Big Head Press


L. Neil Smith's
THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE
Number 622, June 5, 2011

"The cops have gone crazy.
There's lots of this going around, these days."


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Take Your Little Black Box and Shove It
by L. Neil Smith
[email protected]

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Attribute to The Libertarian Enterprise

We all heard this week that from this moment onward, all new automobiles manufactured in or imported to the United States will be required to have "litle black boxes" like the flight recorders in aircraft.

The device, which steps far outside the bounds of what's allowable under the Constitution, will tell government, the insurance company you're forced at gunpoint to do business with, the ex-spouse suing you for divorce, and anybody else who can get a court order out of some drunken sleazebag judge, exactly where you've been going, how often you went, and how fast you got there. The government admits that it will form the basis for a new tax, to be assessed by every mile you drive.

Of course the taxes on gasoline will be repealed.

Not.

They're quite open about it, because they have other, bigger plans for you and your car. I'm assuming this contrivance will be remotely readable, so they can nag you about your driving habits, and remind you, in the Sacred Name of Holy Gaia, that you're consuming too much energy. Even worse, it's a step toward giving the blue gang the power they've craved for years, to turn your engine off whenever they feel like stopping you, pulling you out of your car, stealing anything valuable you may have on your person, and bludgeoning you half to death.

The cops have gone crazy. There's lots of this going around, these days.

Mind you, nobody ever got to vote on this, not even the useless scumsucking parasites we mistakenly call representatives. It's being imposed on us by another brutal and barbaric brigade of bureaucratic banditi. Doubtless it will arrive with all kinds of penalties and rules with regard to disengaging the damn thing and dumping it in the landfill.

Where it belongs.

Now let's stop and grab hold of reality for a moment. The United States is in the middle of a second Great Depression, brought down upon us, exactly like the first, by government interference with the free market system. The first time around, it was the Federal Reserve, keeping interest rates lower than they would naturally have been. This time, it was fat, stupid economically ignorant politicians, forcing banks to make home loans that everybody involved knew could never be repaid.

Before the first Great Depression, no economic downturn (each of them caused by government) had ever lasted more than eighteen months. Thanks to the abysmal cluelessness of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his criminal accomplices, the Great Depression lasted twelve years, and never truly ended. There were more people unemployed in 1941 than there had been in 1932 when he was elected. It was simply interrupted by the Second World War which Roosevelt did everything he could to get us into, in order to conceal his embarrassing failures in the fog of war.

So here we are again, seventy years later. in the middle of the same kind of mess, the politicians in this country having learned precisely fuck-all from the unspeakable stupidities committed by their predecessors. It's such an unbelievable series of developments that many otherwise staid and sober observers have come to believe its being done deliberately, in order to demolish America and loot the ruins.

I find the thesis extremely difficult to refute. Every single last thing that Obama and his gaggle of mutants have done to "alleviate" the disaster we're living through has been diametrically, 180 degrees wrong. In a depression, normally hardworking Productive Class individuals suddenly find themselves without employment (generally owing to excessive taxation, insane levels of regulation, or government manipulation of the money supply) and without enough money to feed, clothe, house, transport, and defend themselves and their families.

Everything Obamanism has forced on us has made things worse. If they're actually sincere in their misbegotten attempts to repair the destruction that they and theirs have wreaked, that's extremely bad news. It means that, instead of striking Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, the Air Force should be bombing America's real enemies, Harvard and Yale.

Which brings us back to those little black boxes—and unintended consequences. Government policy—along with the extortionate demands of unions—have come close to killing America's automobile industry. The current administration—which did the killing—has reanimated General Motors so it can stagger around like a zombie, but that will change nothing in the long run, because the anti-car fanatics aren't finished.

Case in point: as long as this unconstitutional law remains in force, I will never buy a new car, and neither will anyone else who values privacy and freedom. Get that, Detroit? What it means is another brutal blow that, following so many others, you guys may never recover from. It also means that, exactly as I predicted (prematurely) in The Probability Broach, we'll all be driving little plastic cars from Brazil. The used car market will boom, driving up the cost of living for ordinary folks. An underground economy centered on gimmicked black boxes will thrive—rob a gas station, swap your box out, get away free.

Meanwhile, Republicans haven't done a single thing to slow the Juggernaut by a mile per hour, or reverse it by an Angstrom unit. In fact, they've helped the Democrats to accelerate it by renewing the single most evil, Draconian, and unconstitutional item of legislation that this country has ever suffered under, the so-called Patriot Act. They're trying to kill the Internet. They are liars and cowards and thieves.

I've had enough of this crap. How about you? It can be stopped— reversed—but it will require a clear understanding on the part of Republicans who, at the moment, seem too dumb to live, that they have to take creatures like John Boehner and Mitt Romney over to the barrow ditch at the side of the road, make them kneel down, and do the right thing.

By which I mean pray, of course.

Or not.

If they won't be the party of liberty they pretend to be, then we will start another. And another when they infiltrate and corrupt it. And another after that. It may mean another four years of Obama. It may mean a slide into totalitarianism that we'll have to fight our way out of again, but it will also be worth it, just to put an end to the Republican Party and to the parasites and shapeshifters who fill its ranks.


Four-time Prometheus Award-winner L. Neil Smith has been called one of the world's foremost authorities on the ethics of self-defense. He is the author of more than 25 books, including The American Zone, Forge of the Elders, Pallas, The Probability Broach, Hope (with Aaron Zelman), and his collected articles and speeches, Lever Action, all of which may be purchased through his website "The Webley Page" at lneilsmith.org.

Ceres, an exciting sequel to Neil's 1993 Ngu family novel Pallas is currently running as a free weekly serial at www.bigheadpress.com/lneilsmith/?page_id=53

Neil is presently at work on Ares, the middle volume of the epic Ngu Family Cycle, and on Where We Stand: Libertarian Policy in a Time of Crisis with his daughter, Rylla.

See stunning full-color graphic-novelizations of The Probability Broach and Roswell, Texas which feature the art of Scott Bieser at www.BigHeadPress.com Dead-tree versions may be had through the publisher, or at www.Amazon.com where you will also find Phoenix Pick editions of some of Neil's earlier novels. Links to Neil's books at Amazon.com are on his website


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