It occurred to me, quite suddenly, the evening of December 15, that Pelosi's January 6 Inquisition Panel is not really charging former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows with "criminal contempt."  That accusation serves as smokescreen for what Pelosi and her puppets, assisted daily by The New York Times leading the Pravda-like media, are really claiming: that Mr. Meadows is guilty of sedition, of open hostility to the Biden administration. 

Where is sedition a crime?  Sedition is a crime where there is no freedom of speech, no right to dissent, in short, no First Amendment.  But guess what!  Mark Meadows will not be silenced, he will not be intimidated, and, if the First Amendment remains operative, he will not be found guilty of criminal contempt for defying the unconstitutional Pelosi inquisition and its subpoenas that violate due process and the American spirit of freedom.

Mark Meadows, in Atlanta this week, addressed a gathering of hundreds of conservative populists drawn from around the country to celebrate the formation of a Georgia state Freedom Caucus, modeled on the House Freedom Caucus formed several years ago by Ohio's Jim Jordan, and currently chaired by Arizonan Rep. Andy Biggs, with Pennsylvania's Scott Perry to take leadership reins, next month.  Among other things, Mr. Meadows assured the assemblage that he will not allow the January 6 select committee to intimidate him.  Now that sort of remark, indicating that Meadows has "a backbone of steel," not a "squishy" banana backbone, is clearly not to the liking of the Pravda-like media, which did not report on the address, nor the fact of this conservative gathering in Atlanta — a gathering, I submit, that indicates the MAGA spirit remains alive and quite well this difficult time of an anti-freedom Democrat administration, led by an oft-incoherent president.

Breitbart covered the Atlanta event and the words of encouragement from Mark Meadows at some length.  The following is an excerpt of Meadows's remarks which offer guidance on dealing with a Republican establishment that has difficulty with what I see as the Federalist 57 call to government officials to stay close to the people if government is not to become tyrannical.  (Apparently, there are Republican state legislators in Georgia who reject Madison's sage advice in No. 57.)

Note the three stages of forming a freedom caucus, cited by Meadows, including the stage where the GOP establishment hopes to wean away "squishy" caucus members.  All that freedom caucus members require, Meadows advised, is a steel backbone — and a sense of solid commitment.

Here are pertinent excerpts from an address by a patriot to an audience of hundreds, committed to our founding legacy of liberty, as reported by Breitbart:

Mark Meadows (photo credit: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0 license.

"I also want to let you know that the Freedom Caucus — now, many of you know the personalities," Meadows said. "Originally, it was a phone call I made to Jim Jordan and said. 'Jim, you call these four people and I'll call these four people' and nine of the 10 decided to be a part. Here is the thing that is critical. Those individuals were not welcomed at the normal parties. In fact, many times where the Republicans have their regular gatherings, they didn't get the invite. Now, many of you may feel the same way because right now they're having all the wonderful get togethers where they work on redistricting and they try to maybe leave you out — I don't know if that's hitting too close to home or what — but as we see this there's all kinds of legislative tricks they use to reduce your voice."

Meadows said there are three distinct stages to the formation of a successful Freedom Caucus. First, the establishment laughs at and ignores the members.

"There's three stages to this. The first is  when you decide to do your Freedom Caucus they're  [the GOP establishment] going to pat you on the head and say, 'Good for you, you'll never amount to anything.' I mean they will. They'll discount you," Meadows said. "They'll say it's not going to happen. Ultimately, what has to happen is you have to stick together and not be discouraged. You have to have the procedures on your side and know the procedures and the legislative operational tricks — and I use the word tricks in a tactical way, meaning the way you add amendments and make it difficult for some of your–well let's say less principled colleagues — the ones that have backbones of bananas rather than backbones of steel. I want more backbones of steel, don't you?"

The second and third phases are where things get interesting, Meadows said. In the second phase, the establishment recognizes the threat and tries to neutralize it by co-opting squishy Freedom Caucus members — but in the third phase, when the Freedom Caucus has won, he said that is when conservatives get a seat at the negotiating table and begin to have real leverage to move the needle to the right in big legislation.

So at first they'll discount you. Then all of a sudden you'll stick together, and there is a second phase of your caucus where they'll try to co-opt you," Meadows said. "I call this the wildebeest phase. It's like a lion looking for a weak wildebeest — they try to come out at the pack and they come and they get one and they say, 'There's a Freedom Caucus person who's not acting like a Freedom Caucus person, we can cull them out.' You've seen it. You've seen it already whether you have a Freedom Caucus or not. You see them, all of a sudden they start getting little bills, find their way through committee. They get them all the plum assignments for committees. It is that weak wildebeest we got to be careful about. Because what happens is is you go from not being relevant to them trying to pick off the weak wildebeest to the third phase, which is really fun because the third phase is when they realize you have enough leverage to stop what they're trying to get done and you get invited to the table."

Meadows said that conservatives, if they organize effectively, can get to that third phase fairly quickly — and said it took the House Freedom Caucus about two years to get there.

"Now I'm here to tell you you can go from being not relevant to being invited to the table in a very short period of time," Meadows said. "By a very short period of time, when it came to the House Freedom Caucus, it took us two years. Two years to show we were willing to stick together."

May the Almighty grant that the December 14, 2021 Freedom Caucus gathering, in Atlanta, of Republican conservative populists from  around the country be as significant to America's political development for good, as against evil, as was the first gathering of the Republicans in Ripon, Wisconsin, March 20, 1854.