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Lever 11
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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 11
== WHEN YOU WISH UPON A STAR ... ==
If I chose a motto for our age, it would be "wishing will make it so."
No matter how sweetly you dress it up or how many cartoon crickets warble it
against a starry backdrop, it's a crude substitute for philosophy or science,
best suited to the bad-tempered whims of a two-year-old. Push it too far --
how much aviation fuel is \really\ in that tank as opposed to what you
\want\ to be there? -- and it can get you killed.
What a person believes is his business. If nothing else it's part of the
process of natural selection. Lives based on a judicious respect for reality
are more rewarding. Those who see clearly and think straight are likelier
to reproduce and their offspring likelier to prosper. Those who choose a less
rational path will be replaced, statistically, by those who make better
choices, and the human condition will improve. You many think this is cruel,
but it identifies a real phenomenon. It's the way the universe works -- has
worked for billions of years -- whether you like it or not.
The idea that wishing will make it so is most deadly applied as a
principle of public policy. It doesn't matter that you opted to use your head
when your choices are made for you. You suffer just as if you'd made them
instead of some bureaucrat or politician.
The classic case is the Volstead Act. For a century before its passage,
its advocates, who believed drinking is a Bad Thing (which indeed it may be)
and demanded a law to keep people from doing it, ignored complaints that
they were making a mockery of individual rights. For a decade afterward, they
ignored secondary effects which proved vastly more damaging to all of society
than the use of alcohol.
Prohibition is to blame for a lot that's wrong with America today. It
was the start of popular disregard for the law. Millions of ordinary people
who became criminals by overnight fiat responded by drinking more than ever,
many for the first time, simply to assert their rights. With the stroke of
a pen, previously acceptable behavior was lumped together with acts everyone
agreed were wrong, like murder and kidnapping. Moral lines became hopelessly
blurred and have tended to stay that way.
Prohibition put many unsavory types in business, big business it turned
out, who are still with us. In a way that could never have happened if
dogooders hadn't meddled in their private affairs, decent people were
suddenly exposed to criminal (and legal) violence as if they were criminals
themselves. Although it wound up partially repealed, Prohibition also set
precedents for meddling in every other aspect of individual life.
Bureaucrats and politicians failed to learn the folly of "wishing will
make it so" from Prohibition. Those who scream about youth gangs today are
the ones to whom the minimum wage, another kind of Prohibition, is sacred.
Never mind that any job at a buck an hour beats a mythical one at five. Never
mind that the minimum wage generates unemployment by punishing those who
hire young, unskilled workers. Never mind that, if these kids had any kind of
job, they'd soon learn enough to get a better-paying one. Never mind that
they might even be too busy to join a gang. Never mind that the minimum wage
raises the cost of goods and services so that its victims have a harder time
obtaining food, clothing, and shelter -- in effect, bureaucrats and
politicians \invented\ the "homeless". The nasty-tempered two-year-olds --
excuse me, bureaucrats and politicians -- demand fulfillment of their wishes
no matter who gets hurt, simply so that they can bask in the glow of their own
self-righteousness.
To the twisted mindset of Prohibitionism, facts about the individual
right to own and carry weapons are similarly irrelevant. Never mind what the
supreme law of the land ordains. Never mind that gun control renders peaceful
and productive people -- women, minorities, and the elderly in particular --
helpless in the face of a criminal element bureaucrats and politicians
created, just as they did the homeless. Never mind that legislators who
violate their oath of office by advocating gun control should be in prison.
They're out to strip a nation of its weapons come hell or high water, and
they're not going to let a little thing like a decent regard for objective
reality, social justice, or the Bill of Rights interfere.
Before you feel too smug, examine your own mindset. You could be guilty
of the same self-righteous nonthinking.
George Bush's so-called "War on Drugs" is simply Prohibition dressed up
for the 90s. It can't stop people from making, selling, or using drugs any
more than Volstead stopped them from making, selling, or using alcohol. It
\has\ boosted the price of drugs from pennies a pound to hundreds of dollars
an ounce. It's driven weak competition from the market and created not just
a livelihood where there wasn't one before, but a monopoly for the most
violent and ruthless -- and, not incidentally for millions of bureaucrats,
politicians, and cops, honest and corrupt. Worst of all, it's given
bureaucrats and politicians another excuse, acceptable to media and public,
to raise taxes exponentially and stamp "CANCELLED" across the Bill of Rights.
Especially the Second Amendment.
Never mind that what you do to your own body is your business or you
haven't \any\ rights at all. Never mind that the only way to protect kids
from drugs is the long, hard, grownup task of bringing them up right. (Let's
start by abolishing public schools, which concentrate and distribute
self-destructive behavior the way public hospitals concentrate and
distribute disease.) Never mind that before the turn of the century, drugs
were freely available and nobody showed much interest in them. Never mind
that there \wasn't\ any drug problem until bureaucrats and politicians
created it.
There's more to the fight for the Second Amendment than simply wishing
that the badguys would go away. We hand them a club -- in the form of a
contradiction -- each time we agree to \any\ Prohibition, and it's childish
to expect them not to use it.
Wishing can't accomplish anything by itself. We're going to keep losing
our liberties -- and not just to own and carry weapons -- until we get our
own logical and ethical ducks in a row.
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L. NEIL SMITH'S \LEVER ACTION\ LETTER NUMBER 11
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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