Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ’s)

A. Non-partisan means non-political which means all political parties and their members are welcome to join in the building of the Monument to Enduring Freedom.  Those who clamor for more federal control to ‘fix’ society’s problems (i.e., the social-engineering crowd) can also be viewed as ‘friends of the big-government’ coalition, whereas members of the ‘friends of freedom’ coalition are those who advocate for limited government and individual responsibility, and who support our Constitutional Republic and participatory democracy as identified in our founding documents.  To a greater or lesser degree, some members of all our political parties exist in both of these coalitions.

America’s heart and soul is not about political parties!
America’s heart and soul is about its people!

The Monument to Enduring Freedom is not about political parties. It is about Americans!

2. Q. Why all these terms, aren’t Americans all the same?

A. Americans are not all the same. They have never been the same. From our founding in 1776 some Americans sided with King George III and wanted England to rule our country. Others fought against British rule. Some Americans wanted a strong federal government while others wanted a limited federal government and strong state governments. The debate continues to this day. That’s the wonderful thing about freedom – it embraces all opinions. Terms are only helpful if they help each of us understand the objectives of those groups. Once understood, we can rally our support behind which group we feel a connection to.

3. Q. Socialism isn’t all that bad? It just helps the poor have a better life?

A. If this statement makes sense to you, if you agree with it, if you don’t see the immediate need to build the Monument to Enduring Freedom, then my case has already been made for the monuments Educational Outreach program which will teach our youth the facts about socialism and America’s founding.

“So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.”

Voltaire

Listed below are the steps to a Marxist socialist utopia as documented in their writings and applied in many countries over many years:

• Create dissatisfaction within subsets of the population (unions, minorities, welfare recipients, lifestyle choices). Encourage these subsets to use violence to get their fair share of wealth.
• Remove God and religion from the public square, from classrooms, from the general population. Promote ‘God is dead’ philosophy and replace it with ‘Man is God’ philosophy.
• Use widespread corruption, lies, deceit and subterfuge to rig elections.
• Use natural disasters and emergencies as an excuse to remove rights of citizens. Use martial law more and more.
• Control and manipulate the monetary system.
• Chip away civil rights one bite at a time.
• Replace fundamental Judeo-Christian morality with ‘situational ethics and humanism.
• Restrict freedom of speech. Control the mass media.
• Squash those who resist by cancelling access to technology.
• Limit access to books, rewrite history, remove monuments to the past.
• Private business becomes state owned and controlled.
• Encourage and reward citizens to ‘snitch’ on their neighbors who speak out for freedom and against the state.
• Control all aspects of education. Replace with centralized propaganda.
• Separate children from parents.
• Begin to implement centralized control of government, education, bureaucracies, food production and distribution.
• Once Marxist-Socialist politicians control the country, eliminate all opposition. Declare a new and improved socialist government.
• At this time, the new leader declares himself/herself a ‘fairly elected’ dictator. A new tyrant is born. This new tyrant creates a personal ‘army’ to protect him and his laws.
• Once this new socialist state is in place, it is transformed into a beautiful and shiny communist country. The final goal of all socialist programs is the implementation of communism.
• After ten or twenty years of living in this new communist country and under the iron thumb of its dictator, life gets harder, not better. The people eventually realize they’ve been duped. They fell for the utopian platitudes promised of free health care, free education, free housing, free this and free that. But in time they sadly become victims of their own ignorance and greed.

4. Q. The monument costs too much. Just spend the money to feed the poor!

A. Yes, the Monument to Enduring Freedom will cost a lot of money. The Educational Outreach Program will cost a lot of money to operate each year. And yes, we could use the money to feed the poor. But that’s part of the beauty of America. We are free to pick our causes that we believe in and we are free to spend our hard-earned money on what we want. Period. We say that if you do not like our monument project, or what it stands for, that is your choice. We respect your right to do so. We also expect you to respect our right to build this monument. Life is short. Pick your path and find meaning as you walk it. As part of my answer to this question, this insightful quote from President Teddy Roosevelt seems to fit. Projects like this one with a massive vision are often ridiculed by those who love to criticize.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Theodore Roosevelt, 26th U.S. President

5. Q. Why do we need another big monument? The Statue of Liberty is enough!

A. The two fundamental pillars of American society are liberty and freedom. Liberty can be viewed as the ‘rule of law’ that is applied equally to every person regardless of status, wealth or position. Freedom can be viewed as having ‘access to the law’. If a person is denied access to the law, he will not be able to realize his inalienable rights of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. You can also view freedom as the realization of our …’pursuit of happiness’. The Statue of Liberty focuses on America’s declaration of liberty for all. The Monument to Enduring Freedom focuses on America’s declaration of freedom for all. The rule of law (liberty) and access to the law (freedom) are the two messages that make America stand out among all other countries in the world. Two principles – two monuments – One America.

6. Q. If the Monument to Enduring Freedom is so important, why not just have the government pay for it?

A. Our goal has always been to see this project funded by individuals and the private sector. One of our beliefs is that the federal government has grown too big and is involved in the lives of citizens more than it was ever designed to. The Statue of Liberty was a gift from the people of France to America. Americans paid for and built the pedestal. The Monument to Enduring Freedom will be a gift from the people of America to America. And through extension of its message, to the world.

