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The Deal
by L. Neil Smith
[email protected]

Attribute to L. Neil Smith's The Libertarian Enterprise

An air-headed law professor embarrassing Texas with her existence, has added her not very original two cents to arguments "progressives" have been having among themselves (nobody else seems to be listening) about the unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right of every man, woman, and responsible child to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon—rifle, shotgun, handgun, machine gun, anything—any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission.

That's the full meaning of the Second Amendment she wants to see repealed.

Libertarians and conservatives don't have these arguments among themselves. That's because, somewhere along the line, they learned to read. They also learned a little history, which will prove important, here.

While some of this nation's Founding Fathers—Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, George Mason—were intent, first and foremost, to create a new country in which individual liberty and free enterprise would be the order of the day, there were others, like Alexander Hamilton, who regarded the fledgling America as his personal piggy bank.

You will have been taught that the Articles of Confederation, our first "operating system" were deeply flawed, The truth is that they provided for an extremely decentralized governance that stood as an obstacle to the vast fortunes Hamilton and his cronies had hoped to amass.

The Articles had to go, and it is revealing that among Hamilton's first acts as Treasury Secretary under the Constitution that replaced them was a national excise tax on whiskey that, as readers of my novel The Probability Broach know, very nearly sparked a second American Revolution.

Corn farmers of western Pennsylvania long accustomed to turning their crop into a less perishable, more transportable product, were among the first victims of democracy American-style, the kind where three coyotes and a lamb sit down to debate on what's going to be for dinner.

Nevertheless, that's why a few stiff-necked libertarian-types, like Jefferson, held out for a Bill of Rights to be added to the new Constitution, and it was written, more or less to Jefferson's order, by his close friend, James Madison, one of the few Federalists who was genuinely interested in assuaging the Anti-Federalists about the new document.

The Bill of Rights was, unfortunately misnamed. It was not a list of things Americans were allowed too do, under the Constitution. It was and remains a list of things government is absolutely forbidden to do—like set up a state religion, or steal your house—under any circumstances.

The Bill of Rights was the make-or-break condition that allowed the Constitution to be ratified. No Bill of Rights, no Constitution. And since all political authority in America "trickles down" from the Constitution, no Constitution no government. And, since the Bill of Rights was passed as a unit, a single breach, in any one of the ten articles, breaches them all and with them, the entire Constitution. Every last bit of the authority that derives from it becomes null and void.

Let's review:

No Second Amendment, no Bill of Rights.

No Bill of Rights, no Constitution.

No Constitution, no government.

Once again, to make sure that the dumbest lawyer in the room gets it:

No Second Amendment, no Bill of Rights.

No Bill of Rights, no Constitution.

No Constitution, no government.

Why a so-called law professor can't figure this out is beyond me. No doubt, in part, her mind has been damaged by years of law school, No doubt she regards the Bill of Bights as an obstruction to an agenda that she feels more loyalty to than she does to the Constitution, that of converting a nation of free and independent individuals into an ant-farm, Recall that the head of the most violent, lawless government we've had to suffer under since 1865, also claims to have been a law professor.

Teaching Constitutional law, no less.

At this point in history this woman knows that "gun control" -- more accurately known as "victim disarmament"—does nothing to reduce crime. Howard Metzenbaum, gun control maven of the Senate from 1974 to 1995, openly admitted it to the media, "off the record". Gun control has only one purpose: to intimidate and control the Productive Class.

To the deep, almost physically painful chagrin of the people of her ilk, even if victim disarmament "worked", and even after decades of anti-self-defense propaganda, the Productive Class doesn't want it and doesn't need it. Except for those those areas controlled by "progressives", the iunner city cores, this is the most peaceful, prosperous and, yes, truly progressive society in the history of the world.

It's also heavily armed—750 million firearms, according to the industry, "of modern design, in good working order"—it's pissed off about a number of issues, and better than ever before, it knows its rights. It knows that, even if the Second Amendment were repealed, the basic right to own and carry weapons doesn't come from the Bill of Rights, The Second Amendment was written to protect a pre-existing organic right to own and carry weapons. In short, the tax-slaves are getting uppity, and that terrifies plantation staffers like this law professor.

If she wants to renege on the historical deal that made America great in any way you choose to name, she needs to understand that, if she succeeds, government as we have known it, will cease to exist. America will be ruled by the kind of mindless brute police force we're seeing in New Mexico and other places today. Only, once the police are stripped of their Constitutional authority, people will begin to fight back.

We all have an idea what that will look like,

Maybe that's what she wants.

If you ever wondered what kind of political shape-shifters and double-dealers broke over 1500 treaties with the Indians, you need look no further than people just like this one, who want to take your guns,

Tell them that Americans have obeyed their last gun law.

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