“The best defense against usurpatory government is an assertive citizenry.”

― William F. Buckley Jr.

By Dr. Jim Ferguson

Are you an Indian or a chief? I thought about this on Columbus Day which is also listed as Indigenous People’s Day on my iPhone calendar. I think the whole controversy is contrived caca (excrement), derived from the Latin word cacāre. You realize that the so-called indigenous peoples did not originate in North or South America. They migrated from Asia, probably across the Bering land bridge during the last Ice Age (12000 BC). Or possibly they crossed the Pacific from Polynesia as demonstrated by the Kon-Tiki voyage.

I have few reservations about being politically incorrect. Recently, a colleague told me she could not state her beliefs or she would have been fired long ago. I can’t be fired because I answer only to the Lord, through my conscience, and to my wife Becky. And both of them love me and cut me a lot of slack.

I learned long ago that only a fool ignores the perspective of women. I found it telling that leaders of the feminist movement say virtually nothing about the misogyny of Middle Eastern countries. And many leftists scream for mandatory Covid vaccinations, yet ignore the rights of the unborn.

Recently, I’ve been thinking about leadership and a friend demonstrated the psychodynamics of leaders and followers with a YouTube link she shared entitled “First Follower: Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy.” If you want to understand leadership and group dynamics, you must watch this three-minute video presentation by Derek Sivers. It will tell you more about leaders and followers, Indians and chiefs than anything I can say.

A leader is someone who introduces a concept, even if considered ridiculous by others. A leader has the courage to offer his idea and enlist the support of followers. The video shows the “first follower” joining the leader and demonstrating his own courage and leadership qualities. A smart leader accepts the first follower as co-equal, and together they entice the second follower to join the nascent movement. The rest of the crowd soon follows because it is no longer risky to join the group and they want to be part of the in-crowd. This video beautifully demonstrates the leadership and consensus-building of President Donald Trump and the Make America Great movement. Ol’ Joe possesses no leadership qualities, and we have come to see that he is neither virtuous nor a uniter.

By the time you read this essay, we will be deep in the election cycle for Knoxville’s City Council. I am following Becky and her Amazonian leadership and have already voted for all five of the conservative candidates. Remember, in the general election you get to vote for all of the candidates, not just the one in your district. Tear out the names or make a memo to yourself so you will be prepared when you go to the election booth. We must not allow Knoxville City Council to lead our county to become like the infamous Loudoun County Virginia, so much in the news with critical race theory.

“These are the times that try men’s souls,” said Virginian Patrick Henry in December 1776. If you are not worried about our country and the direction the government is leading us, you must be brain dead. When a decorated marine lieutenant colonel is imprisoned for speaking the truth, fathers are arrested for speaking up at school board meetings and iPOTUS and his gang mislead us in every category, you know we are in trouble.

Gandhi was known as the Mahatma or “great soul” of India in the mid-20th century. He is best known to Americans as the originator of non-violent resistance and civil disobedience. In the early 20th century, he organized a campaign of massive civil disobedience in South Africa to gain voting rights for Indians. He next used nonviolent resistance to win India’s independence from Great Britain in the 1940s. Martin Luther King adopted Gandhi’s non-violent resistance in the civil rights movement of the 1960s. When Americans saw fire hoses and police dogs used on people and the abuses of Bull Connor’s thugs, the Jim Crow laws, established by Democrats after the Civil War, were ended.

Though it is largely not covered or misreported by the legacy media, civil disobedience is breaking out all over America. This disobedience is not the Democrat sanctioned violent protests of BLM and Antifa, which burned, looted and intimidated in the misused name of justice. Citizens are now standing up to tyrannical school boards, airline pilots are refusing to fly airplanes, soldiers are disobeying unjust orders of their superiors and people are walking away from jobs rather than submit to the dictates of iPOTUS and the modern incarnations of evil’s tyranny. You better watch out Joe, it is America’s “doers” who are saying no.

Unlike my liberal friend who said he couldn’t be bothered with injustice because it wasn’t happening to him, I will resist. And unlike my other liberal friend who was unaware that America had achieved energy independence under President Trump, I AM aware that energy independence was squandered by iPOTUS, and now we see rising gas prices. I will resist the progressive socialist Democrats in Knoxville and in Washington. And because in any battle, it is better to fight here and now on your terms rather than wait for them to further divide and eventually send the FBI up your driveway, I AM resisting.

I am not advocating any sort of violent action. I side with Jesus, Gandhi and Martin Luther King’s notion of civil disobedience. I no longer buy “woke Coke” and products of companies who kowtow to leftists. I am blessed to have a forum to speak and a constitution that guarantees that freedom and empowers me to vote and say “No” to socialists in Knoxville and Washington.

I urge each of you to stand up and be counted. This is still a free country, though it is challenged by “the rulers and powers and forces of darkness.”

Evil will not just go away; it must be resisted. It is our time for civil disobedience.

Follow my lead and VOTE for the everyday citizens who are standing up against the progressive socialist Democrats!