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 THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE Number 710, March 3, 2013 "The bottom line is that Western Individualism is under attack from all sides philosophically, and that this is likely a precursor to an effort to defeat it by force."
What's It Got In Its Pocketses, My Precious?
Attribute to L. Neil Smith's The Libertarian Enterprise It says here the government will soon have drones—meaning that they already have them—that can see whether you are carrying a weapon. We are already better acquainted than we should be with various scanning contraptions at airports and elsewhere that look inside your briefcase, inside your purse, inside your suitcase, and inside you to determine whether you have had the temerity, despite the vicious and illegal police state practices that have sprung up around us like malignant toadstools—to exercise your rights under the Second Amendment. The term "wand-rape" has found its way into the general vocabulary. What they want in the end, of course, is devices you can't avoid passing through—some of my readers will remember the Arnold Schwarzenegger version of Total Recall in which people were X-rayed (or something) at regular intervals, and any gun they carried stood out in red, while klaxons oinked a warning to every statist pig in the vicinity. That part of the movie itself reminded me of Abner Mikvah, Esq.— former Congressman, former judge, Waco Willie Clinton's mouthpiece, and general lickspittle to everyone and everything collectivistic— who once expressed a heartfelt desire that in the future, there be a metal detector "in every doorway" in America. When I looked the slug up just now on Wikipedia, I was surprised—and disappointed—to discover that Abner is 87 years old and hasn't died yet. The world will be a better, cleaner place when he finally has the courtesy to do so. I don't know about you, but I am damned sick and tired of being restrained, plundered, and chivvied about by criminals who are eager to approve every liberty-obliterating law and regulation that gets proposed to them, but don't believe that any law at all applies to them. Take a look at this one, for example, written in plain, simple English: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." Notice that the pebble in that particular bowl of pinto beans is the wiggle-word "reasonable". It not only means different things to different people, but different people will deliberately define it differently to suit their political purposes. It's like the expression "reasonable" gun control, which, among those who call themselves "progressives" (because they've left so much excrement on the word "liberal" it can't be used any more) amounts to confiscation. Any way you parse it, it's a loophole you could sail an aircraft carrier through. I would support an amendment to remove wiggle-words from the Constitution. But you tell me: how could anybody possibly believe that there is any way that the individuals who wrote and ratified that law—which happens to be the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution—would have approved the use of metal detectors (in every doorway or not) or drones that can look down and tell our enemy the state whether you're armed? Or is it infinitely likelier that James Madison and the other Founding Fathers simply didn't want the state to know what's in your pockets? No matter how or why the search is carried out. No matter how urgent the excuse that's been invented for it. No matter how subtle the means supposedly are. Government has no right to know what's in your pockets. Make no mistake: the Fourth Amendment, right along with the other nine amendments, are the law. They are, in fact, the highest law of the land, superceding all other laws, treaties, and the main body of the Constitution itself, that being in the nature of an amendment. To violate one or more of them is, beyond question, a criminal act, as spelled out in Title 18 of the United States Code, Sections 241 and 242. Wikipedia maintains (somewhat ungrammatically), "Punishment varies from a fine or imprisonment of up to one year, or both, and if bodily injury results or if such acts include the use, attempted use, or threatened use of a dangerous weapon, explosives, or fire shall be fined or imprisoned up to ten years or both, and if death results, or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, [they] shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death." People of all political stripes say they want their country back. I am not so much concerned with the American nation-state as I am with the unique civilization—of which the hallmarks are an unprecedented peace, freedom, progress, and prosperity—that has developed in America, not because of the government, but very largely in spite of it. I want my civilization back—and so should you—which means, first and foremost, abandoning rule forever by the thuggish whim of politicians, bureaucrats, and the police, and returning to the rule of law. In turn, returning to the rule of law must begin with forcing (and I use that word knowing full well what it means) politicians, bureaucrats, and the police into abject compliance with its merest provisions. I suspect that, rather than citizens' arrests, which are a joke, that the reform we seek will have to begin with county sheriffs all over the country. If Sheriff Joe Arpaio, for example, a man for whom I don't have much respect, were to arrest Senator John McCain for his many crimes against the Constitution, and if other sheriffs were to follow his example, we would wind up with a vastly more liveable civilization. I have spoken about building a new prison on Alcatraz Island to house officials who fail to respect the Bill of Rights, and I will do so again. But the fact is, there are far too many such miscreants, especially at the lowest levels of government, to lock up, even in the FEMA camps the government has built to put us in. But we can give them "community service" jobs like crushing every gun detector ever owned or used by governments or corporations to violate the people's Fourth Amendment, and recycling them into something useful—like automatic weapons. If that's the future you'd like to live in—I certainly would—then let's begin working toward it, now. Do not expect any help from the evil Democratic Party, the hapless Republican Party, the helpless Libertarian Party, or the Green Party which, I recently learned, courtesy of Robert Zubrin's, latest book*, was originally founded by Nazis. It is up to us "to provide new guards for [our] future security."
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