 |
|
|
L. Neil Smith's THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE Number 338, September 25, 2005 "Listening to the Libertarians Yapping"
Libertarians: The Connies Speak Out (Part One)
Exclusive to TLE I have been accused—and I didn't like it much—of saying that the people of the United States are sleeping. All that we libertarians (or Marxists or Georgists or Monarchists or Nudists or Flat-Earthists or Anti-Darwinists) need to do to achieve victory over the Forces of Evil (whoever they happen to be at the moment) is to awaken our fellow countrymen (and our countrywomen, too) from their deep and dangerous slumber. Now in fact, I've never said anything even remotely like that. It's just part of the argumentative style of the guy who made the accusation (he's a novelist, and he'd want me to mention his name) to invent positions for you on various issues and then try to bamboozle you into defending them, a technique I don't think I ever fell for, even in grade school. I dismissed him and I haven't heard from him since. The other day, however, I had an experience that made me wonder if that view wasn't right, after all, about one subculture of Americans in particular, those who continue, despite the dictates of history—not to mention good taste—to label themselves "conservative". And since conservatives have shown over the past several years that they have no real interest in individual liberty, but merely represent a right-wing variety of socialism, I think it's appropriate to call them "connies" What happened is that I heard from a friend that he had posted an essay of mine "on an ostensibly pro-RKBA, heavily Republican gun forum". For those unfamiliar with the acronym, "RKBA" stands for the "Right to Keep and Bear Arms", referring to the Second Amendment. I greatly prefer to modernize a hackneyed phrase that otherwise seems to fall on cliche-deafened ears, by saying "the right to own and carry weapons". He continued, "Thought I'd forward a couple of the responses." The particular essay in question, "Why Did It Have To Be Guns?",
has been a favorite feature of my personal website, "The Webley Page"
Back already?
Okay, keep in mind the gist of the essay: my contention that you
can learn practically anything you need to know about a politician
from his respect—or lack thereof—for your right to own and carry
weapons.
"What has been working," read the first so-called response to my
essay, "is the Conservative strategy of wearing down and defeating the
Liberal establishment through a continuous campaign on all fronts
against their ideology, performance, and political and news media
dominance."
Aside from the fact that this wasn't really a response to my essay
at all (it seemed a lot more to me like a defensive knee-jerk reaction
to the myriad and conspicuous failures of Republican politicians to
stand up properly for the Second Amendment over the past few decades),
do you see what I mean about connies being sound asleep? Either that,
or they're all higher than ... higher than ... an appropriate metaphor
appears to be escaping me, here ... I've got it: higher than Rush
Limbaugh.
What this writer is attempting to describe, in any case, is not a
conservative strategy, not at all, but one developed during the 19th
century by English Fabian socialists, including H.G. Wells, George
Bernard Shaw, Sydney and Beatrice Webb, and a great many illustrious
others.
Even if that didn't happen to be true, what is it that these
connnies are wearing down and defeating, exactly? Thanks to the likes
of Richard "I Am Not A Crook" Nixon (who considered private ownership
of firearms "an abomination") and the inappropriately sainted Ronald
Reagan, the all-consuming State today is bigger, more powerful, and
more voracious than ever. And one way or another, every bit of it is
the work of the cowards, cretins, and crazies who call themselves
conservatives, whose self-congratulatory campaign against the liberal
establishment seems to consist of little besides becoming liberals,
themselves.
Let's stick with the fundamental right to own and carry weapons,
since it was on a gun forum that this antilibertarian flatulence was
posted. Who made the Brady Bill and the late, unlamented Ugly Gun ban
possible? None other than the Republican Party, under the viagratic
leadership of Senator Brady Bill-Bob Dole, who gave the Clintonistas a
pass on rules of procedure that would have otherwise stopped them
cold. For ten years, as a consequence, liberty hung in limbo—and
hangs in limbo even yet—thanks specifically to the connies who now
have the baldfaced temerity to claim it was all part of some grand
strategy.
Sure: the "strategy" of betraying principle, toadying to creatures
like Bill Clinton, who would be powerless without enthusiastic connie
help.
"It's a slow process," our correspondent declares pontifically,
somehow failing to notice (or acknowledge) that it's also a process
presently running in reverse, away from the individual freedom that
connies used to claim they desired. "But the only alternative is
listening to the Libertarians yapping while the Liberals control the
USA."
So that's the problem! The poor connies don't like our "yapping".
They don't appreciate any individual impolite and impolitic enough to
remind them that they're lying phonies who have now managed to inflict
more catastrophic damage on what the Founding Fathers accomplished
than any left-winger ever dreamed of in his wildest McGovernistic
imagination.
They probably hate our mentioning the way their foreign policy,
driven by mercantilist lust for somebody else's property, brought on
the attack on the World Trade Center, or their so-called Patriot Act,
which would make Adolf Hitler green with envy, or their thousands of
spy cameras on the streets, twice as thick as in the old movie
1984,
or their midnight arrests and abductions—following the Abe Lincoln
playbook, line by jackbooted line—of American citizens and others
never properly accused, let alone convicted of any crime, or their
concentration camps and torture dungeons hidden in friendly foreign
dictatorships.
They don't want us "yapping" while what they're really "wearing
down and defeating" is the Bill of Rights, through their "continuous
campaign on all fronts" against freedom of communication, freedom of
assembly, freedom of religion, sexual and reproductive freedom, the
right to travel freely without being molested by hired thugs, personal
and financial privacy, and, yes, the individual right to own and carry
weapons.
Never forget Ronald Reagan's support for the Brady Bill, named to
honor his old flunky, or George Senior's campaign diatribe against a
tiny .22 revolver, or George Junior's promise to sign a renewal of the
Adequate Magazine ban if his left wing allies ever managed to get it
passed.
Connies want us libertarians to stop "yapping". And I suppose if I
were heavily invested in the relentless Nazification of what was once
the freest civilization in the world, I'd want exactly the same thing,
myself.
Wouldn't you?
I seem to recall somebody saying, "When the enemy screams "Foul!"
the loudest, you know you're doing him the most damage." Now who could
that possibly have been? Oh yeah, it was me! In my essay, "Tactical
Reflections" in my book
Lever Action.
And to that, I'll add now that
the more conservatives whimper, the more we libertarians know we're
right.
So I guess we'll just keep yapping until the connies wake up.
TLE ADVERTISER Help Support TLE by patronizing our advertisers and affiliates.
|
|
|
|