7. Q. What about the design of the monument? How was it conceived? How were the sculptors picked?

A. Our website homepage under Our Team – The Sculptors, gives a detailed account of the process of selecting the artists and their designs. Several years ago, a nationwide search was sent to 270 of the nation’s best sculptors for their design ideas. This search was completed in 2017. The artists, Anna and Jeffrey Koh-Varilla, and their design were officially accepted and announced in 2018.

8. Q. If the Educational Outreach Program of the monument project is so important, why don’t you just operate it without building the monument?

A. Having the 305-foot-tall monument on the West Coast will serve to bring a laser focus to our future-focused mission of education. This massive and historic monument will help bring much-needed attention to the educational task at hand, that of teaching truth-based historical facts about America’s founding and her role in the world as a beacon of freedom for all people. There is a lot of ‘noise’ in the world today. Many voices clamor for attention. As ‘Brother Freedom’ stands tall and proud, a megaphone for freedom, coupled with ‘Lady Liberty's message of liberty, all will hear their message and none will doubt their resolve. No one can ignore a 305-foot-tall exclamation mark to freedom!

9. Q. Individual Freedom or Collective Good – which is better?

A. Individual freedom, what we call those inalienable rights of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”, is not designed to have a predetermined outcome … I pursue what I want to pursue. You pursue what you want to pursue, and as long as neither of us treads on each other, we are free to work out our own life. The collective good is simply having everyone work towards a predetermined destination that is designed and enforced by a benevolent tyrant or ruthless dictator. Individual Freedom and Collective Good are polar opposites.

10. Q. Isn’t the Statue of Liberty’s message all about letting needy immigrants into America?

A. No, it is not. Sculptor Fredric-Auguste Bartholdi, never intended the Statue of Liberty to evoke the idea of immigration. The idea of the Statue of Liberty as a symbol of welcoming immigrants was only attributed to the monument since 1903. In a sense, he viewed his creation as something nearly opposite: as a symbol of liberty (the rule of law) spreading outward from America to the world *. To help finance the pedestal, poet Emma Lazarus was asked to write a verse about the monument. Known as ‘The New Colossus’, the now famous sonnet would wait 17 years following the statues dedication before it was crafted into a bronze plaque and hung on an interior wall of the pedestal. The topic of immigrants was clearly never a primary message of the Statue of Liberty – its message was and is all about spreading the uplifting ‘Light of Liberty’ and the ‘Rule of Law’ message throughout America and the world.

* The Statue of Liberty – The Monumental Dream, page 35. By Rizzoli Electra

11. Q. This project sounds very conservative? Who exactly are conservatives?

A. Let me tell you who conservatives are: *“We love people. When we look out over the United States of America, when we are anywhere, when we see a group of people, we see Americans. We see human beings. We don't see groups. We don't see victims. We don't see people we want to exploit. What we see -- what we see is potential. We look out across the country and see the average American, the person that makes this country work. We do not see that person with contempt. We don't think that person doesn't have what it takes. We believe that person can be the best he or she wants to be if certain things are just removed from their path like onerous taxes, regulations and too much government. We want every American to be the best he or she chooses to be. We recognize that we are all individuals. We love and revere our founding documents, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. We believe that the preamble to the Constitution contains an inarguable truth that we are all endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them Life, Liberty, Freedom and the Pursuit of Happiness. We conservatives think all these are under assault. We don't want to tell anybody how to live. That's up to you. If you want to make the best of yourself, feel free. If you want to ruin your life, we'll try to stop it, but it's a waste. We look over the country as it is today, we see so much waste, human potential that's been destroyed by 50 years of a welfare state -- by a failed war on poverty. We love the people of this country. And we want this to be the greatest country it can be, but we do understand, as people created and endowed by our creator, we're all individuals. We resist the effort to group us. We resist the effort to make us feel that we're all the same, that we're no different than anybody else. We're all different. There are no two people in this world who are created in a way that they end up with equal outcomes. That's up to them. They are created equal, given the chance. We don't hate anybody. We want everybody to succeed. We want the country to succeed, and for the country to succeed, its people -- its individuals -- must succeed. Everyone among us must be pursuing his ambition or her desire, whatever, with excellence. Trying to be the best they can be.”

* 2009 CPAC Keynote Speech. Rush H. Limbaugh, Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient 2020.

12. Q. What is American Exceptionalism? Aren’t all countries exceptional?

A. American exceptionalism is the idea that the United States is inherently different and unique from other nations by virtue of the principles upon which it was founded. America stands alone (exemplary, distinctive) as a bold, wonderful and spiritual experiment in democracy. America began with ideas and philosophy to lift the individual above all manner of tyrants, kings and governments. “In God We Trust”, the motto of the United States, was signed into law in July 1956 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. This motto is at the center of American Exceptionalism. American government exists to secure the rights of man. America was founded on Judeo-Christian principles of ‘unalienable rights’ that come from God, not man or king or government. The political system of ‘balance of power’ between its three branches (executive, legislative, judicial) with separate but equal authority was unique in the world. Basing individual rights of liberty and freedom as coming from God was never reflected in any other government until America did so. Hence, American Exceptionalism simply means that America stands unique (exceptional) in the principles and truths it was founded upon.