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Lever 15
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The Atlanta Declaration: Every man, woman, and responsible child has a
natural, fundamental, and inalienable human, individual, civil, and
Constitutional right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed,
any weapon -- handgun, shotgun, rifle, machinegun, \anything\ -- any
time, anywhere, without asking anyone's permission.
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L. NEIL SMITH'S \LEVER ACTION\ LETTER NUMBER 15
" ... AND TO PROVIDE NEW GUARDS ... "
In \Lever Action\ Letter Number 3, I asked some not-so-rhetorical
questions which all boiled down to the same thing: how much do you want to
keep your guns? Would you agree to leave others alone to live any way they
please if they agreed to let you keep your guns?
I gave some examples -- pornography, chemical substances, religion, race,
abortion, sexual preference -- which may have made answering that question
fairly hard, pointing out that no sane being sacrifices those personal
rights he considers most precious merely for the sake of imposing his values
on others. Yet it often seems that each of us disapproves of, and wants to
outlaw, some one little thing someone else cares about. With millions of us
all working for one kind of Prohibition or another, it's no wonder the
controls seem to ratchet tighter around our lives every day.
We can work together to reverse the process by making a commitment to
respect each other's rights no matter how much we may disapprove of any
particular exercise of them. I don't know about you, but I don't care what
my allies do with their own lives -- the one limit being an obligation
never to \initiate\ force against others, since that's how we began losing
our rights to start with -- as long as they want to be free and can help me
stay that way.
So how do we get started?
The Covenant of Unanimous Consent was originally written to change the
way we're used to thinking about personal freedom, make it more consistent,
put some teeth into the Bill of Rights, and limit \forever\ the power of
politicians, bureaucrats, lawyers, and Prohibitionists to control the way
we live. Some of its Signatories feel that it may turn out to be as
important as the Declaration of Independence.
I wrote the Covenant of Unanimous Consent because I intend to keep my
guns, and the rest of my rights, as well. The other side's counting on us
to remain divided and intolerant. That's how they got us where they want
us in the first place. Nobody is ever \asked\ to sign it, but if you have
the courage and intelligence to renew your personal commitment to the
American tradition of individual liberty, I've made it easy for you by
reproducing the Covenant of Unanimous Consent here, on the other side.
Let me hear from you before it's too late.
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L. NEIL SMITH'S \LEVER ACTION\ LETTER NUMBER 15
111 EAST DRAKE ROAD SUITE 7032
FORT COLLINS, COLORADO U.S.A. 80525
L. Neil Smith is the award-winning author of 16 novels including
\Henry Martyn, The Crystal Empire, BrightSuit MacBear, Taflak Lysandra,
The Probability Broach,\ and the forthcoming FORGE OF THE ELDERS
trilogy, beginning with CONTACT AND COMMUNE.
Your contributions to this effort, while extremely welcome, are not
tax-deductible.
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========================== A NEW COVENANT ============================
[Of Unanimous Consent]
WE, THE UNDERSIGNED Witnesses to the Lesson of History -- that no Form of
political Governance may be relied upon to secure the individual Rights of
Life, Liberty, or Property -- now therefore establish and provide certain
fundamental Precepts measuring our Conduct toward one another, and toward
others:
[Individual Sovereignty]
FIRST, that we shall henceforward recognize each Individual to be the
exclusive Proprietor of his or her own Existence and of all Products of
that Existence, holding no Obligation binding among Individuals excepting
those to which they voluntarily and explicitly consent;
[Freedom from Coercion]
SECOND, that under no Circumstances shall we acknowledge any Liberty to
initiate Force against another Person, and shall instead defend the
inalienable Right of Individuals to resist Coercion employing whatever
Means prove necessary in their Judgment;
[Association and Secession]
THIRD, that we shall hold inviolable those Relationships among Individuals
which are totally voluntary, but conversely, any Relationship not thus
mutually agreeable shall be considered empty and invalid;
[Individuality of Rights]
FOURTH, that we shall regard Rights to be neither collective nor additive in
Character -- two Individuals shall have no more Rights than one, nor shall
two million nor two thousand million -- nor shall any Group possess Rights
in Excess of those belonging to its individual Members;
[Equality of Liberty]
FIFTH, that we shall maintain these Principles without Respect to any
person's Race, Nationality, Gender, sexual Preference, Age, or System of
Beliefs, and hold that any Entity or Association, however constituted,
acting to contravene them by Initiation of Force -- or Threat of same --
shall have forfeited its Right to exist;
[Supersedure]
UPON UNANIMOUS CONSENT of the Members or Inhabitants of any Association or
Territory, we further stipulate that this Agreement shall supersede all
existing governmental Documents or Usages then pertinent, that such
Constitutions, Charters, Acts, Laws, Statutes, Regulations, or Ordinances
contradictory or destructive to the Ends which it expresses shall be null
and void, and that this Covenant, being the Property of its Author and
Signatories, shall not be Subject to Interpretation excepting insofar as
it shall please them.
______________________________ ___________________________________
Signatory date Witness date
______________________________ ___________________________________
Name (please print) Name (please print)
* From \The Gallatin Divergence\ by L. Neil Smith, Del Rey Books, 1985,
as amended by unanimous consent October, 1986.
Send to: 111 E. Drake, Ste. 7032, Ft. Collins, CO 80525.
ENCLOSE $2 TO COVER ARCHIVING. Include SASE for confirmation of receipt.
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