Hey folks! Adam Johnson here; I write the newsletters for Middle Tennessee Tea Party.

It has been suggested that because we intend to have a peaceful event on Saturday the 22^nd, the “cowardly event organizers for the conservatives” somehow are “zombies” who should “bow down” and “kiss [the SEIU’s/ACORN's] feet and hands,” as if the Tea Party movement is merely “meek opposition,” trying to keep Panel attendees “from carrying signs or showing any signs of intelligence,” and that “by [my] standards,” we should “just give them everything they want now.” After all, “why meet at all if we’re going to roll over like our wimpy representatives and senators[?]”

I find that accusation insulting and more than a little short-sighted, but since it’s been made, allow me to make myself plain upon tables.

The Panel is an informational event, the point of which is for our people to walk away more intelligent and informed than when they came.

We are indeed planning on protesting, vociferously so, but at the Town Hall, not the Panel. Let the SEIU have their little demonstration; let them waste their movement’s momentum demonstrating at Bart Gordon’s office, in front of a man who already is sympathetic for their cause and who is likely not even to be there when they show up.

Seriously, does it make any logical sense to demonstrate in front of a person who’s not even there? One might as well write a letter to Santa Claus asking for his liberties back!

Frankly, it’s not signs or slogans that concern me; it’s haughty, spiteful, cynical attitudes on the part of a profound minority of those in the Tea Party movement. We’re all angry to a point, of course; our country is being stolen from us, and for the first time in 150 years, we find ourselves in the position of not standing for the status quo.

I’m a card carrying Libertarian. In my own Party, what has held us back from making substantive progress for our cause always have been vocal, short-sighted troublemakers: those who are more interested in scoring cheap political points than making substantive progress in the direction of Liberty; those who are more concerned with making themselves feel like they’re making an impact than they are in taking a step back, considering the available options, and actually making an difference; those who are more concerned with looking cool than being a good American and working for our founding Fathers’ vision of America.

Now forgive me if I don’t take kindly to being called a coward. I would hope that the people who claim to be supportive of the libertarian-conservative point of view would not be too short-sighted to know the difference between “cowardly” and “smart.” By my standards (or the standards of any reasonably intelligent, civilized person) we should outsmart them. We should look at their plans, their history, their reputation and stifle any opportunity they have to gain sympathy for themselves or their cause, to make themselves look good, or to make us look bad.

Honestly, how can one expect the Tea Party movement to “look different from the SEIU/Acorn [sic] thugs” by behaving just like they do and provoking an altercation with them, which altercations have been their modus operandi for years? If anybody chooses to fight, let it be them. Then, they will be seen as the Big Union thugs harassing the peaceful, yet stoic, Tea Party folks, the same way the police in the South were made to look bad during the peaceful protests of the Civil Rights movement era.

I defy anybody to tell me seriously that he considers those protesters of the ’50s and ’60s to be anything but heroes, and I defy him doubly to tell me that he considers those southern police officers to have been anything but villains.

Seriously, I think we all really need to take a good, long, hard look at this country. Look at the players on the political landscape. Look at how our opposition and how they do what they do. Look at us and what we’ve been doing for the last 150 years.

Now, ask yourself this question: “even if we defeat every piece of their legislation and pass every piece of ours, if we stoop to their level and play their game, will they not eventually bring public opinion back to their side and come back stronger next time, or would we be better off to write a new book, one that keeps public sentiment on our side without giving them political ammunition to use against us in the future?”

So I said all that to say this.

“Know your enemy, and know yourself.”

—Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Now let’s all get out there and take our country back the right way!

—Adam Johnson
Member of the Committee
Middle Tennessee Tea Party
www.MidTNTeaParty.org

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