Most of the advice above seems to be to play tight, and when you do get a good hand play it aggressively. IMO this is excellent advice with the right type of tournament structure, i.e., larger initial stack, and blinds that don't go up too much, too quickly. The ideal structure includes those attributes plus only has six players per table. If you look through the
poker site lobby, this type of structure is harder to find and usually costs more to buy in to.
Otherwise, I find that patience usually doesn't get me to a healthy stack size (unless I happen to hit a lucky streak) in your usual low stakes or freeroll tournament because they typically have a turbo or even hyper-turbo structure. Being patient usually just gets me short-stacked so that when I do play I'm going to get called no matter what by the big stacks. I've placed in this type of tournament, but it was always because of luck (i.e., my JJ beat AK, or my AK beat QQ, or my KQs beat AQ).
If you happen to run into a passive/cautious crowd at your table, then you can play weaker hands in position aggressively pre-flop and continue to play aggressively post flop without TP or better and win some pots. But if you get called by two to four players (typical early stage freeroll situation) regardless of your bet sizing, then you're going to need a lot of luck to get anywhere.
I think that most of the "jerks" who play "crap" super aggressively are actually playing this type of tournament structure correctly in the early stages. If they lose quickly, then they've only invested a few minutes (or seconds) of their time.
If they happen to get lucky and score a few pots, then the smart "jerks" with their newfound larger stacks will start to tighten up a bit. The ones who really have no idea what they are doing will continue to play crap hands super aggressively and will bust our pretty quickly.