Okay, here's the picture: America is fighting
a pair of undeclared wars that have have accomplished
nothing except the utter and abysmal destruction
of one of the most ancient civilizationsin the
world, and stretched this nation's ability to
defend itself against any actual threat practically
to the breaking point.
These wars, which history will likely remember
as "Vietnam II and III" (with Iran a
possible "IV"), were once advertised
as guaranteeing for America a cheap source of
fuel. Yet they are draining the economic lifeblood
of this country to a point it will probably never
recover from. MSNBC estimates that the cost could
go as high as two trillion dollars. That's a numeral
2, followed by twelve zeroes, two thousand billion
dollars, or about $27,000 from each American household
of four.
Go to: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11880954/
Trillions now. How soon before we have to start
counting in quadrillions?
Meanwhile, a not-so-secret mercantilist cabal
is plotting to fuse this country with Canada and
Mexico, absolutely without the consent of the
governed, with a hungry eye toward creating a
continental empire entirely outside the limitations
of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Say
a fond farewell to your individual right to own
and carry weapons. An 18-lane superhighway will
be built to tie it all together, and at some point
we will be compelled to exchange our dollars for
"Ameros".
At the same time, against the clear mandate of
that Constitution and the Bill of rights, the
government is kidnapping individuals it doesn't
care for, hiding them indefinitely and without
due process, in secret prisons where it is torturing
them -- exactly as the Lincoln Administration
did back in the 1860s. It is also applying pressure
wherever it can on universities and various media
to muzzle or fire its critics and, if at all possible,
destroy their careers. It's already built "detention
camps" all around the country -- go to: http://tinyurl.com/34r6hc
-- for dissidents it can't shut up by other
means.
Not surprisingly, the news online (the only real
news that this country has ever had) is filled
with prophecies of doom from every quarter.
Which actually may turn out to be a good thing.
That perennial right-wing curmudgeon Patrick
J. Buchanan has a new book out that's being widely
advertised as heralding "the end of America".
As is usual with Buchanan, part of what he has
to say about current events is absolutely on-target,
while other things he wrings his hands over are
rather easily solvable problems, or trivial and
silly.
Any of the several ugly messes Americans find
themselves in at the present moment in history
-- those that aren't a result of government bungling
of an economy it should have been forbidden even
to touch, or of the imperialistic ambitions of
at least the last three presidential administrations
-- Buchanan shortsightedly blames on immigration,
illegal and otherwise. He proposes forcibly ejecting
every single last illegal resident, and declaring
a moratorium on all legal immigration, too.
Now let me get this straight: Buchanan's willing
to build a new Berlin Wall 1200 miles long, from
southern California to Texas, force each and every
individual this side of it to carry government-issued
identification, and erect his new American
police state, based on preventing illegal immigration
(rather than on drug laws or phony terrorism as
past administrations have done), but he's not
willing to do things like phase out the welfare
state which he and those like him usually identify
as the main temptation that brings immigrants
to America?
Or, as I have suggested, offer American statehood
to any Mexican state that endorses the Bill of
Rights with a two-thirds vote of its people? (Go
to: http://www.jpfo.net/filegen-a-m/bor.htm
for a handy translation of the Bill of Rights
into Spanish -- and fifteen other languages --
and be sure to celebrate Bill of Rights day with
us, December 15!)
It is perhaps important in this context to recall
that the word "neoconservative" was
first applied to those -- Buchanan and Ronald
Reagan were among them -- who accepted the welfare
state as something that nobody could do anything
about, and generated their policies accordingly.
Over the last three decades or so, Not-so-great
Britain has more or less ruined itself by blaming
everything on recent immigrants, and ignoring
or evading the real causes of cradle-to-grave
runaway nanny state problems such as intolerably
high taxes, a flat economy, zero tolerance gun
control and the deadly crime epidemic it has spawned,
Marxoid labor unions, and "me-too" international
adventurism. So let's stop, set everything else
aside for just a moment, and think about immigration.
Three questions come immediately to mind that
I believe Buchanan ought to be required to answer
fully before we start taking the man seriously.
First, is this merely the reaction of a xenophobe
and racist -- somebody who doesn't want Little
Brown Brother hanging around his sister or his
daughter -- looking for somebody lower on the
social ladder than he is to use as a scapegoat?
Or would Buchanan feel the same way toward newcomers
to America if they were committed, as we all are,
to the values expressed by the highest law of
the land, the first ten amendments to the Constitution,
commonly known as the Bill of Rights?
Second, assuming Buchanan is not a xenophobe
or racist, would he be prepared to underwrite
-- or to help to underwrite -- a foundation dedicated
to conveying those values to newcomers in every
possible way? I have issued this challenge to
anti-immigrationistas many times in many
ways, but all I've ever heard in response was
crickets chirping.
Third, if you're not a xenophobe or racist --
I freely admit that this is a very big "if"
-- then why are you still standing there, Buchanan?
Get busy!
At the opposite, liberal or "progressive",
end of the conventional two-dimensional political
spectrum (ask me what an accurate map of the political
world looks like some time -- or better yet, buy
my novel The American Zone at http://www.lneilsmith.net/lnsbooks.html
which describes it in considerable detail), we
find Naomi Wolf. An extreme far left feminist,
formerly a political campaign consultant to Bill
Clinton and Albert Gore, Wolf has recently become
gravely worried about the police state she sees
being erected around us. (One can't help wondering
if this former accomplice to Waco Willy and Hot
Airgore realizes that her former clients took
huge strides themselves, in its initiation.)
Be that as it may, Wolf has begun waking up,
has written a book about her concerns, and produced
a list of ten steps that the evil, stupid, or
insane leaders of a democracy (which America was
never intended to be) must take first in order
to transmogrify a once-free country into a fascist
police state. She's even gone so far as to endorse
reform legislation written and introduced into
Congress by Ron Paul.
