They were there not because they think everything's fine with health care, but because they think Obama's proposed cure is far worse than the disease. They want to preserve the best healthcare system on the planet from being destroyed just because there are problems with paying for it. They want to keep the system free from a government takeover so that different solutions can be found, many different choices and innovations may be offered, and different political ideas can arise, ones that rely on government allowing more freedom and removing obstacles rather than the other way around. That's how Americans have historically overcome problems.

And here is another thing that happened at every rally. People came up to us trying to hand us five-, ten-, twenty-dollar bills just to help. They were so thankful we were there speaking to them, encouraging them and showing them how they could speak up for themselves. Their own elected representatives, remember, have been avoiding them. We had been turning those gifts down because the bus tour wasn't about fundraising. But after a while we realized that we should start allowing it.

What a picture — while the powerful and cowardly in Washington were busy running from them and slandering them as bought-and-paid-for angry thugs, they were gracious and smiling and individually volunteering to give. I'm talking about little old ladies and proud veterans and people in wheelchairs with oxygen masks and mothers and fathers and Sunday school teachers and bikers and surfers and God knows who all else. Any Democrat who truly cared about diversity would eat his Sunday New York Times out of sheer jealousy.

That's why I say go to the rallies. For me, it was an honor. After speaking in Jacksonville in the parking lot of the Marina Cafe, we were eating our lunch there (mine was a yummy fried soft-shell crab sandwich), and a woman came in, handed event coordinator Chad Adams forty dollars and squeezed his hand. She had left the rally, went to an ATM, and came back. We were amazed. Humbled.

So I say go to the rallies. Go for her and for the many, many people like her. They have kept this country great. They have sustained her through some of her greatest challenges. How dare anyone in this government of, by and for the people put her in danger of being flagged a "waste" on some bureaucrat's spreadsheet. How dare they lie about her and her concerns. I don't think you could if you saw what I saw at the rallies.

Do right by her. Do right by them. Address their concerns, junk the bill, and stop the character assassination of upstanding Americans.

Go to the rallies and tell the truth.