Rep. Michele Bachmann. Photo: Douglas Burns

Rep. Michele Bachmann is headed to Denver on Friday to speak at the Western Conservative Summit 2010. Organized by the Colorado Christian University, the event’s theme is “Right Turn, Right Now.” Bachmann will give a keynote address tonight and will share the stage with conservative luminaries such as Michelle Malkin, Dick Morris, Tom Tancredo and Dennis Prager.

The summit is sponsored by a number of conservative groups including Focus on the Family, The Heritage Foundation and Colorado Family Action. Attendees will be required to sign the Lone Tree Declaration, a six-point manifesto for the summit.

Here’s the declaration:

We gather as grateful Americans, on the week of Independence Day, in the shadow of the Continental Divide at Lone Tree, Colorado. Our signatures on this declaration, to which we invite others not present to add their names as well, affirm six tenets of who we are and what we stand for:

1. In our adherence to the self-evident truths of the American Founding, we are conservatives.

2. In our debt to the civilizational heritage of Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, London, and Philadelphia, we are Westerners.

3. In our concern for the mounting threat to liberty, seeing freedom in the balance, we convene with solemn purpose at this Summit.

4. We seek a conservative renewal for our country through civic action that puts principle above party, resists the corruption of power, bridges intramural disagreements or rivalries, and protects an open public square centered on the nation’s Judeo-Christian core.

5. We commit ourselves unswervingly to a political and social order that upholds individual freedom and personal responsibility, limited government and the rule of law, free enterprise and private property, traditional family values and sanctity of life, compassion for the poor and voluntarism in service to others, natural law and morality, strong defense and secure borders, all in keeping with the original intent of the Constitution.

6. We reject, and will resist, the socialist temptation, transnational progressivism, secular utopian illusions, appeasement, disarmament, or capitulation to jihad and sharia.

Reminding our compatriots that with 2010 America enters a decisive decade for its survival as a free society, and appealing to God for His mercy and help, we declare our fidelity to the Spirit of 1776. To its revival we mutually pledge our solemn faith.

As our sister site the Colorado Independent first reported, Fox News reporter Griff Jenkins — specifically sent to “cause trouble” — was confronted by protesters chanting “Spread the lies” and “Fuck corporate media” just as the DNC was starting in Denver. Fox’s coverage of the tussle gives credence to demonstrators’ concerns about the rightwing network — or as Huffington Post’s Z.P. Heller says, “they have every reason” to yell. Jenkins, in a followup report, threw himself in the middle of the protest to ask marchers why they were there. Imposing his notion of free speech as forced response to a reporters’ questions, he said of those who refused to speak with him, “I guess they don’t believe in freedom of speech.” In response to a man with a “stop the torture, stop the war” sign, he replied, “Don’t you believe in freedom?” That set off a chorus of chants: “Fuck Fox News!”