From The Non-Advocacy Community

Salt Lake City Mayor "Rocky" Anderson, in an email quoted by the Deseret News:

Anderson, a Democrat who serves in an officially nonpartisan office [HA! HA HA HA HA! - the Editor], sent an e-mail Friday to selected environmentalists, Democrats and a few of his top administrative staff. It said of Bush's visit: "Don't let him come to Utah and not see huge opposition, even in the reddest (most Republican) state. This would send such an important message. A tepid response will just send a message of apathy and resignation."

Anderson went on to write: "Let the Bush administration — and the world — hear from Salt Lake City!!! The advocacy community should be organizing the biggest demonstration this state has ever seen!"

Anderson's office provided a copy of the e-mail to the Deseret Morning News after it was leaked to the news media.

And here is the replies I would so desperately like to write in return, but I know wouldn't be read:

Reply 1:

Dear Mr. Mayor,
Get Bent.
Signed, Tyler, a member of the non-advocacy community

Reply 2:

[CENSORED IN ITS ENTIRETY. TRUST US, YOU DON'T WANT TO READ IT. - The Ed.]

By the way, what in the devil is an "advocacy community"? My interpretation is a bunch of self-appointed know-it-alls who know better than we, the unwashed masses, and therefore are the sole conservators of Truth and Light. In other words, a bunch of full-time whiners.

Reply 3:

Dear Mr. Mayor:

What are you thinking? Who appointed you Chief Guardian of Truth and Light (As Defined By Howard Dean), Utah Chapter?

Here's a message from those of us out here, in the non-advocacy community:

Want to have a protest? Resign. Do it with your own resources on your own time.

Otherwise, get back to work! The police will have enough headaches with a presidential visit without you going out and stirring up trouble, and having to babysit your sorry hide through the aformentioned trouble.

Answer me this: are burning these bridges and ticking this many people off really going to do any good for the city entrusted to you? Really?

Signed, Tyler, A Member of the Non-Advocacy Community

Well, at least my blood pressure is doing better now.

This is just petty grandstanding. The professional protestors have complained about so much for so long that I really don't care what they have to say anymore.

And in cold reflection, that's not a good thing. By so strenuously exercising their rights to assemble and speak freely, have they damaged them? Have they, at the very least, damaged those rights' impacts on their fellow men, and thereby those rights' impacts on the course of the Republic?

I don't know.

Another thing - right now, it's almost 11:00 PM, August 21, 2005. I have a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach about tomorrow. I've had it before and been wrong (more often wrong than right, fortunately) - but still. At the very least, Utah is going to end up looking like a bunch of morons. Again. The rotten apples defining the barrel.

Listen, my view on the war is probably already self-evident by now. I think it's worth the price, as high as it is. I don't want my decendants to live in fear, or in chains. I want them to be able to practice their faith, speak their mind, exercise their liberties.

And I don't want them to die because some entity hates those liberties, and what they make possible, enough to strike out and kill men, women, and children whose only crime was having lived.

It is my hope that my successors know peace. It is my prayer that they will be both worthy of and willing to defend the liberties guaranteed in the Constitution.

And my prayer for myself is that I will be.