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I Told You So
by L. Neil Smith
[email protected]

Special to L. Neil Smith's The Libertarian Enterprise

What seems like many years ago, I wrote an essay—the earliest reference I can find to it now is in an article published in 2000 by former The Libertarian Enterprise editor John Taylor, but I'm sure it's older—which, with a nod to one of my favorite scenes in Raiders of the Lost Ark, was called "Why Did It Have To Be ... Guns?". [Mr. Taylor reports the date on the original file is March 29, 1995—Editor]

Its thesis, essentially, was that you can learn everything you need to know about any politician if you find out where he stands with regard to your individual right to obtain, own, and carry weapons. If he won't trust you, you can't trust him. One politician I had in mind when I wrote it was then Arapahoe County (Colorado) Sheriff Patrick J. Sullivan.

Sullivan is a Republican, 68 years of age, a former Bill Clinton advisor who held local office 18 years, from 1984 until 2002. He was named National Sheriff of the Year in 2001. However at the moment, he has been arrested and is being held in a detention facility named after him for trading methamphetamines for sex, allegedly with young men and underaged boys, some of whom allege that they were coerced, and that the former sheriff, rumored to be HIV positive, himself, infected them with AIDS. It has been alleged he even went as far as checking young prisoners of the drug war out of jail, and setting them up in hotel rooms for days at a time to be visited by other powerful men.

During and after what happened at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999, there wasn't a TV camera or radio microphone he didn't cram his lying, dirty, hypocritical face in front of, to attack the concept of weapons ownership by private individuals. He became nationally associated with the crime as well as his false solution. But like many a man who brutalizes those he has sex with, we know now that he had another reason to make sure his potential victims couldn't defend themselves.

Here's the thing: creatures like Pat Sullivan believe that they are somehow superior—morally and intellectually—to the rest of us.

Creatures like Pat Sullivan believe their imagined superiority gives them some god-given kind of right to tell the rest of us what to do.

Creatures like Pat Sullivan believe they have a right to set the standards with regard to how the rest of us live, that they can tell the rest us what to wear, what to eat, what to drink, and what to smoke.

Creatures like Pat Sullivan believe they can decide for the rest of us whether or not we can be permitted to operate an automobile, or be allowed to obtain, own, and carry the physical means of self- defense.

Creatures like Pat Sullivan appear on radio and television to tell the world that it's dangerous for the rest of us to direct our own lives and to do whatever we wish with them, that we need somebody else —somebody like them, of course—to do all of that for the rest of us.

If the rest of us resist these altruistic benefices, creatures like Pat Sullivan believe that they have a right to protect us to death and, increasingly, they have the hardware to accomplish exactly that.

Creatures like Pat Sullivan even brag that they have a right to steal our children if they don't approve of the manner in which we're raising them and put them "in the system". And now we know one reason why.

Creatures like Pat Sullivan ultimately come to believe that they own us, and can do anything they wish with our bodies and with our property.

And that we have no rights.

As I write these words, there is another scandal developing in Denver, regarding the newly-elected Mayor, other powerful figures, and prostitutes.

Understand that, as a lifelong libertarian, I have nothing against prostitution, nor against homosexuality, nor even against the commerce in or use of drugs. What's utterly evil about these situations is not the acts themselves, but the hypocrisy involved in doing these things oneself while arresting and destroying the lives of others for doing them.

Pederasty is something else altogether. I believe that we all have an evolutionary duty as adult human beings to protect our children— all children—until they've grown up enough to protect themselves. We can argue about a proper age of consent, but the duty to protect is inarguable.

Thanks to the courage, intelligence, and resourcefullness of investigator Jonathan Elinoff, his boss Tom Martino, and talk show host Peter Boyles, a big, ugly truth has been exposed to the full, actinic light of day. I don't think they understand how big or ugly. This kind of thing has been going on for as long as men have weilded power.

And thanks to the astonishing revolution of lateral communicatons among individuals replacing vertical communications coming down from on high in human civilization, a revolution that has already begun to alter the face of that civilization, six thousand years of tyrant kings and presidents—the Age of Authority—is ending. It is now the time for our species to "provide new guards for their future security".

Thomas Jefferson understood that 235 years ago.

The rest of the world is finally catching up.

Pass it on.

First published on L. Neil Smith at Random

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