Go to: http://tinyurl.com/yqhznn
And to: http://tinyurl.com/2g26rs
I'd often wondered whether the Lefties bellyaching
now about what the Righties are inflicting on
the country would complain -- or even feel particularly
threatened -- if their fellow liberal Democrats
were the ones doing the inflicting. Like very
few other writers I've read so far, right, left,
or center, Wolf seems to understand that, given
the grossly unconstitutional and atrocious practices
that have been forced upon America by the Bush
Administration, President Rudy or President
Hillary would be equally inclined to rule as a
dictator because it would be easier, especially
in some handily manufactured crisis. Both know
how inconvenient it would be if Congress were
to find its BACKBONE once again and start talking
back to an Imperial Presidency.
And always there is the not-so-subtle threat,
not so very far in the background, that, if whatever
war the government has involved us in lately doesn't
go well, those being forced to pay for it now
in the form of taxation and inflation will be
forced to pay for it all over again by seeing
their sons and daughters enslaved by the military
-- despite a prohibition against "involuntary
servitude of any kind", clearly including
the draft (go to: http://tinyurl.com/3bsr7p
), in the Thirteenth Amendment -- and poured straight
down into the dark, bottomless warfare state rathole
like so many worthless grains of sand.
Reading Naomi Wolf's writing gives me hope. If
an individual like her can rise above the level
of the counterfeit struggle between the two heads
of the Boot-On-Your-Neck Party, and see -- and
write about -- what's actually at stake today,
then maybe America still has a chance.
On the other hand, Buchanan still has a considerable
way to go. If, like him, we allow ourselves to
be distracted by the trivial (and immigration
is trivial, compared with what government
plans for our future: detention camps, DNA libraries,
ID implants, politically convenient disappearances,
24/7 surveillance by cameras and other technology,
the hijacking of our children by the public school
system and social "services", brainwashing
and physical torture) then we are doomed.
Even leaving out xenophobia or racism as possible
motivations for this distraction, is it better
to be fighting over a few jobs (with people who,
the antis claim out of the other side of their
mouths, are not here to work but to scrounge),
or building a free economy in a free society that
creates more new jobs every day than can possibly
be filled?
Which brings us back to Naomi Wolf. As much
as I like hearing what she has to say, I notice
that not one of the ten points she makes has anything
to do with the physical, mechanical means of preserving
liberty that Buchanan, despite his many and grievous
faults probably understands.
Of course I'm referring here to the unalienable
individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right
of every man, woman, and responsible child to
obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any
weapon -- rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun,
anything -- any time, any place, without
asking anyone's permission. Like it or not, it
is the free exercise of this right, and no other,
that keeps Americans from becoming mud hut peasants
like we see on TV, being robbed, raped, and murdered
by their outlaw governments and roving bands of
killers and thieves.
The left wing media mistakenly believe that the
right wing regime is generally friendly toward
the private ownership of weapons, but nothing
could be further from the truth. Former Attorney
General John Ashcroft's first utterance on the
Second Amendment should have sent chills up the
spine of every individual in America who wishes
to stay free. What he said was that, sure 'nuff,
the Second Amendment protects an individual right
-- one that government has the power to regulate
or even suspend -- just like habeas corpus
-- whenever it feels like it.
In the years since George W. Bush chose to barricade
himself in the White House, the federal Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives
-- "on his watch", as the saying goes
-- has grown more brutal, more given to totalitarian
strategy and tactics, more inclined to violate
the law themselves, than ever before, even under
the Clinton Administration. Go to: http://tinyurl.com/22nzz6
. This could be stopped with an Executive Order
of the kind this administration is so fond of
issuing. If they're friendly to gun owners, where's
that Order?
So add Step Number 11 to Wolf's list and note
that it's on the horizon. The Second Amendment
is about to be ruled on by the same gang of old
fogies in black dresses -- their predecessors
once decided that slavery was just dandy -- who
grandly declared that your property can be stolen
by any sufficiently corrupt city council that
decides that the crooks they give it to will end
up paying them more by way of taxes.
Both Buchanan and Wolf, although their awareness
of the dangers America faces -- and their willingness
and ability to communicate it -- are heartening,
desperately need to see a slightly broader picture
than they're apparently seeing now. They could
make a good beginning by screening Innocents
Betrayed a documentary DVD produced by Jews
for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, that
demonstrates beyond question the direct and inavoidable
connection between "gun control" (more
correctly described as victim disarmament)
-- especially mass prohibitions and confiscations
-- and the genocidal mass killings that almost
all governments seem to feel an urge to indulge
in from time to time.
Go to http://www.innocentsbetrayed.com/
and read the rest of this afterward.
No amount of "reform" will ever change
this. By its very nature, government perceives
individuals as interchangeable and expendable
components -- a natural outgrowth of seeing them
as masses of voters. You and I -- we parents,
brothers, sisters, FRIENDS, wives, husbands, and
children -- do not. Only by cutting government
back -- like the dangerous, unruly, and thorn-covered
shrub it is -- to virtually nothing in the way
of money and power, can any of us ever hope to
regain the individual freedom that made us a beacon
to the rest of the world.
At no time was it ever necessary to send soldiers
overseas and shove that idea down folk's throats
at bayonet point. They always got it.
And they always will.
The America we all once loved has exactly the
chance for survival left that you -- that we --
and that folks like Buchanan and Wolf give it.
What are you prepared to do? --
Four-time Prometheus Award-winner L. Neil Smith
has been writing about guns and gun ownership
for more than 30 years. He is the author of 27
books, the most widely-published and prolific
libertarian novelist in the world, and is considered
an expert on the ethics of self-defense. His writings
may be seen on the following sites:
