<html>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Crazy Atheist Libertarian</TITLE>
<meta name="keywords" content="crazy, atheist, libertarian,
Crazy Atheist Libertarian, humanist, news, government, religion, crime, police">
</HEAD>
<body background="nevada.gif">
<pre>
Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2001 02:36:00 -0500
To: Matthew Gaylor <<a href="mailto:freematt@coil.com">freematt@coil.com</a>>
From: Matthew Gaylor <<a href="mailto:freematt@coil.com">freematt@coil.com</a>>
Subject: THIRTY-TWO STUPID YEARS By L. Neil Smith
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed"
<p>
To: Matthew Gaylor <<a href="mailto:freematt@coil.com">freematt@coil.com</a>>
From: "L. Neil Smith" <<a href="mailto:lneil@ezlink.com">lneil@ezlink.com</a>>
Date: Mon, 12 Nov 2001 07:53:35 -0700
<p>
THIRTY-TWO STUPID YEARS
<p>
By L. Neil Smith <<a href="mailto:mailto:lneil@ezlink.com">mailto:lneil@ezlink.com</a>>
<p>
Excerpted from _The Libertarian Enterprise_ #147
<<a href="http://www.webleyweb.com/tle>">http://www.webleyweb.com/tle></a>
<p>
<p>
For many years, I've been saying that the overarching tragedy of our
species is that our best attributes -- courage, integrity, most of
all intelligence -- are not additive in character. Two people aren't
braver than one person, nor more principled under pressure, nor are
they any smarter. On the other hand, our worst attributes -- chiefly
brute force -- are additive. Two people are inarguably stronger than
one.
<p>
Another attribute human beings possess is a regrettable propensity to
react to sufficiently shocking events by allowing themselves to be
stampeded like buffalo straight over the nearest cliff. This
attribute is called stupidity. It may be the most additive human
attribute of all.
<p>
Thirty-two years ago, as a result of the voluntary cooperation of
tens of thousands of human beings (admittedly and deplorably at the
involuntary expense of millions of taxpayers) attempting to add their
intelligence together, three men climbed into something very like a
large conical dumpster and allowed themselves to be blasted into
space toward the single large natural satellite of humanity's native
planet. Once there, two of them descended from orbit, walked around,
planted a flag, took some samples, then climbed back into lunar orbit
and came home.
<p>
A great deal has been said, in the three decades that have passed
since that event, about that mission and its meaning. Three pretty
stupid decades, thirty-two stupid years, in the view of those who'd
hoped that landing on the Moon might somehow change the destiny of
humanity.
<p>
In some ways, it is the noblest thing that human beings have ever
accomplished. In some ways it is the silliest and most futile. We all
supposed that it was a first step -- for all of humanity -- toward
the stars. That part turned out to be a very ugly, painful lie. What
NASA's Apollo XI mission has come to represent instead, historically
and psychologically, is a not-so-cheap publicity stunt, commemorating
not the purposefulness and the power of the unfettered human mind,
but the purposelessness -- and the power -- of the modern managerial
state.
<p>
Others have said it better than me. Victor Koman's great _Kings of
the High Frontier_ identified and forced us to confront a reality
many were loathe to acknowledge: any rational analysis of the
government's "space program" reveals that its principal commission is
to prevent ordinary, non-government-approved human beings from ever
leaving the Earth. I don't recall that Koman ever offered a coherent
reason for this, beyond a reluctance we know too well, on the part of
those who believe they own us, to let go of our lives. As Freeman K.
Dyson put it, once we get out there among the asteroids, the IRS will
never find us.
<p>
But there's another reason, one I don't remember if I've written
publicly about (I've mentioned it in private correspondence), but
which I think represents a more compelling motivation to keep all of
humanity penned up on this mudball than mere power. Unless something
very difficult to change, changes nonetheless, we'll be penned up
here forever, and our children, and their children, until the sun
burns out.
<p>
Remember Robert A. Heinlein's _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_, one of
the cornerstones of the libertarian movement? If I'm right, it's also
one of the cornerstones of the government's effort to keep us trapped
here on Earth. The other cornerstone, as it were, is the epoch-making
work of Walter Alvarez, who discovered that the dinosaurs were
probably wiped out by a giant rock falling on this planet from space.
<p>
Alvarez showed us what falling rocks can do.
<p>
Heinlein showed us how to make them fall.
<p>
You and I read books like Heinlein's to inspire us in our struggle
for freedom, but there are dweebs who work for the government who
read books like _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_ to feed the paranoia
of a new parasitic class. Remember those geeky kids you run into at
science fiction conventions, usually unkempt and overweight, wearing
makeshift uniforms and armbands or badges that say "security"?
