Attribute to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

In her column, [ last week—Editor ] “The Perilous Passage,” Ms. Hoyt raises a number of excellent points about the dangerous straits we have reached. For the most part, I agree with her except for the degree of danger. For instance, I think violent civil war is an optimistic expectation.

On our recent course, the far more likely scenario is what, elsewhere, I’ve termed “hunting season”, in which unorganized, independently motivated and acting, individuals go up the the dusty attic and bring out the trusty gun (or Molotov cocktail, improvised grenade, car, truck, bulldozer) and begin dealing with political offenders, who think freedom should be illegal, on a piecemeal basis.

From there, once started, it would devolve into settling other grudges. After all, after the first, all the rest are free.

POST PRIMUS ALII LIBER

I don’t want that. I hope you don’t want that. Ms. Hoyt hopes we can "vote our way out of this," and I hope she is correct.

On the Democrat side, we have a cast of clowns who all endorse, to some degree, a Green Raw Deal which requires reinstituting slavery. If you doubt this, look up the “Modern Monetary Theory” they use to explain how they’ll spend tens of trillions of dollars without inflating the monetary supply. (Hint: Print money on a scale that would make Zimbabwe’s Mugabe go, “Whoa….” pay it out on wages and materials, then tax every last zent [Zimbabwean cent] right right away from the recipients.)

This explains why every candidate endorses victim disarmament, naturally.

And note: While only three candidates (Swalwell, O’Rourke, and Biden) have explicitly threatened to enforce their edicts (you did notice Harris, right?) with military-on-civilian force, none of the other blinked an eye… or denounced the threat.

Warren, building on the GRD, plans an energy infrastructure that necessitates reducing the nation to an Early Medieval technology level, likely killing 90+% of the population.

No wonder the Great Meteor of Death chose to sit this one out:

I will not participate in the 2020 election cycle. With candidates pushing Green Raw Deal, Medicare for All, victim disarmament, and nuking America, y’all have human annihilation covered.

In short, they are all as bad—and worse—as Ms. Hoyt notes. To counter the psychopaths, she suggests voting our way out of it with Trump. At this point Hoyt and I diverge.

But respectfully. I know civil war is bad from studying history and observing other war-torn nations from a distance. Ms. Hoyt experienced it firsthand. That difference, I think, gives me a certain clinical detachment—good or bad—while Hoyt is understandably emotionally inclined to avoid a repeat, horrible, performance at any cost.

So she clutches at the straw that is Donald Trump. On the one hand, I don’t blame her. He’s certainly less deranged than slobbering socialist slavers of the Democrats.

But less evil?

Consider Trump’s history. Up until he decided—on an apparent “reality TV” whim—to run for President as a Republican, he’s generally been a big city, anti-RKBA Democrat. He has a long business history of disrespect for other people’s property and personal rights.

In Presidential practice, aside from the 2016 campaign and Vichy NRA annual meetings, he’s still anti-Second Amendment. He likes ex parte “red flag” orders (“due process later”), raising age limits for rights, expanding the class of prohibited persons, and bump-fire ban.

Trump’s beloved “red flag” orders are not merely a 2A issue. If allowed to stand (and more on that in a moment), they establish a precedent that thoroughly guts, skins, and butchers due process for anything. They eliminate the need for evidence for accusations. Innocence is something you’ll have to prove, because the accusation suffices.

Sounds more like a socialist Democrat bent on removing constitutional impediments to establishing a “green” Utopian slave state, than a conservative, constitutionalist.

The bump stock (“bump-stock-type devices,” BSTD) ban is still misunderstood by all too many people as a ban on a pointless, silly, and maybe slightly dangerous toy that “I don’t want.”

Never mind the “semi-auto problem,” where semi-automatics become “easily converted” to machineguns… which at least one court case is attempting to establish, specifically citing Trump’s ban.

This precedent means bureaucrats can redefine very words. It means they can override and rewrite any legislation… or even the Constitution. The President’s administration becomes Congress. Only the Courts stand in his…

Oops.

Let’s look at the Supreme Court, which many see as one of Trumps’s victories; two “conservative” Associate Justices nominated and confirmed. The Constitutional republic is safe!

Except… both of those Justices joined the unanimous decision to decline to allow a temporary stay on enforcement of the BSTD ban; they actively chose to allow an uncompensated taking (darn, there goes another Amendment) without due process. “Conservative. You keep using that word…”

Nor have any other of Trump’s judicial picks shown much inclination to pretend the Constitution still exists.

All in all, Trump has done more damage to the Bill of Rights, in less than a full term, than the Democrats have managed in decades. In all, he has set the Presidential, precedential, stage necessary for the Democrats to fulfill their dreams.

And those Democrats have noticed. Senator “Kneepads” Harris has cited Trump’s own executive order on BSTDs as precedent for her plan to finish off private firearms ownership by fiat.

With all due respect to Ms. Hoyt (and I mean that; I like her thinking and writing, fiction and nonfiction) there is no practical difference between voting for someone in the insane clown posse of the Dems, or the like-minded reality TV troll, except that if the Republicans hold the Senate, Trump may advance his anti-freedom agenda faster than would an opposed Democrat President.

If we are to vote our way out of this mess, it needs to be with someone other than Trump. But there, I admit, I fail.

I do not know of anyone running for the office that I do not consider as bad as the known suicide options. I think there must be, but I haven’t found her. It doesn’t help that the mainstream media, polling agencies, and political candidate aggregation sites actively suppress info on most “third parties.” I’ve asked around, but the usual answer is, “Damned if I know.” Though one person did suggest Tulsi Gabbard.

-blink-

It also doesn’t help that our current electoral process of “trial by Roman Colosseum” primaries, and Media Thunderdome general elections, tends to discourage participation by the principled and sane. Then there’s ballot access perpetually limiting control of the Electoral College to Republicans and Democrats anyway.

Our current choices are:

1. Elect a Democrat. We get a medieval lifestyle, poverty, slavery, and eventual extinction. Pantifa and comrades-in-arms would celebrate by rioting and hunting down evil “fascists” and “racists,” secure in the knowledge that the nation has safely become Portland. See “hunting season.”

2. Elect Trump. The end of rights, a Republican police state, and Pantifa et al riot even worse. See “hunting season.” But we’d still have electricity for a while.

3. Hunting season.

Ms. Hoyt has chosen option 2. I’m still looking for another.