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The Mandarin In The Moon
by L. Neil Smith
[email protected]

Attribute to L. Neil Smith's The Libertarian Enterprise

There's an old saying (among Philosophy majors) that the true test of objective reality is to step off the curb in front of an oncoming bus.

I have here before me on the desktop, an article by Jeremy A. Kaplan of FoxNews.com, run December 6, 2013 entitled "Why is China targeting the moon—and should NASA as well?" It raises a question in my mind: do people really get paid for being this slow on the uptake? Considering what's at stake, Kaplan's article is so full of idiotic and trivial prattle, it's difficult to suppress one's vomit reflex.

Of course that could be the fault of his editorial masters.

I can never decide what irritates me more, when people don't pay attention to me (I am a writer, after all, and a moderately vain one), or when they won't pay attention to the undeniable facts of objective reality.

I get extremely weary of predicting events and phenomena that seem perfectly obvious to me at the time I predict them, but to which other people still react as if the universe had given them a 2X4 between the eyes (when they don't just hide their heads in the sand or some other warm, dark, moist place) whenever they come to pass a decade or two later.

Allow me to put this as succinctly and straightforwardly as I can. Robert A. Heinlein's monumental novel The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress [Amazon.com or Chinese Edition] appeared 47 years ago, in 1966. The minute it hit the stands, a time bomb began ticking that could go off in the next decade, possibly even sooner, destroying any hope humanity has ever cherished of individual liberty.

Go read it right away. I'll wait here for you.

Done already?

Good.

Three years ago, I spelled it out without fictional trappings in an essay in these pages called "China Moon". Here it is: whoever controls the Moon controls the Earth and everything and everybody on it.

You should read that right away, too.

The facts are terrifying. Briefly, chunks of rock (not something expensive, like missiles, can be dropped from the Moon to the Earth with effects, depending on mass and velocity, comparable to falling objects that changed the course of biological history in the ancient past.

If a member of the Oathkeepers or a Tea Partier makes a speech in Cleveland or leads a demonstration in Bakersfield that our Lunar Overlords don't care for, both cities can be spectacularly reduced to glowing lakes of molten glass, and the next individual who threatens to make a politically incorrect speech or lead a demonstration gets torn limb from limb on TV so the Overlords can see it, by his own neighbors.

That truly will be the end of history.

And of anything worth living for or fighting for.

Something drastic has to be done. The simplest thing would be to build a military base on the Moon amidst the howls and screams of so-called "progressives" and the genocidal scum at the United Nations. Forget the pseudoscientific wimps and halfwits at NASA. Turn the Navy loose.

Don't look to the present government. They're a huge part of the problem. Over the past several years, the Administration of Barack Hussein Obama has given us more than sufficient reason to believe that it is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Chinese communist government. And in any case, as my wife Cathy L.Z. Smith observes, governments, even when they disagree with one another, are united against their citizens.

I expect lots of screaming from my fellow libertarians, as well. I have made myself unpopular by recognizing that the only way to control the government is to become the government. (This doesn't contradict anarchism, it may be the best way to facilitate it; in the end it becomes a test of character.) This is a somewhat similar case. The best way to prevent being enslaved is by making it too difficult and expensive.

It can all be done within principle, but I'll leave explaining that for when I'm thoroughly convinced that someone is actually paying attention.

The alternative?

Get some knee-pads and brush up your Mandarin.

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