke magnificently, at least partly off the cuff, but presumably stringing together memorized bits of wisdom from past speeches adapted to his audience and the current times as he paced around the stage restlessly, conveying his frustration and anger at Congress and out of control government and the irresponsibility of the American people with enormous enthusiasm and conviction. Will talked at length about the erosion of personal responsibility and the willingness of too many Americans to look for a handout from government instead of helping themselves, pointing out that “more and more Americans are dependent on a government which they are not paying for,” reminding us that while the top 50% of wage earners pay 97% of the taxes in America, the overwhelming majority of our tax money is spent for the 50% of the population which pays no tax at all. He talked about the fall of communism and fascism around the world and how in many ways with no outside enemies we have become our own worst enemies and drifted away from the values which we once shared. He made the fundamental point which I’ve stressed in some of my writing that our current economic woes are not the result of the failure of the free market as the left would try to convince you, but the inevitable outcome of an overly managed and controlled and dependent economy and of businesses which have lost fiscal discipline and become dependent on government for undeserved support. In his conclusion he said that “capitalism does not just make us better off, it makes us fundamentally better.” Although he was angry and clearly dissatisfied with the current state of the world, Will’s speech was surprisingly inspiring and positive in its overall message.

One event which I didn’t attend at the summit was the rally on the steps of the Capitol to call attention to the bailout and government irresponsibility in general. Busses were available to take attendees directly to the mall, and hundreds turned out for some short speeches and relatively dignified protesting. Congress was not in session, but at least some news media were there to report on the concerns expressed by Americans for Prosperity members. You can get a feel for the rally from the Fox News video presented below.

The Defending the American Dream summit attracted a lot of interesting people. Not the kinds of Republicans which the left holds in their imaginations and certainly not what most associate with the Bush administration. At one point during the closing reception Ken Blackwell began talking about the importance of traditional Republican values and the woman next to me turned and surprised me by smiling and declaring that she was a liberal. I smiled back and acknowledged that I’m one too. It was an enlightening experience. Somehow despite all the pulls and pressures and the mistakes of accepting Dixiecrats and Neocons into the party, there remains a growing core in the Republican party which holds to the values of the party from a century and more ago when the interests of business and the best interests of the people were seen as naturally allied and the philosophy of the Republican party was one of individual liberty, responsibility and prosperity. Some of them might consider themselves libertarians or independents today, but the adherent of those traditioanl values were out in force at the Defending the American Dream Summit.

Well represented within this group were members of the Republican Liberty Caucus, the group within the Republican Party which is working hard to return the party to its classical liberal roots, and which shares many principles with the AFP. Some were there to attend the various breakout sessions and presentations and several were there as bloggers. RLC members in attendance included the following.

Krystle Weeks was there to write reports for her Crystal Clear Conservative blog, which features liveblog-style reports. Krystle is very prolific, so you have to go a couple of pages back to find her posts – she’s written about 20 new articles in the last week. She’s well connected in the Virginia and Washington political community and has a lot of useful insights.

Dr. Bill Smith came up from Arkansas and was writing for his ARRA News Service, which is a very useful resource for conservatives with some insightful critiques of the left. There are some really strong, hard-hitting articles on his site and I’ve added it to my regular reference sources.

John Underwood of the North Carolina RLC was there. I hardly saw him since he was intensely immersed in the sessions and meetings throughout the conference. I did at least manage to get him to slow down long enough for a photo, which is more than I was able to manage with a couple of other RLCers who were at the conference but nowhere to be seen. I also saw RLC member Aakash Raut, who writes at University Blog and is with the University of Illinois (Springfield) Young Republicans. Sadly, he wasn’t around for photo time.

I saw a lot more of David Baumgartner, who is the RLC coordinator for Wisconsin and is working hard on getting his state’s RLC organized and chartered. He’s a very nice fellow who has taken a late-life career shift and is attending law school and expanding his political activism. I suspect he’ll do a great job getting the RLC on its feet in Wisconsin.

With thousands in attendance and a high level of enthusiasm, the Defending the American Dream summit was a great look at where the Republican party and the nation might be going in the next few years. The message was positive, the dissatisfaction with the current establishment in both parties was palpable, and there were not just questions but a lot of good ideas and positive approaches to our current problems being discussed.

A lot of people are talking about change this election. The left would have us believe that the change we need is towards a bigger state and more socialism and that it is embodied in Barack Obama. Yet at the Defending the American Dream summit I saw a remarkably strong movement pushing for a very different and much more positive sort of change. Americans for Prosperity has gone from nothing to an estimated 300,000 members in only two years. As they continue to grow, they are poised to emerge to political prominence in the chaos which is likely to follow after next month’s election. They may not have all the answers, but the folks at AFP and the groups who are working with them do at least seem to grasp the key message that less government and more freedom are the only way to run our country if we want to avoid repeating the errors of the current era in the future.

You can find my full series of five articles on the conference with lots of video interviews at the Republic of Dave.