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And did we learn any useful lessons this weekend? Hmmmm?

Well, since you asked....

We learned that if there were ~200 of us there this year and ~ 2 million marching in the street by this time next year we should plan on minimum 300 in attendance at the 2nd Annual FreeRepublic Convention to coincide with what will likely be 3 million marching in the street.

My thanks goes out to all those organizers! That was a herculean effort and you did it all so seamlessly. And special thanks to Jim whose vision to launch FR almost 12 years ago has been an inspiration and a rallying point for the many like minded who are now in our individual capacities silent no more.

Submitted for consideration: I think we'll have more in attendance if FreeRepublic considers having an activists exhibition hall which can feature local FR Chapters, organizations, Conservative vendors, and maybe even candidates for office. With a convention theme of "Flip the House" in advance of the 2010 election which will likely be held a scant 60-90 days later -- the FR convention can be a rallying cry and a full court motivational press toward that final election day goal.

Solid non-RINO candidates should be invited to speak at FR: it was truly uplifting to hear Col. Al West. As anyone who was there can tell you, he literally brought the house down! More music acts (e.g. Ted Nugent, Michael W. Smith, Huckabee, Charlie Daniels et. al., perhaps to join a second round of Lloyd Marcus, Lisa Norton) -- FR's own "Freedom Concert." and even more radio and FoxTV personalities as was Andrew Wilkow (add Rush, Sean, Howie Carr, Mark Levin, Ann Coulter, Glen Beck, etc.) -- should also be invited.

Invite Andrew Breitbart and the two gutsy, inspirational young people that are bringing down ACORN. These are the kind of young people our own young people will be inspired by. Invite schools like Hillsdale College to set up a booth, and conservative think tanks like Heritage Foundation, Claremont Institute, Project 21, ACU, FreeCongress Foundation, etc. Have Matt Drudge do a lecture on the new media like he did at the Nat'l Press Club a few years ago. Conspicuously un-invite CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN.

Maj Stephan Cook can be joined by that USMC officer who spoke at the 9/12 event -- maybe others who are also sticking it to Obozo on his legitimacy as CIC.

The first Presidential campaign I participated in was Goldwater '64 in what was then deepest, darkest post-Kennedy assassination New England, living in the stepchild State of Massachusetts better known as Rhode Island. My Dad was ex-USAF who had set up his private medical practice on Waterman Street in Providence, RI. I passed out cans of ginger ale which had been private labeled by the RI-GOP campaign headquarters as "Goldwater."

I was only 6 years old at the time but I remember it vividly. "Conscience of a Conservative," was the bible of conservatism that guided my parents at the time and Bill Buckley's Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) which later became the Young America's Foundation in the 1980's (David Bossie) together with publications like "National Review," Reagan's must-read weekly favorite, "Human Events," the John Birch Society's "Review of the News," and "American Opinion," Hillsdale College's, "Imprimus" fed the conservative mind at a time when Conservatism was in the wilderness getting its bearings.

While we fought Medicare and Medicaid, The Great Society, and the War on Poverty in 1965 without success in the face of overwhelming Democrat majorities in the House and Senate and the Kennedy mystique dripping all over everything, an intellectual Conservatism was gaining a spring back foothold. Reagan became governor of California in 1966 and Republicans made major gains in the House and Senate although not majorities in the same off year election. We got Nixon in 1968 who ended Vietnam in 1973, which we may recall was first started by Democrats under Kennedy with "military advisors" in 1963.

We are in a similar out-of-power era and Obama fancies himself to be the last Kennedy brother, but this is not Goldwater's era or his issues. We are not only concerned with economic conservatism, but the state of social conservatism. We have actual Commies running the government as Czars now -- the spectre of every John Birch Society warning ever issued. The Bible and prayer was cast out of the schools for only 3 years in 1965, but within 10 years abortion had been legalized, we retreated in SouthEast Asia and America would soon enter a crest fallen era defeatism with Carter.

Obama is the wickedness of LBJ married to the malaise of Carter, and the ever-building overexposure of Clinton.

Today's conservative movement-in-exile bears a resemblance to where we were in the mid '60's after the bruising defeat of Goldwater (1965-1966). It also looks a lot like 1979-1980 pre-Reagan and 1993-1994 pre Contract With America. The intellectual crucible of conservatism was alive and prospering though it appeared to many of us at the time to be "underground" -- yet at this time it was vetting its spokesmen, honing its new, yet familiar principle-based message. Speaking -- refining -- strategizing....

During the years 1965-1976 at a "Titanic" centerpiece of a hotel in Boston then known as the Statler Hilton (now the Park Plaza -- oddly enough owned by the Kennedys as it was the place JFK launched his first Senate campaign), the John Birch Society used hold its "Rally for God, Family and Country," where struggling post-Goldwater conservative groups would gather to celebrate the 4th of July, and to be inspired by the likes of conservative speakers and authors like Taylor Caldwell ("Captains and Kings," "Dialogs With the Devil"), E. Merrill Root (poet and former student of Robert Frost, writer, "Collectivism on the Campus"), and George Schyler (author “Black and Conservative,” "Black No More" – one of Thomas Sowell’s early inspirations. Of him it was admitted by the liberal H.L Mencken: "I am more and more convinced that he [Schuyler] is the most competent editorial writer now in practice in this great free republic.") Coincidental choice of words by Mencken, don't you think?

There appeared also John Stormer ("None Dare Call It Treason"), former FBI-er Dan Smoot, Sens. Jesse Helms, and Strom Thurmond, actor Walter Brennan (of the ’60 television hit, “The Real McCoys”) and a host of other rising and then-serving political leaders as well (e.g., John Ashbrook, R-OH). As a child and later as a teenager I had the privilege of meeting each of them.

Which authors and speakers could constitute a likely roster of today’s participants at such a convention?

The TEA parties are out-Alinskyizing the Alinsky-ites! We the people are the power and Obozo can’t focus an Alinsky-style polarizing/paralyzing laser on 2 million of us. We’ve got Obama and his Czars and his prime enablers in Congress in the polarizer they designed to train on us, they are withering in the face of it, and we watch as they throw each other under the bus! What a joy it is to just sit back and watch his own people doing him in.

FreeRepublic is the internet version of the Committees of Correspondence. Sure there is the GOPAC and Concerned Women for America conventions held in January that is the annual “beauty pageant” of conservatism, but January is too far removed from most people's memory by the time the 2010 election rolls around to grab anyone’s distant attention span.

FreeRepublic’s 2nd Annual Convention may possibly be strategically timed to coincide with another likely March on Washington which gives a platform to the potential political movers and shakers who can rush the House with us. If we are successful in Flipping the House in 2010, word will soon get out that FR has the “thread cred” to win elections.

By FreeRepublic’s 3rd Annual Convention in 2011 maybe the next Reagan will emerge and announce their candidacy for president following another rafter-raising Lloyd Marcus rendition and another set of stem winders by Stephan Cook and Al West!

Let's continue to build on the momentum while public opinion is building with us.