Basics Project

Welcome to BasicsProject.org
It is difficult to value something when its worth is unknown. This truth brings to mind the old adage about two children who had received the same bike, one given the bike, the other made to earn the bike. Invariably, the child who was given the bike was more prone to neglecting it, not understanding its worth, while the child who was made to earn the bike, who understood its worth, maintained it. This basic truth applies to our American Heritage and the continued welfare of our nation. Without a solid understanding of the basic principles used by our Founding Fathers in establishing our Constitutional Republic it is sometimes difficult for Americans to recognize the worth of the American ideal. When the full value of freedom and liberty are not realized it becomes easy to incrementally relinquish rights guaranteed under the Constitution. Today, our country faces both a threat from abroad and a threat, in the form of ideological conflict, from within. While some among us choose to accentuate the imperfections of our nation, others condemn our culture or literally champion our nation’s defeat and demise. We at BasicsProject.org understand that there is a direct correlation between understanding the principles, ideology, history and meaning behind our founding documents – the Charters of Freedom – and the proclivity to value and, therefore, advance our American Heritage to the next generation and beyond.

We invite you to study, use and disseminate the information you find here at BasicsProject.org. As an IRS recognized 501(c)(3) tax-exempt entity we provide this basic knowledge -- and links to organizations and literature that provide a more in-depth analysis of the subjects -- free of charge. But like any non-profit organization we do need your financial support to maintain our programs and refine our research. Please consider making a tax deductible contribution or purchasing one of our educational CDs. And please, tell your like-minded and open-minded friends about us. Our goal is grassroots, fact-based education and you are a major part of what will make our endeavors successful.

Pillar Issues
Constitutional Literacy
Many Americans know the preamble to the United States Constitution and the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence. They also may be able to recite at least some of the enumerated Bill of Rights. But few know these documents are considered our Founding Documents, documents that carry equal importance in the creation and execution of our government. Even fewer understand the principles, history and philosophy surrounding the creation of these remarkable documents. To be an American is to understand and to have a reasonable commitment to the ideas in America's founding documents. It is the mission of Basics Project to make sure that every American is afforded the opportunity of understanding these remarkable documents, the covenant between citizen and the uniquely American form of government. We believe that through a greater understanding of the principles on which our government was built our citizenry will better understand that e pluribus unum, the idea that we are out of many, one. Read more...	¨Reading: Keeping a Republic by Nancy Salvato This book by Nancy Salvato, the Director of Constitutional Studies for BasicsProject.org, examines the issue of American sovereignty and how it relates to the continued well-being of our Republic. From the deliberations undertaken during the framing of the US Constitution to the challenge of maintaining national sovereignty in a time of Progressive globalization, Keeping a Republic examines the philosophy and ideology that served the Framers in creating the United States of America, ideals valid to this very day. ¹Viewing: Understanding Our Government Many people in the United States -- and around the world -- believe that the United States is a Democracy. It is not, and for good reason. Our Framers and Founders bequeathed to the citizens a Constitutional Republic, doing so for some very good reasons, chief among them was to avoid the tyranny of the majority, or mob rule.
Islamist Terrorism
There can be little doubt that terrorist organizations have arrived on the shores of the United States of America. The thousands of lives lost on September 11, 2001 stand as testimony to this undeniable fact. But the truth of the matter is that terrorists have been migrating to the United States, establishing their organizational cells, infiltrating and fading into our communities for decades; laying in wait for the correct moments to strike. These are precisely the events that preceded the flights that delivered the nineteen 9/11 hijackers and thousands of innocent people to their destinies. Today, 72 terrorist organizations with thousands of operatives exist and operate within the borders of the United States. Many counterterrorism experts, including former CIA Director James Woolsey and founding member of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, Dr. Bruce Tefft, agree, it is not a question of “if” there will be another attack on American soil, it is a question of “when.” The only questions left unanswered about this future attack are how lethal it will be, where it will take place and whether we will have had enough foresight to have acquired the information needed to literally help save our own lives. Read more...	8CD: The Beginning of the End: The American Hiroshima The beginning of the end of Planet Earth occurred on September 27, 1991, when President George H.W. Bush announced that the United States would withdraw its nuclear weapons from NATO sites throughout the western world if the Soviet Union would follow suit. Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev agreed and a deadline was set. The task was to be completed by May 1992. Withdrawing the tactical nuclear weapons in order to place them in secured places seemed to be a great idea that no one in his right mind could oppose. But truth be told, it was a horrendous mistake... ¨Reading: A God Who Hates by Dr. Wafa Sultan For the first time, Dr. Wafa Sultan tells her story and what she learned, first-hand, about radical Islam in A God Who Hates, a passionate memoir by an outspoken Arabic woman that is also a cautionary tale for the West. She grew up in Syria in a culture ruled by a god who hates women. She believes that the god who hates is waging a battle between modernity and barbarism, not a battle between religions. She also knows that it’s a battle radical Islam will lose.
The American Fifth Column
With roots emanating from the ideology of the Marxist/Leninist Era, the American Fifth Column presents a menace from within; a threat to the longevity of our uniquely American way of life. These roots, nurtured and further developed during the counter-culture revolution of the of the 1960s and 1970s, and now taught in classrooms across America as “tolerance,” "multiculturalism" and "diversity", have evolved into a unique yet visionless ideology, which holds that our most basic constitutional tenets are the central cause for many of the social ills here in the United States and around the world. The Secular Progressive, Democratic Socialist and/or neo-Marxist American Fifth Column ideology embraces the philosophies of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin. It is a product of the Frankfort School of pre-World War II Germany and employs the democratic process to promote moral relativism, multiculturalism and political correctness, in an effort to silence fundamental American ideals and pursue an American form of socialism in their place. Read more...	¹Viewing: The The Cloward-Piven Strategy First proposed in 1966 and named after Columbia University sociologists Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, the "Cloward-Piven Strategy" seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse. ²Podcasts: Is Eric Holder Practicing Affirmative Action Justice? The events surrounding the abandonment of the voter intimidation case against three members of the New Black Panther Party for actions taken at a Philadelphia polling place during the 2008 General Election have left many puzzled as to why the most egregious violation of the Voter Rights Act since the days of the KKK was dropped by Eric Holder's Justice Department.

