Operation American Spring was an event held this weekend in DC that was talking about having 10 – 30 million people show up to protest (Phase 1, below). What was its purpose? From its website:
Mission: Restoration of Constitutional government, rule of law, freedom, liberty “of the people, by the people, for the people” from despotic and tyrannical federal leadership.
Assumptions: Millions of Americans will participate American veterans and patriots are energized to end the tyranny, lawlessness, and shredding of the US Constitution. Government is not the target, it is sound; corrupt and criminal leadership must be replaced. Those in power could use force against unarmed, peaceful patriots exercising their constitutional rights. Patriots could be harmed, but not expected. There is no hope given today’s technology of secrecy for the effort nor do we want it secret.
Concept of Operations:
Phase 1 – Field millions, as many as ten million, patriots who will assemble in a peaceful, non-violent, physically unarmed (Spiritually/Constitutionally armed), display of unswerving loyalty to the US Constitution and against the incumbent government leadership in Washington D.C., with the mission to replace with law abiding leadership. Go full-bore, no looking back, steadfast in the mission.
Unfortunately for the organizer, Col. Harry Riley, USA (Ret.), instead of a few million people that were expected to show up for this Phase 1 event, the report from Jack Kimball was that only a few hundred showed up yesterday. Organization was poor, things were not set up for an anticipated crowd of the size being touted. Of the 1 million militia that said were to be coming, about 30 were seen. Jack related that he and the other folks that went down from NH were more than disappointed.
Sure, really bad weather doesn’t help (lots of hard rain yesterday according to Jack) but this was a horrible turnout. I do wonder about this, however:
…Operation American Spring was billed as far back as six months ago as a rally call for patriotic Americans to force leaders in Washington, D.C., to return to a more limited and constitutional style of governance — and to oust those leaders who weren’t listening. Among the group’s targets: Mr. Obama and Mr. Boehner, as well as Attorney General Eric Holder, Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid, Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, vice president Joe Biden and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.
…Mr. Riley’s reasons for the event, as stated in previously published accounts: “We are calling for [their] removal … as a start toward constitutional restoration. They have all abandoned the U.S. Constitution, are unworthy to be retained in a position that calls for servant status.”
Removal…by who and by what mechanism? Having 10 – 30 M people would have been impressive and perhaps a bit intimidating to many CongressCritters, but my questions were echoed by others, like Rick Moran at American Thinker:
Certainly, it’s a worthy goal to attempt to force politicians to follow constitutional principles in making law. But for the overwhelming majority of Americans, it’s a huge sacrifice for them to leave work and family for a weekend trip to DC. Expecting 10 million people to drop everything and come to Washington was unrealistic and the group has left themselves open to ridicule despite the serious nature of their protest.
But the second part of the protest was not only unrealistic, but dangerous:
We are calling for [their] removal … as a start toward constitutional restoration. They have all abandoned the U.S. Constitution, are unworthy to be retained in a position that calls for servant status.”
Obama, Biden, Boehner, McConnell, Pelosi – you can’t just wish these people away. Just how was the “removal” to occur? One assumes that 10 million people in Washington would be very intimidating, but did organizers really expect all of these politicians to resign peacefully? And did organizers think that President Obama would do nothing? The army would almost certainly be called out to protect the government.
This is not how the US works. We do not have government by the mob. We have elections to “oust” bad politicians. And if someone in Texas doesn’t like people in Ohio sending John Boehner back to Washington, it is constitutionally none of their business.
As for President Obama and Vice President Biden, why abandon the constitutional way of changing a president through impeachment? How can you march on Washington to restore constitional principles and then tear the constitution up by ignoring what the document requires in removing a president and vice president?
It’s this kind of incohernece that has made the march a failure. You can’t claim the high ground of constitutional restoration by doing everything that document was set up to prevent.
Look, right now I’m glad there is gridlock in DC – it means that Progressives are being foiled at moving that Overton Window (and the rest of us along with it) further and further from the Constitutional values that this country was founded upon. Any time that the move towards more and more Socialism, where Equality is forced by dint of Government decree without regard to the Individual Freedom, is thwarted, I’m a happy guy. Part of the problem, however, is that both Republicans (regardless of the noise of their flapping gums) and Democrats (who actually relish pulling that Window ever Leftward) have embued the Executive Branch with sufficient Powers so as to make Congress irrelevant (and Obama is taking full advantage of that AS WELL knowing that the US House will never have the testicular fortitude to actually use their Constitutional Power of the Purse).
Unfortunately, there was a big gap between “get the millions mob” and HOW to “remove from office” in the whole process – and like Moran said, that may have been the reason why more didn’t. A “show up and pitch the Elected Officials out” sounds good and feels good – but we’re not at the real point of “tar and feathers” (as much as we believe it IS time and it IS called for).
The big TEA Party rallies may now be history – and many moved on to working the ballot boxes. Face it, regardless of what the media and the Establishment Republicans may be crowing, the values that the TEA Party espoused are still alive and well; they don’t need waving Gadsden flags to show they are working. It is working, they are working – just look at the effect it has already had in 5 short years.
Here’s the rest of from the Operation American Spring website:
Concept of Operations:
Phase 1 – Field millions, as many as ten million, patriots who will assemble in a peaceful, non-violent, physically unarmed (Spiritually/Constitutionally armed), display of unswerving loyalty to the US Constitution and against the incumbent government leadership in Washington D.C., with the mission to replace with law abiding leadership. Go full-bore, no looking back, steadfast in the mission.Phase 2 – One million or more of the assembled 10 million must be prepared to stay in D.C. as long as it takes to see Obama, Biden, Reid, McConnell, Boehner, Pelosi, and Attorney General Holder removed from office.
Consistent with the US Constitution, as required, the U.S. Congress will take appropriate action, execute appropriate legislation, deal with vacancies, or U.S. States will appoint replacements for positions vacated consistent with established constitutional requirements.
Phase 3 – Those with the principles of a West, Cruz, Dr. Ben Carson, Lee, DeMint, Paul, Gov Walker, Sessions, Gowdy, Jordan, should comprise a tribunal and assume positions of authority to convene investigations, recommend appropriate charges against politicians and government employees to the new U.S. Attorney General appointed by the new President.
*All actions in Phase 2 & 3 will be consistent with the U.S. Constitution.
