Attribute to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

Anybody who knows me, every reader who follows what I write, understands by now that I am not a religious person. This is not the venue in which to discuss why. I am far from religiously ignorant. My counselor for the Boy Scouts’ God and Country Award, a Lutheran Air Force chaplain (and Estonian immigrant), was a benignly stringent taskmaster who knew I was a non-believer and kept me working at my studies about twice as long as usual until he was certain I was an informed non-believer. My first major in college was philosophy (there’s a whole different story—Cancel Culture, circa 1964), where I was exposed to even more religious thinking.

This is also not the place to discuss the many ways, ethically, morally, scientifically, and socially, I disagree with just about every religious sect and institution you can name. The only thing I’m really interested in considering at this point is the mindless vandalism we’re seeing being waged against religious sites and icons, and why they enrage me almost beyond my power to express it.

Whether I happen to like it or not, religion is a major pillar of Western Civilization, that freed serfs and slaves alike, propagated an Industrial Revolution that raised living standards exponentially, invented the democratic republic, sent human beings to the Moon, and accomplished almost every other wonderful thing that has ever happened on this planet—or off it. Religion was a major component of the American Revolution, and now it’s extremely important to most of those fighting against the neocommunist hordes—and their allies in office—threatening to overwhelm and obliterate everything intelligent individuals cherish.

Given the arson of Notre Dame and other ancient, famous, monuments to the evolution of civilized society—let alone blowing up giant Buddhist sculptures, pulling down crosses and statues, and the moral cretins who actually want to demolish the Pyramids—it has become pathetically clear that an attack on religious architecture is a display of savage, barbarous contempt for civilization itself. What kind of moral retard wants to smash a 500-year-old stained glass window?

As an ex-cop I assure you that most muggers and rapists are successful because their victims fail to recognize—until it’s too late—what’s going on. “This can’t be happening to me!” What’s going on to our beloved country right now is war. Until we recognize it for what it is, it will keep happening. More innocents will be hurt or killed, more property will be trashed and burned at life-destroying cost.

America, in the 1940s allied itself with Joseph Stalin, who ended up killing more Nazis than we did Although the alliance had dire consequences afterward, it was necessary for our survival at the time. Most of my allies in this mortal struggle are religious people. I am their fellow-traveler. In a broader sense, they are my family. I’m their crazy Uncle Charlie whom they dread inviting to weddings and Thanksgiving, but they invite me anyway, because I’m family.

I said essentially the same thing in a recent essay about the National Rifle Association, and I was harshly criticized for it. While it’s undoubtedly true that I have often argued with the NRA—in print—especially with its top leadership, a man I have long called “Pepe” LaPierre because he basically struck me as a skunk, the millions of members of the NRA are my fathers and mothers, my brothers and sisters, my sons and daughters, my grandsons and granddaughters. I have been a member of the National Rifle Association, off and on, since I was eleven years old, and a Life Member since 1974.

My principal disagreement with the NRA has been over its shameful timidity. It was founded, soon after the War Between the States, by veterans, to protect the right of the individual to own and carry weapons. Thanks to the Democrats, it seems a lot less timid these days.

Yes, I know that NRA Headquarters appears to have internal problems. Tell me, what national organization doesn’t, the Libertarian Party? The Boy Scouts of America? Wayne LaPierre has been accused by a communist district attorney—exactly the same scum-sucker bent on bringing Donald Trump down—of corruption. Even if true, it has absolutely nothing to do with the NRA family, the overwhelming majority of whom are decent, Constitutionalist, and yes, God-fearing people. They’re the folks, fully as deplorable as I am, whom I could have trusted to look out for my infant daughter, an increasingly rare quality, it seems, these days.

And for the record, I never wrote, “The bad people are out to get LaPierre and the NRA! I must give them money to show my support!” I am proud that my wife and daughter joined the NRA. That infantile, unnuanced statement only needlessly smears five or six million good people.

So, if you insist on fighting the Vandal Hordes all by yourself, my darling critics, I’m afraid that you’re going to be gravely disappointed. You’re family, too. And Where We Go 1 We Go All.