Spotlight

Elena Kagan
Nominee to the US Supreme Court
A week after Ronald Reagan’s presidential victory in November 1980, Kagan, who was then a student at Princeton University, contributed a piece to the Daily Princetonian, wherein she gave voice to her angst over the apparent demise of the left. She wrote that her immediate “gut response” to Reagan's election had been to conclude “that the world had gone mad, that liberalism was dead, and that there was no longer any place for the ideals we held or the beliefs we espoused.” Soon thereafter Kagan predicted, with a hopeful spirit, that “the next few years will be marked by American disillusionment with conservative programs and solutions, and that a new, revitalized, perhaps more leftist left will once again come to the fore.”

The following year, Kagan penned her senior thesis—titled “To the Final Conflict: Socialism in New York City, 1900-1933”—wherein she specifically thanked her brother Marc, “whose involvement in radical causes led me to explore the history of American radicalism in the hope of clarifying my own political ideas.” In the body of that work, Kagan lamented that “a coherent socialist movement is nowhere to be found in the United States”; that “Americans are more likely to speak of...capitalism’s glories than of socialism’s greatness”; that “the desire to conserve has overwhelmed the urge to alter”; that “in a society by no means perfect,” no “radical party” had yet “attained the status of a major political force”; that “the socialist movement [had] never become an alternative to the nation’s established parties”; and that the Socialist Party had “exhausted itself forever and further reduced labor radicalism in New York to the position of marginality and insignificance.” Kagan called these developments “sad” and “chastening” for “those who, more than half a century after socialism’s decline, still wish to change America.” Read more...

Al-Shabaab
Sunni Jihadist Group
The Harakat Shabaab al-Mujahidin (al-Shabaab)— also known as al-Shabaab, Shabaab, the Youth, Mujahidin al-Shabaab Movement, Mujahideen Youth Movement, Mujahidin Youth Movement, and other names and variations—was the militant wing of the Somalia Council of Islamic Courts that took over most of southern Somalia in the second half of 2006. Although the Somali government and Ethiopian forces routed the group in a two-week war between December 2006 and January 2007, al-Shabaab has continued its violent insurgency in southern and central Somalia. The group has gained control of many parts of southern and central Somalia by using guerrilla warfare and terrorist tactics against the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia and its allies, African Union peacekeepers, and nongovernmental aid organizations.

On 29 February 2008, the US Government designated al-Shabaab as a Foreign Terrorist Organization under Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act and as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist under Section 1(b) of Executive Order 13224. Al-Shabaab’s rank-and-file members come from disparate clans, and the group is continually susceptible to clan politics, internal divisions, and shifting alliances. While most of its fighters are predominantly interested in the nationalistic battle against the TFG and not supportive of global jihad, al-Shabaab’s senior leadership is affiliated with al-Qa‘ida, and certain extremists aligned with al-Shabaab are believed to have trained and fought in Afghanistan. Al-Shabaab has issued statements praising Usama Bin Ladin and linking Somalia to al-Qa‘ida’s global operations. The group has claimed responsibility for many bombings—including various types of suicide attacks—in Mogadishu and in central and northern Somalia, typically targeting Somali government officials and perceived allies of the TFG. Read more...

Support the Efforts of BasicsProject.org

As a 501(c)(3) qualified tax-exempt organization, your contributions to Basics Project are fully tax deductible for federal income tax purposes, subject to appropriate limitations. You can help us achieve our goals by taking advantage of the tax savings available to you through your financial support of our organization. Whether it’s an individual contribution or building Basics Project into your corporate financial structure, the options remain the same, you can pay taxes to the federal government and hope Congress spends it wisely, or you can affect that amount by contributing to Basics Project with a guarantee it is going to help preserve our American Heritage.

Click here to find out how you can help or to make a donation