An Open Letter
to Republican Senator Wayne Allard

by L. Neil Smith
[email protected]

Special to The Libertarian Enterprise

          Not many years ago, when you were in the Colorado legislature, I got a letter from you saying there were already too many gun control laws and that we ought to start repealing them, rather than passing more.
          That was then, apparently, and this is now.
          I heard you being interviewed on KOA radio this morning, and you had something different to say. Like every other Colorado Republican before you -- like that feckless buckethead Bill Armstrong and that quivering bowl of moral spinelessness Hank Brown -- you've jettisoned your principles (provided that you ever really had them in the first place) and leaped to join the jackass chorus braying for the latest trendy exercise in victim disarmament, closure of the "gun show loophole".
          That "loophole" (as you know perfectly well) is one of the last remnants of 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.
          A right that (as you know perfectly well) when it was respected and enforced in the last century, effectively prevented crimes like the recent one in Littleton, now being used as an excuse to tear up the Constitution.
          A right (as you know perfectly well) you're eagerly helping the most evil presidential administration in the history of America to destroy.
          What is it with Republicans and Bill Clinton, anyway? The man is a chronic, habitual, pathological liar. He's a rank vulgarian. He's an adulterer. He's a blackmailer. He's a rapist. He's a traitor. He's a war-mongering hypocrite. He's a mass-murderer, both domestically and abroad.
          Yet you chose to impeach him for the most trivial of these crimes and even then failed to convict him, or to deter him from committing more. And judging from your actions -- rather than your words -- you actually adore him, as, sooner or later, each of you kneels publicly, as you did on KOA this morning, Senator, to engulf the presidential member.
          But as usual, I digress.
          For years I've warned the readers of my books and articles that the two gangs in this country pretending to be politically opposed to one another are actually "Socialist Party A", dedicated to the New Deal, the welfare/warfare, cradle-to-grave nanny state, and the eventual erasure of every last trace of individualism, and "Socialist Party B", which only promises to do the whole thing more cheaply and efficiently.
          For years, I've held you out as an exception to the stupidity, cowardice, and corruptibility we've come to expect of Republicans. I've voted for you and urged others to follow my example. I regret that, and am determined now to support anyone who opposes you in the future -- even a liberal Democrat -- on the basis that it's easier (and less disgusting) to deal with a socialist who's proud of what he is and proclaims it from the very housetops, than with one who creeps around pretending that he's something else, waiting for an opportunity to stab his constituents in the back and strip them of their rights under the highest law of the land, the first ten amendments to the Constitution.
          I've been involved in politics for nearly 40 years, and I realize that the chances you'll actually see this letter are vanishing and slight. Some overpaid flunky will glance at it, make a tally-mark on the "against" side of the grotesque position you've taken (assuming she's not a public school graduate, and therefore capable of reading and understanding words of more than one syllable), and consign it to the shredder in a manner typical of all the mistakes Republicans have made since Bill Clinton -- or maybe even Franklin Roosevelt -- was elected.
          As a futurist (and the world's most widely published and prolific libertarian author) I predicted both the rise of the internet and the collapse of the Soviet Empire many years before they happened, when "experts" told me I was wrong. Even now I could tell you how to beat Clinton and his ilk and deal with the media of which you're all so terrified.
          The 20th century has been a period of the biggest, most powerful governments -- and consequently the most destructive wars and other despicably inhumane atrocities -- in world history. The 21st century -- now the merest 19 months away -- will be the century of the Bill of Rights.
          Whether your party has any role to play in that century remains to be seen. My prediction, based on its disgraceful performance in the last quarter of this sorry century, is that it will soon disappear from history, lingering only as a pathetic -- and vaguely repulsive -- memory.
          Whether this prediction of mine proves as accurate as the others I've made is entirely up to you, Senator, and to those like you in a party sadly lacking (and badly in need of) courage, intelligence, and integrity.

L. Neil Smith is the award-winning author of The Probability Broach, Pallas, Henry Martyn, Bretta Martyn, The Mitzvah (forthcoming, with Aaron Zelman), and 15 other novels. Order them from Amazon.com via http://www.lneilsmith.org// or from Laissez Faire Books at http://www.laissezfaire.org/ or just call Laissez Faire toll free, 1-800-326-0996.

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