Special to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

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One Year Later - a new letter from Germany

L. Neil Smith was and stays my third political mentor and the only one I never knew in person.

My other mentors were my late parents. My father Wolfgang was born 1921 and passed away 2002, my mother called Tine was born 1923 and passed away 2013. They were lucky married for 53 years. My father was a well known politician, for 37 years member of Deutscher Bundestag and for 23 years chairman of the faction of Freie Demokratische Partei (FDP) in Deutscher Bundestag. He wrote no fiction but hundreds, maybe more than thousand, of political essays, and my mother wrote down and corrected the majority of them on typewriter and later computer. For her family she wrote full of irony travel journals and photographed on travels since the 1960ies. We were never in USA, never in GB, never in Spain or France, c. 1959 and 1960 for a day in northern Italy, and the most travels were in Germany or former GDR. [GDR: German Democratic Republic, aka East Germany — Editor]

My father was two times married.  His first wife was without interest in politics, but a wonderful woman. She is still alive and now near the 101st birthday. They had a daughter, born 1945, and a son, born 1947, so that L. Neil theoretically could be his elder political interested son. My father was member of FDP since 1945, my mother since 1946, both till death, and I am member since 1970. My parents had to flee from their home Saxony in 1948 because the Soviet and German communists disliked their political activities. My stepbrother has a daughter, my stepsister has three granddaughters nearly age of Rylla, and the eldest of these three is mother. After my birth the doctors told my mother that she could not have further children. Now I am 68.

I read the NAC books of L. Neil since the beginning of the 80ies in German translation and meanwhile most of them in English, too. I do not know how often I read these books, maybe two times per year. After the death of my mother who missed her husband till she died, L. Neil Smith became and stayed my third political mentor. Since I read the graphic novel „Roswell Texas“ at WWW, I know that we two like the same two songs, maybe much more. „Crazy Words Crazy Tunes“ I know in an instrumental version, recorded in Berlin c. 1927 by the band of Marek Weber, with solos of US trumpeter Arthur Briggs and US Banjoist Mike Danzi - hearing this solo I remember L. Neil. The other song is „I `m an old cowhand from the Rio Grande“. I know this song in two versions. In this moment the computer plays my favorite tune „Tiger Rag“ in one of many versions I know and like.

But, as I asked last year, is L. Neil really gone? Yes, his crippled body passed away, but as a christian I believe in the immortality of the soul. He left his spirit near Cathy, Rylla and his authors. His soul used the really Probability Broach, a tiny thing only big enough for souls. He cannot return because he has a new healthy body, but he can look through the broach. He will never forget Cathy, Rylla and Anarchocapitalism which is normal in his new world. Maybe he will meet my parents. As I read „The Probability Broach“ this year again I found out that the beginning will maybe correct not for USA in 1987 but for Germany in 2023.

I hope that „The Frozen Stars“ are or will be finished. Maybe it is a good future. And I hope his ghostwriter Win Bear told him the whole story. Or has he told it meanwhile to L. Neil?

I know the feeling of missing husband and father very well. It will never leave Cathy and Rylla. Since my father died I was unable to hear his favorite Swing Music made by the well known Glenn Miller Orchestra. Till my mother died and longer I lived in my father house. Sometimes I know I have motions as my father, sometimes I move as my mother. I miss the special humor of L. Neil. Her was similar. And I think his spirit told me: write this article. I did so. He was a great man.

Harald Mischnick
[email protected]

The Importance of Principle

I am convinced that two libertarians on a scaffold, with nooses around their necks, will be arguing about intellectual property.

I don't care about it much, one way or another, except that I think any non-voluntary (that is, government) solution is going to be even less legitimate than the original theft was. Let the creator figure out his own remedy for it.

I wrote a little piece about property, a while back.

Paul Bonneau
Paul Bonneau

Re: The Importance of Principle

It is one thing to discuss someone downloading a copy of Metallica's cover of "Whiskey in the Jar." It is another to talk about a megacorporation such as Disney not paying royalties to people who wrote novels set in the Star Wars universe under contract to Lucasfilm and Del Rey, especially given how jealously Disney defends its copyright rights. If Cathy Smith, heiress to El Neil's royalty rights for the Lando Calrissian novels,

• Lando Calrissian and the Mindharp of Sharu (1983)
• Lando Calrissian and the Flamewind of Oseon (1983)
• Lando Calrissian and the Starcave of ThonBoka (1983)

Chooses to not mention this particular dog his family has in this fight I will.

Albert Perez
Albert Perez