I want to thank you very much. I’m sincerely grateful to you.
For a rather long time we progressives and liberals have been considered weak, lily-livered, unfocused, too nice to be anything more than a loud-mouth complainer.
Unfortunately for you, there is a short-term memory issue here.
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You have forgotten who went up against mine owners, the car makers, the railway tycoons.
You have forgotten the civil rights marches and boycotts of the sixties. You have forgotten the VietNam War actions. The young folk who refused to accept the unfair draft and a foolish war, the black folk who refused to sit at the back of the bus.
You have forgotten what we were willing to endure during the McCarthy period.
You have forgotten the labor strikes and boycotts. You have forgotten the folks who stood up to police, water cannon, attack dogs, the mercenaries with baseball bats, bully clubs, tire irons and even the National Guard with guns trained to the heart, all those meant to beat down into submission the labor workers, civil rights leaders, and kids with long hair.
You have forgotten the underground free press and kitchen table meetings and the hundred other ways we crisscrossed a country to get out the message, long before social media.
You have forgotten who we are and what we can do when we are roused from our propensity to be understanding, accepting, well-educated, nice.
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And here is where I would especially like to thank the Tea Party. You have also forgotten where you found the tactics to become an influence. It was from us. And you used it well.
In the past few years, some of us were awakening, as if sleepers. We saw the anger and hatefulness, and some of us actually understood it. It was such an ugly thing that most of us desired to turn such vitriol aside, judging it as beneath our notice. In that respect, we were mistaken, and you took us to school.
I want to thank you for the education and the reminder. I also want to thank you for demonizing us, making us look a fool, laughing at us and telling us we no longer have any power what so ever.
Why?
Because nothing emboldens a progressive or liberal more than telling us we have no choice and we are powerless to your ministrations. No one takes away our freedoms and flaunts it without inspiring us to re-claim that which is ours.
You cannot “give” us our rights or our freedoms or our power.
It is ours alone, given to us by a power far greater than you. It belongs to us, and we do not give you permission to take it away.
So, thank you for the motivation to wake up and master ourselves once again. Real progressives and liberals are never so happy as when we are in a battle for that which is honorable and right.
If you do not believe it, to quote my Viking grandmother:
“Hide and watch.”
We don’t just “resist”… We become the Resistance and have been ever thus since 1776.
Respectfully yours,
Several times Great Grand Daughter of
Brigadier General Andrew Lewis,
Continental Army of the American Colonies
