My message to America's 912 movement

By Michael Johns

By most estimates, over three million Americans attended a 912 Project event on September 12, 2009. The project was launched by Glenn Beck of Fox News, and I have supported it wholeheartedly and believe it to be a constructive political movement building on the even larger Tea Party movement, which I co-founded in February 2009 and have since helped lead.

Beck covered the events remotely from Fox's New York studios, and millions more tuned in for his coverage of it.

My message on September 12 was that change must come to Washington, D.C., not from it, which led me to instead decide to speak at the second-largest 912 Project event that day (after Washington, D.C., where over a million people gathered), held in Washington Park in Quincy, Illinois.

Washington Park was selected because of its historic role, on October 13, 1858, as host to the largest of the seven Lincoln-Douglas debates.

I will let my message in Quincy stand for itself.

But the essence is that these are deadly serious times, as were Lincoln's in 1858, and that Americans must—right now—recommit ourselves to our constitution and liberty, or this nation will find itself far down a very different, ominous path that erodes nearly all the tenets of American exceptionalism.

Michael Johns is a healthcare executive, co-founder of the U.S. Tea Party movement, and a former White House presidential speechwriter. Follow him on X at: michaeljohns