putting it in perspective

On Wednesday, I had the distinct pleasure of hanging out with about 2000 other so-called “rightwing extremists”.
There was no destruction of property.
There was no vandalism.
There was not a whole lot of shouting, or even raised voices.
There were no threats of violence against anyone, present or not.
There was no violence of any kind.
There were no police interventions. The police were there, but they maintained a standoff of about 100 yards, and never had cause to come closer.
There were no pitchforks or torches.
There was no shooting into the air.
There were no racist slogans or signs that I noticed.
There was no identifiable presence from any paramilitary, neo-nazi, or white-supremacist groups, nor any similar groups or organizations.
There was no harassment of the press, reporters, or photographers who attended.
There was no flag-burning.
There was nothing anti-American in any signs, slogans, or speeches.
There were no vocalized or written exhortations for violent overthrow of the American government.
There was a lot of politeness – “thank you”, “excuse me”, etc.
There was a cross-section of the Tennessee population, from farmers in their coveralls up to slick-and-smooth businessmen.
There were families, from babes in swaddling clothes up to people who might remember the Great War.
There was respectful silence for the speakers… except when they said something particularly poignant.
There was tolerance for the counterprotesters in attendance. So far as I can tell, they were never harassed nor harangued, nor did the crowd really interact with them much at all.
There were people who voted for President Barack Hussein Obama.
There were a lot of people who are concerned about the path our country is taking.
There were folks who arrived late due to jobs.
There were a lot of people (myself included) who had never protested anything before in their lives – about 75% of the crowd, by a show of hands.
There was a clean-up effort after the event to ensure the site was better than when we arrived.
There was a sizeable emphasis placed on history, the Constitution, our Founding Fathers, and the ideals on which America was founded.
There was a Pledge of Allegiance.
There was an opening prayer.
There were Gadsden Flags and Culpeper Flags and First Navy Jacks and Gonzales Banners and American Flags.
There were somewhere around 2000 people in attendance, in a town of 174,000.
There were approximately half a million people at all Tea Parties nation-wide.
And this is only the beginning.
People have been taking governmental stupidity laying down in the past, but now they know there are more people like them – people who are interested in America returning to the ideals and concepts that made it so great. People interested in a smaller government. People interested in less spending. People interested in representatives who actually bother to listen to the people who elected them. People interested in a government that not only recognizes their rights, but also protects them, as it should.
And now those people are going to start writing their representatives, or showing up in their offices, or attending city council meetings, or lobbying, or joining other pro-rights organizations or groups, or many, many other alternatives.
The Tea Parties were not the culmination of their movement – far from it, really. They are the beginnning of what we hope will be a further interest in citizen activism in the government, which can only lead to the benefit of a government for the people, as it always should have been.