Here’s The National Spokesperson for Tactical Civics TM, Jeff Calhoun’s response to the Bangor Daily News:
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TO: Editor-in-Chief of Bangor Daily News
RE: August 27, 2024 Article by Kathleen Phalen Tomaselli titled, “An anti-government group is
recruiting in northern Maine”
I am writing in response to your Tuesday, August 27 article by Kathleen Phalen Tomaselli entitled “An anti-government group is recruiting in northern Maine” which made the Tactical Civics™️organization and our regional coordinator and upstanding Maine resident and small business owner Jon Ellis the subject of the article.
As a member and national spokesman for Tactical Civics™️ I thought it might helpful to provide your readers clarity for understanding the precise nature of our mission. It is unfortunate that the need for clarity is so great as a consequence of the irresponsible, reckless, and potentially libelous accusations and manufactured “guilt by association” allusions made by Ms. Tomaselli and your publication. An old rule of thumb, sometimes referred to as “Hanlon’s Razor,” states, “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” I will let the reader decide which attribution is appropriate in this instance.
The entire article begins with a conclusion reached without investigation but rather predicated on the mythical and ever-growing “hate map” by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which lists supposed hate and anti-government groups. I say supposed because the SPLC has a well-documented history of erasing the lines between actual hate groups and people they just disagree with. Multiple left-leaning publications like The New York Times, Politico, NPR, and Current Affairs, to name a few, have raised multiple and serious concerns about SPLC practices from a decades-long culture of sexual harassment, gender and racial discrimination, and sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars while spending only a fraction of their money on actual legal advocacy. Maybe you will find that relying solely on the SPLC’s famed list was a grave mistake without additional investigation.
A good journalistic rule of thumb is to resist the temptation to begin a story with your conclusion. Was this the result of malice or stupidity? I’m not sure. The irony of the article is in the designation of Tactical Civics™️ as an “anti-government” group. If one were to actually seek to understand the values of our mission, she would find that Tactical Civics™️ is unrivaled as the most pro-government organization in America. We believe and teach that the government of these united States of America, ordained and established in our Supreme Law as well as in our state constitutions, is the most sublime ever conceived in the human mind throughout the annals of human history.
The four pillars of our organization are reflections of the wisdom of one of our Founding Fathers, John Adams, who said, “Because We have no Government armed with Power capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by morality and Religion; avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry, would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution as a Whale goes through a Net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
In light of Adams’ wisdom, Tactical Civics’™️first pillar is to glorify Jesus Christ. We do this, in part, by calling Christians in America to repent of our sins of laziness and sloth and return to lives of responsible and repentant faithfulness to our civic duties and authority. Far from being either anti-government or fringe, Tactical Civics™️is teaching We The People to pursue a lawful, peaceful, and highly engaged volunteerism to fulfill our stipulated duties and authority, which lie at the center of what it is to be American.
Your own Maine constitution states, along with every other state constitution, the fundamental premise upon which all government rests, as articulated in both the Preamble and Article I, Section 2. Your Preamble states, Objects of government. We the People of Maine, in order to establish justice, insure tranquility, provide for our mutual defense, promote our common welfare, and secure to ourselves and our posterity the blessings of liberty, acknowledging with grateful hearts the goodness of the Sovereign Ruler of the Universe in affording us an opportunity, so favorable to the design; and, imploring God’s aid and direction in its accomplishment, do agree to form ourselves into a free and independent State, by the style and title of the State of Maine and do ordain and establish the following Constitution for the government of the same And in Section 2 of Article I: “All power is inherent in the people; all free governments are founded in their authority and instituted for their benefit; they have therefore an unalienable and indefeasible right to institute government, and to alter, reform, or totally change the same, when their safety and happiness require it.”
These fundamental principles, enshrined in our highest law, place a tremendous weight of duty on We The People to actively maintain and hold accountable the government We created, and to do so on the authority We stipulate to ourselves within it. Calling these values “anti-government” reveals either a complete ignorance of what our government actually is or a deep hatred for the Constitutional rule of law our Founders gave us .
At this point it is superfluous to address the outrageously manufactured “guilt-by-association” attempts of Ms Tomaselli in mentioning Tactical Civics™️ in the same breath with neo-Nazi groups, which we abhor, private paramilitary organizations, which we agree are unlawful, as are any allusions of violence, vigilante justice and Spanish inquisitions. While these are cartoonish caricatures which, we as an organization would ordinarily scoff at, except that by making these wild associations, you have maligned the character and reputation of a good man and remarkable leader in your state. You owe Jon Ellis a public apology and our mission a public retraction of the untruths you published.
Sincerely,
Jeff Calhoun
Tactical Civics™️ Spokesman
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