Sharon Statement

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The Sharon Statement is the founding statement of principles of the Young Americans for Freedom.

Written by M. Stanton Evans with the assistance of Annette Kirk, wife of the late Russell Kirk, ^[1] and adopted on September 11, 1960, the statement is named for the location of the inaugural meeting of Young Americans for Freedom, held at William F. Buckley, Jr.'s estate in Sharon, Connecticut. The statement read, in part:

“

WE, as young conservatives believe:

THAT foremost among the transcendent values is the individual's use of his God-given free will, whence derives his right to be free from the restrictions of arbitrary force;

THAT liberty is indivisible, and that political freedom cannot long exist without economic freedom;

THAT the purpose of government is to protect those freedoms through the preservation of internal order, the provision of national defense, and the administration of justice;

THAT when government ventures beyond these rightful functions, it accumulates power, which tends to diminish order and liberty...

”

Two years later, Tom Hayden's Port Huron Statement, the foundational document of Students for a Democratic Society, would become the unofficial rebuttal to the Sharon Statement. These two manifestos would frame the ideological struggles on American college campuses throughout the 1960s.