Howard Phillips of Vienna, Virginia is the designated recipient of the CCRKBA Gun Rights Defender of the Month Award for October.
In nominating Phillips for the Award, John Michael Snyder, CCRKBA Public Affairs Director, said that “in this day and age, when so many people involved with public affairs obviously lead such unprincipled public lives, it is well to recognize and honor those in the public arena whose lives evidence sincere and firm commitment to principle, and especially those whose principled commitment includes firm dedication to the Second Amendment individual right to keep and bear arms. Such a man is Howard Phillips, whom I have known for over a quarter of a century. Howie is most deserving of this Award.”
Howard Phillips was chosen by an overwhelming majority of delegates at the National Convention of the U. S. Taxpayers Party in San Diego, California on August 17, 1996 to serve as its presidential candidate. Included in Howie’s and the U.S. Taxpayers Party Platform was the declaration that “the right to bear arms is inherent in the right of self-defense, defense of the family, and defense against tyranny conferred on the individual and the community by the Creator to safeguard life, liberty and property and that of his family, as well as to help preserve the independence of the nation.
“The right to bear arms is guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the Constitution; it may not properly be abridged or denied. The U. S. Taxpayers Party upholds the right of the citizen to keep and bear arms. We oppose attempts to prohibit the ownership of guns by law-abiding citizens, and stand against all laws which would require the registration of guns or ammunition.
“We emphasize that when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have them. In such circumstances, the peaceful citizen’s protection against the criminal would be seriously jeopardized.”
Howie and his wife, Peggy, have six children ranging in age from 11 to 32, and 10 grandchildren.
One of the children, Brad, currently is running as an Independent for the U. S. House of Representatives against 16-year incumbent Herb Bateman who he says “has undermined our Second Amendment rights by voting for the Brady Bill and opposing the repeal of the ban on assault weapons.”
Howard Phillips left the Republican Party in 1974 after some two decades of service to the GOP as precinct worker, election warden, campaign manager, congressional aide, Boston Republican Chairman, and assistant to the Chairman of the Republican National Committee.
During the Nixon Administration, Phillips headed two federal agencies, ending his Executive Branch career as Director of the U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity in the Executive Office of the President, a position from which he resigned when he says President Nixon reneged on his commitment to veto further funding for “Great Society” programs.
Since 1974, Phillips has been Chairman of The Conservative Caucus, a non-partisan, nationwide grass-roots public policy advocacy group which has been in the thick of battles, in opposition to the Panama Canal and Carter-Brezhnev SALT II treaties in the 1970, in support of the Strategic Defense Initiative and major tax reductions during the 1980s, and in the vanguard of efforts to terminate federal subsidies to ideological activist groups under the banner of “defunding the Left.”
Other Conservative Caucus campaigns have involved opposition to NAFTA and the World Trade Organization, support for a national version of California’s Proposition 187 to end mandated subsidies for illegal aliens, and establishment and promotion of The Coalition for a Congressional Impeachment Inquiry of President Bill Clinton the most anti-gun President in American history.
A 1962 graduate of Harvard /college, where he twice was elected President of the Student Council, Phillips is President of Policy Analysis, Inc., a public policy research organization which published the bimonthly ISSUES AND STRATEGY BULLETIN.
During the 1970s and 1980s, Phillips coordinated efforts to build private sector support for anti-Communist freedom fighters in Central America and southern Africa. He played an instrumental role in the leadership of the so-called New Right, as well as in the founding of the so-called religious right in 1977. Phillips has led fact-finding missions to Eastern Europe, and the Far East.
He has published three books: THE NEW RIGHT AT HARVARD (1983), MOSCOW’S CHALLENGE TO U.S. VITAL INTERESTS IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA (1987) and THE NEXT FOURS YEARS (1992).