Give Us Liberty by Dick Armey Page A

advocates of government health care and the euphemistically named “public option” that they had “to be very loud and vocal” if they hope to save their beloved vision of socialized medicine.
    â€œWe won’t get a public option 1 , or anything close to it, unless people who feel strongly about it make a racket,” Reich told Politico. The “first step is to be very loud and very vocal: Write, phone, e-mail your congressional delegation and the White House. Second step: Get others to do the same. Third step: Get voters in Montana, North Dakota, Nebraska, and other states where Blue Dog Dems and wavering Senate Dems live and have them make a hell of a fuss. Fourth step: March on Washington.”
    That sounded like a challenge. Listening to the attacks leveled by Democrats against the citizens who showed up at town halls over the summer, you would have thought that the Left eschewed citizens who “make a racket,” “a hell of a fuss,” and anyone who is “very loud and vocal.” Were we not just lectured to about such things? Was there a double standard?
    Organizing for America, Barack Obama’s lauded grassroots machine, did in fact pick up the cudgel and organize a counterprotest on September 13. Sophia Elena, a video blogger 2 whose compelling footage of the Taxpayer March on Washington is some of the best on YouTube, captured the counterprotest the next day. All of 175 advocates of government-run health care attended. It was little noted and quickly forgotten.
    The real power revealed on September 12 was the actual people who organized the march. True to the independent libertarian spirit of these decentralized protesters, there were tens of thousands of organizers for the march, and thousands of assorted caravans of buses from every corner of the nation. No speaker or attendee was paid a fee, and no transportation or hotel was subsidized.
    E XPLOSIVE I DEAS
    O N THE AFTERNOON OF September 11, 2009, staff and volunteers were gathered at FreedomWorks’ headquarters at 601 Pennsylvania Avenue, scrambling to finish up the many projects that needed to be done. Campaign manager Nan Swift was working with the volunteers who were printing maps and directions, rolling T-shirts, and making protest signs. Brendan and Jenny Beth were working out a final order of speakers. Melissa Ortiz, a FreedomWorks volunteer, was working out the logistics of directing people around Freedom Plaza, along the route on Pennsylvania Avenue, and inside the barriers around the stage. Everyone else was on the phone, calling local organizers to bolster turnout.
    And then Alberta, our office administrator, received the call: “There’s a f—ing bomb in your building, bitch.”
    According to ABC News: “On the eve of what organizers call a ‘Big Ol’ TEA Party,’ the Washington, D.C., offices of FreedomWorks were evacuated by D.C. Metro police on Friday afternoon after the conservative organization reported to authorities at 3:42 P.M. ET that it had received a bomb threat 3 . Tens of thousands of anti–big government activists are expected in Washington on Saturday as part of a march on Washington being organized by FreedomWorks, a conservative group headed by former House majority leader Dick Armey, R-Texas. . . . D.C. Metro police has confirmed to ABC News’ Jason Ryan that the D.C. Metro police had, indeed, evacuated the organization’s offices. . . . Fifty volunteers were forced to leave the office where they were making calls encouraging people to come to tomorrow’s event.”
    At the time the call came in, Matt Kibbe was being interviewed by Luke Livingston, who was shooting footage for Tea Party: The Documentary Film. Luke had traveled to Washington on a Tea Party bus from Atlanta with some of the activists he was following and filming for the documentary. When they knocked on the door to tell Matt and Luke’s crew that the police were