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 THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE Number 755, January 26, 2014 The whole of American domestic history has consisted, pretty much, of one long, constant battle between those two points of view,freedom versus Puritanism...
Special to L. Neil Smith's The Libertarian Enterprise An Agorist is a latter-day American Revolutionary who declares the government breaching the Bill of Rights nullifies the Constitution. Harvey Weinstein and Greg Gutfeld are equally opposed to the Bill of Rights. It's just that one can't count to 2 and the other to 4. I don't use a monolithic talking-points approach in my defense of freedom. My old mentor, Samuel Edward Konkin III, taught me that since all opponents of liberty pretend to be in favor of a holistic liberty—then either betray it from the right-wing or left-wing—the rhetorical technique is to come at them from their own ideological window and show them the contradictions to their own premises. This week, in which movie mogul Harvey Weinstein attacked the Second Amendment right-to-keep-and-bear-arms from the left and Fox News star Greg Gutfeld attacked the Fourth Amendment right-to-be-secure-in-one's-papers-and-effects from the right, had me using this technique of attacking liberty-opponents from their own flanks—back-to-back. Here are the open letters I sent each of them.
Open Letter to Harvey Weinstein Dear Mr. Weinstein, I'm the author and indie filmmaker, J. Neil Schulman. In the past I've hoped to work with you both in distribution of the two feature films I've already written, produced, and directed, and on future projects. I've enjoyed many of the films you've produced and I think if you took the time to get to know me you'd find that we have a lot of views in common when it comes to opposing the fascist/imperialist elements that dominate American politics. Yet the one area where you most need to understand an alternative point of view is the issue of civilian ownership of firearms. You've been in the middle of a talking-points war between neo-Nixonians on the right and neo-Clintonistas on the left who agree on civilian disarmament, It's a mistake the hard-left never made in supporting arming union workers against Pinkertons and the Black Panthers in arming blacks against Klan and other violent segregationists. I also approach this question from the viewpoint of a Jew who has written that if the Jews of Germany had remained armed and kept a warrior spirit then Kristalnacht could have been the beginning of the end for the Nazi Party prior to World War 2. As Sinclair Lewis warned in It Can't Happen Here, fascism not only can happen in America, it already has. Your own movies about extreme renditions of innocent people and every kind of abuse of the Bill of Rights by multiple federal departments including Homeland Security and the NSA have proved that. The last line of defense—the only thing that can be the bottom line in defending all the other Bill of Rights—is the ability of the American people to shoot back when fired on by stormtroopers—and I'm not making this about Barack Obama; it's true of any imperial presidency of any party that has contempt for law, the people's rights, and due process. I'd love to show you my new movie, Alongside Night, that makes these points in dramatic form. Sincerely, J. Neil Schulman
Open Letter to Greg Gutfeld Greg Gutfeld, There is no balance between security measures that violate the rights of innocent people as enshrined in the Bill of Rights and the individual liberties those measures abridge or infringe. A clear example of this was to be found on 9/11/2001 when the infringement of airline pilots', flight attendants', and passengers' Second Amendment right to carry concealed handguns on board enabled a handful of committed terrorists armed with nothing more than boxcutters to take control of four jetliners which resulted not only in massive destruction to the financial and military headquarters of the United States and the deaths of almost 3,000 innocents but two wars in retribution with tens of thousands of more deaths and broken warriors plus trillions of dollars in war costs that could have been better spent in preserving our national economic health. Protecting liberty and individual rights—not massive government bureaucracies in the Department of Homeland Security and the NSA—is the only practical approach to preserving a secure society as well. Any compromise to this principle is allowing the terrorists to win. J. Neil Schulman
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