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The Best Revenge
by A.X. Perez
perez180ehs -+at+- hotmail -=dot=- com

Attribute to The Libertarian Enterprise

While I recognize the need many people have to strike back at the tyrants who oppress us I tend to take a more conciliatory attitude. At least one reader of TLE has called me to task for this, feeling I speak too gently.

My desire is to enjoy the blessings of liberty for myself and my posterity. It will not break my heart to kill tyrants and those who choose to serve them along the way to obtaining this goal. As a middle aged person it is almost certain that if there is any fighting between left or right wing goons and myself they will have started the dance.

That said, I have no doubt that the enemies of liberty will start the dance in the shooting part of the struggle for liberty, with or without reasonable pretext, as we who work for liberty succeed. It is the nature of tyrants to rely on force and deception instead of reason and truth. As deception fails them they will start shooting.

However, I will not give up the fruits of victory to track down surviving tyrants. If any of our enemies survive the armed struggle they started let them enjoy the blessings of liberty with the rest of us.

Wasting their time and money on fake ID cards and papers that noone will ever bother to check. Afraid to draw money from bank accounts that noone is monitoring. Hiding from authorities who either don't exist or have better things to do than chase after the inhabitants of the dustbin of history. Too dependent on the wealth of a free society to dare strike against it, impotent to ever reestablish themselves. Unable to offer a big enough payoff or a scary enough boogie man to ever attract dupes, in fact having to live with being the boogie man in popular entertainment and the one used to scare their own grandchildren into behaving (stop crying or the replicat will get you.).

Until one day they commit suicide, believing that enemies less forgiving than I are closing in and wanting to cheat the hangman.

Of course I have to admit that this revenge is a little subtle for my tastes. With any luck I'll get to gut shoot a couple of them under circumstances where they can't get medical help. If they all have to die along the way I won't shed any tears for them. It's just that given a choice between killing all current tyrants and their minions or securing and enjoying freedom I will choose enjoying freedom. Hope you feel the same.

L. Neil Smith Comments:

Dear Ken—

I would be inclined to agree with Brother Albert and his kind-minded approach to dealing with government criminals once we have achieved freedom except for one serious reservation. I very sincerely commend him for being the gentleman that we all know him to be.

However revenge, retribution, justice—whatever you choose to call it, and don't believe there's any difference between them, no matter what some government or media stooge tells you—serves an extremely important evolutionary purpose.

For those of our defeated enemy who aren't bright enough to have learned from—and been deterred by—their experience (which is pretty much what made them our enemy in the first place) it accomplishes a much-needed scrubbing out of the gene pool. If humankind is to advance in this way, and never be masters or slaves again, then the authoritarian personality must be erased from the human behavioral repertoire.

This was the principal theme of my sixth novel, Tom Paine Maru, before it was savaged by authoritarian personalities before it could be published, back in the 80s. You and I tried to get it back into circulation as an e-book, but that never quite worked out. Now Arc Manor will be returning it to the marketplace in only a few weeks (I just wrote a new introduction for it this morning) and maybe my theories about how humanity got into this mess 30 or 40 thousand years ago will finally gain some currency.

Rest assured, though, Tom Paine Maru also contains enough sex and violence to satisfy the most apolitical reader.

Mr. Perez Comments on Mr. Smith's Comments:

Dear Neil and Ken

I agree with the need to clean the gene pool Brother Neil expressed. On the other hand, if chasing persons who shall remain nameless to avoid being accused of terroristic threats means keeping the tax on cigarettes (for example) in place for even an extra week it isn't worth it.

However if someone wants to take up hunting down surviving tyrants and minions after the revolution as a hobby or can find people to voluntarily subsidize this avocation they should go for it. Maybe I'll agree to contribute to (or even partipate in if I've nothing better to do) the hunt for an Eichmann or Mengele. Some little shilpit kid of a station guard trying to keep from being put on the next train to the camps isn't worth my time or money. I realize that people have justifiable personal grudges and should be left alone to do what they have to do.

What really worries me is that some fast talker(s) will use the hunt for tyrants as an excuse to either extend the survival of the state and/or give the state more power than it should have before it finishes withering away. A second consideration is the number of our enemies we will kill overthrowing the tyrants. Blood can be as addictive as alcohol, I think many of us will have to make a deliberate struggle not to become blood thirsty brutes like the monsters we will be fighting. If we have to spare a few of the bastards to save our personal integrity I am willing to do so. I respect that others feel that they have to track down and kill the last of the evil ones to protect their souls and self respect. Just don't claim the "right" to use the power of the state to compel me to assist you.

By the way, back when I started a story about a genius who had created an artificial gene that compelled people to resist any attempt to subjugate them to unjust authority. I am going to have to start that story over again.

For what it's worth I suspect that most people genetically trapped in authoriarianism could not survive in a truly free society. The Masters would eventually force someone to kill them when they try to impose their will on the wrong persons. The Slaves would die of hunger and exposure as they fail to adapt to freedom, unless they get themselves killed trying to assault and rob armed free people.

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