Brett: No, no, I just want you to know... I just want you to know how sorry we are that things got so f___ed up with us and Mr. Wallace. We got into this thing with the best intentions and I never ...

Jules: [Jules shoots the man on the couch] I'm sorry, did I break your concentration? I didn't mean to do that. Please, continue, you were saying something about best intentions. What's the matter? Oh, you were finished. Well then, allow me to retort.

The above (from the film Pulp Fiction) is the shortest nutshell description I can come up with to describe the cycle of events within the party over the last week or two. Please note my use of the word "cycle." It just keeps going in a sort of loop, with no logic to who might be playing Brett, Jules or poor Mr. "Flock of Seagulls" over on the couch at any given moment.

But, in fact, I do believe that pretty much everyone involved in this latest little teapot tempest does have the best of intentions. Everyone involved wants to fight for freedom. Everyone involved agrees that the Boston Tea Party is, or at least may become, an effective vehicle for doing so. Everyone's trying to keep that in mind.

When it comes to assigning blame, I encourage everyone to assign as much of it as possible to me. I'm not going to argue over whether that's just or not -- I believe it's at least in the ballpark, and the fact is that I can take it, that I'm willing to take it, and that I'd rather take it and help the party get past this stuff than try to assign it to someone else and keep the merry-go-round going not so merrily around.

I support the Boston Tea Party.

I support Charles Jay's presidential campaign.

I support freedom. I believe that (in no particular order) Jim Davidson, Charles Jay, Todd Andrew Barnett, Darcy Richardson, Chris Bennett et al also support freedom, and I hope that all of them will choose to come together in support of both the party and its presidential candidate because they support freedom -- and because, to quote a character from an overtly statist television series, "everything else is crap."

Since I'm in Cliche Land already, I might as well throw in a final one: It's time for the circular firing squad to cease fire. With less than two weeks between us and the presidential election, we owe it to ourselves to make the most of that time fighting for freedom to have the biggest possible impact, rather than fighting amongst ourselves.

The truths and falsehoods underlying recent happenings will eventually sort out, as it always does. Yammering at each other over those happenings right now probably won't speed up that process -- but it will distract us from other things that are at least as important.

Yours in liberty,
Tom Knapp
Founder and 2008 national VP nominee
Boston Tea Party