It Works Better If You Plug It In

By L. Neil Smith
[email protected]

Exclusive to The Libertarian Enterprise

         In this issue of The Libertarian Enterprise -- and those to come for the foreseeable future -- we'll be doing our damnedest to present our readers with practical ideas for healing this sick civilization. Above all, what we'll be striving to generate is actions they can take right away -- entirely on their own if need be -- that'll make a readily observable difference in the world around them, not only within their own lifetimes, but within the lifetimes of some of their shorter-lived pets: white rats, hamsters, gerbils, that sort of thing.
         The purpose of the present article is not to nag anybody. People have an absolute right to what many do-gooders, political activists, and other pests -- even in the Libertarian movement -- are mistakenly inclined to dismiss as "apathy". That's what the movement is supposed to be all about: restoring the right to ignore politics -- and to do so in perfect safety -- in favor of focusing on oneself, one's family, and one's friends. In short, to have a life.
         I have a beautiful, intelligent wife, an equally beautiful and intelligent 7-year-old daughter being home-schooled, two cats, and a house that seems to be constantly falling apart (never noticed that with rental property!). I have the worst-looking lawn in the neighborhood: even the guy whose entire front yard is covered in multicolored gravel glares at me whenever he drives by.
         I'm the top competitive shooter in my local silhouette league. I take my girls ice skating on Sundays and Thursdays. We also attend various social functions, mostly in connection with Colorado State University's Electrical Engineering Department where my wife is (dare I say it?) a "fixture". I have two whole walls in my living room covered with musical instruments with which I used to earn a living but no longer have the time to play. There are enough unread books, galleys, and manuscripts in my office to restock the Alexandrian library.
         And you'll note that I haven't even mentioned the items I write for The Libertarian Enterprise, the SF novels I write for a living, or any of the correspondence, promotion, and other support-work that these activities make necessary.
         Let me put the following as straightforwardly as I can. I'm damned sick of politics. I was sick of it a generation ago. It pisses me off to have to waste my time on it. It pisses me off even more that certain parasites who don't have lives of their own, have learned to subsist, in one way or another, off the "apathy" of those of us who do. Either they're statists, who rely on it to do their dirty work while none of us has the time or energy to keep an eye on them, or -- pretending to be on our side -- they trade on the guilt that they've trained themselves to make us feel for attending to our own business, extracting "restitution" in the form of cash, checks, or even a free lunch.
         Right, left, center are always screaming, "Wake up America!", by which, of course, they mean pay attention to whatever they regard as important. But America doesn't need to "wake up". If America weren't already wide awake, paying attention to what each individual believes is important, your paper wouldn't have gotten delivered this morning, there wouldn't be any groceries to purchase in the grocery store, and you wouldn't have any electricity this afternoon.
         All of that being said (and believe me, it needed saying; I feel much better now, don't you?) there remains the fact that not one of the ideas we've put forward in past isssues of the Enterprise or plan to offer in the future can be made to work by itself. They need somebody to take one of them and run with it until the objective is achieved or the idea has been proven to be no good.
         Take, for example, an idea that I offered in my piece, "Relining America's Birdcages" (TLE, Issue #27) to alter the editorial policies of newspapers and television stations by organizing to write letters, not to editors or station executives, but to advertisers and advertising managers. I guaranteed (with a little backing from our Editor-in-Chief, Vin Suprynowicz) that such an effort would change the sorry face of this nation and the tragic course of its history in only a handful of months. But if the idea's being applied anywhere besides Coconino and Pima Counties in (where else?) Arizona, we'd very much like to know about it, so we can pass the word along as an encouragement to others.
         If it isn't, why not? Did you plan to wait until the tanks rolled over you?
         I have heard from many correspondents who are demanding that their state LP follow the course I laid out in "Target: G.O.P -- At Last, A Libertarian Party Strategy" (TLE, Issue #29) and concentrate all of our electoral effort on Republicans who won their races by less than five percent. It's equally important to let every Republican Senator, Congressman, state legislator, and city councilman know -- with plenty of noisy and repeated warning beforehand -- that this is going to happen to them, that the Republican Party is going to be utterly obliterated, unless they render themselves immune to this tactic by becoming more radical than Libertarians are in the matter of Bill of Rights enforcement.
         I've also had quite a few complaints from Republicans who don't want this done to them -- as if anybody but they themselves were in charge of their own future. What the effort needs now, as I say, is a deluge of letters to the idiots so that they'll actually do something before the next congressional election. Their apologists keep telling me to be patient, that "something big is in the works", but with all the good will in the world, what they appear to me to be doing -- between bouts of sneaking through various pieces of obvious Nazi-inspired legislation -- is waiting for the tanks to roll over them, too.
          What can they do? Well, I went into that in the original article, but I've had another idea since then, as well. In an upcoming issue, we're going to run a copy of the Articles of Impeachment that were drafted for the benefit of Andrew Johnson and Richard Nixon, suitably edited to apply to Waco Willie. He'll not be charged with his campaign finance pecadillos or even waggling his weenie at Paula Jones, but for being in command when more than 80 innocent people -- two dozen of them children -- were poison gassed, machinegunned, and incinerated. If our readers simply print these articles out and send them to their representatives, it might give Republicans a clue about rehabilitating themselves.
         Remember: never promise to relent in the matter of the five-percenters; it's up to Republicans, as I say, to render themselves immune to our "spoiler" strategy.
         One final thing -- for this particular article, anyway: the Libertarian Second Amendment Caucus is looking for a few good beings. One in every county of every American state and every comparable subdivision of every province of Canada. Once that's on its way to being accomplished, we're going to organize in Britain and Australia. The next piece I write for TLE will explain what qualifications we're looking for, how to sign up, and offer you some ideas for action.
         As I said in my April 19th keynote speech to the Arizona Libertarian Party ("You Can't Fight a Culture War If You Ain't Got Any Culture", TLE Issue #29), the "little men by whom we find ourselves governed" are frightened and hysterical because, everywhere in the world, the cause of individual liberty is winning its ages-old battle against tyranny. That's why they're committing the atrocities that threaten to turn the America Dream into a nightmare.
         To finish them before they finish us, we must make their stomachs churn, cost them a night's sleep, shorten their life expectancies by another five minutes each time they hear of something else we've cooked up for them to deal with.
          It's their turn.

L. Neil Smith is the award-winning author of The Probability Broach, Pallas, Henry Martyn, and Bretta Martyn (forthcoming in August of 1997) and other novels, as well as publisher of The Libertarian Enterprise, available free by e-mail subscription or very readable at http://www.webleyweb.com/tle/. Look for his works at Amazon.com Books, http://www.amazon.com or give Laissez Faire Books a toll-free phone call at 1-800-326-0996. His own site, the "Webley Page" may be found at http://www.lneilsmith.org//.

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