Lincolnite will not apologize for starting a movement

About two years ago, Lincolnite Rick Brening was talking with a friend about social issues.
"I haphazardly said, ‘We shouldn't have to apologize for what we believe in.'"Out of that observation, a movement was born.Brening, along with Lincoln native Jake Stutzman and Eric Carroll of Lubbock, Texas, co-founded the company I Will Not Apologize.It started as a maker of T-shirts boasting self-affirming statements like "I Will Not Apologize:"For Believing in Absolutes.""For Going Green.""For Being a Nerd."A few months into selling the shirts, Brening said, "We realized that there is a huge community of people that have been lulled to sleep. They've lost their fire. They've lost their desire to speak out."
So I Will Not Apologize began to evolve into something more than just shirts.
"We took it further, this message that it's OK to stand up for what you believe in," Brening said. "Even if it's difficult for others to hear."So began IWillNotApologize.com.
In the past month, the Web site has changed its format. It's not the final version of the site, but it's a good midpoint from what the site started as and what it will become, Brening said.
The latest version looks and feels a lot like Twitter. Upon arriving at the site, you're asked to finish a sentence: "I Will Not Apologize ..."here's no sign-in. It's completely anonymous. And you can be unapologetic for whatever you want.People are not sorry for a lot of things."For procrastinating." "For being weird." "For my muffin top." "For being a grammar snob." "For being a Christian." "For not being a Christian."
The moderators delete hateful entries and profanity, but otherwise, anything goes.
"It's been fun over the course of the last few years to watch it blossom," Brening said. "One of the tenets of the movement is that we don't know where it's going to go. We let the people decide."
The guys decided early on that the site would be driven by the users and not the other way around.
"Now we won't shy away from the fact that we are ourselves proud Americans, proud patriots and, by and large, proud conservatives," Brening said. "But if you're a proud liberal, be a proud liberal."
The point of I Will Not Apologize is not to push an agenda, he said. It's to shake up people with shy and shaky belief systems, people who are afraid to proudly proclaim who they are.
"We want to give people their voices back," Brening said.