Eventually, some of them grow up to populate the NSA, NASA, and the
Office of Homeland Security.
<p>
Sieg heil.
<p>
They are the Security Class; they will be the death of the human
race, or at least of its dreams, which amounts to pretty much the
same thing.
<p>
Quite aside from the resources that are about to be squandered taking
our military frustrations out on innocent 10-year-old goatherds and
pregnant women (to the tune, in real wealth, of about one Apollo-style
moon mission a month), and the resulting cripplingly disastrous monetary
inflation that will curse our next generation as surely as night follows
the day, you and I will never be allowed into space because we might
launch a rock from the Moon (or simply nudge a handy meteoroid) and do
to Chicago or Beijing what nineteen murderous fanatics did to the World
Trade Center.
<p>
Now that it's actually happened, the Security Class has all the
"proof" any paranoid requires to believe that you and I can never,
ever be trusted. Earth is forever to become one enormous, high-walled,
unescapable sanitarium, run by its sickest, most pathetic patients.
<p>
And we will never get to the Moon again. We will never get to Mars.
We will never get to Pallas or Ceres or 5023 Eris or to the stars.
<p>
Unless ...
<p>
The place to begin, I think, is at the nation's airports, where the
Security Class was born. I'm going to say again -- until one of the
culprits twitches or burps or screams in protest (I accept that none
of them will ever apologize or admit that I was right) -- that I
tried as hard as I could to warn the 1977 Libertarian Party national
platform committee of the danger to liberty that the then new airport
security measures posed. I was sneered at and shouted down by the
same LPista morons who now approve the insane, immoral bombing of
Afghanistan. A popular war is all the proof anyone needs that
intelligence is not additive.
<p>
Everyone who ardently hopes that he or she -- or maybe just our
species in general -- has some kind of future Out There beyond
Earth's increasingly stuffy atmosphere needs to begin right now to
exert every bit of political pressure possible to accomplish three
tightly-braided objectives.
<p>
First, all 25,000-odd gun laws in this country must be repealed,
nullified, or otherwise disposed of. Second only to this country's
psychotic foreign policy, they are what make America vulnerable to
terrorism.
<p>
Second, as a subset of the first objective, universal reciprocal
Vermont Carry must become the rule in this country. Laws suppressing
the unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right --
of every man, woman, and responsible child to obtain, own, and carry,
openly or concealed, any weapon, rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun,
anything, any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission --
led directly to what happened on September 11. Those savage attacks
could never have occurred without victim disarmament to make them
possible.
<p>
Third, as a subset of the second objective, both the government and
the airlines must be prevented from keeping people from carrying
their weapons with them in flight. Contrary to the opinion of many,
airlines are corporations, and as such, simply an extension of the
government. They have no rights. They do have a positive obligation,
on the other hand, to enforce the Bill of Rights, including the
Second Amendment.
<p>
Ending victim disarmament is only the first step. The abysmal
political events that have followed September 11 are a clear signal
that it's time to dismantle the security state totally and forever.
Every time some idiot suggests that you give up any part of your
liberty for the sake of "safety", remind him that the most famous
advocates of that philosophy ended up being tried and hanged at
Nuremburg.
<p>
All of this will be difficult at first. It will be embarrassing and
quite possibly dangerous. But September 11 is a remarkably vivid
demonstration of the "clear and present danger" victim disarmament
poses. And the alternative is giving up, allowing this poor battered
planet of ours to become a dark, dreary futureless prison from this
day until the end of time. Personally, the prospect of never getting
to see the rings of Saturn from one of its inner moons is too sad to
contemplate.
<p>
And unacceptable.
<p>
I want that future for my child.
<p>
Hell, I still want it for myself.
<p>
What was it you always wanted to see ... Out There?
--
......................................................................
L. NEIL SMITH is the award-winning author of more than 20 novels about
individual liberty and the right to own and carry weapons. Read more
than 80 articles and speeches: buy _LEVER ACTION: ESSAYS ON LIBERTY_,
for $21.95+$6 S&H from <<a href="http://www.webleyweb.com/lneil/leveraction.html>">http://www.webleyweb.com/lneil/leveraction.html></a>
<p>
Order _HOPE_ (with Aaron Zelman), get free stuff and a special offer:
click on: <<<a href="http://www.jpfo.org/hope.htm>">http://www.jpfo.org/hope.htm></a> or read about MAKING A MOVIE
of _The Mitzvah_ the action-adventure thriller by Aaron Zelman and L.
Neil Smith -- and maybe even help get it done! -- click on
<<<a href="http://www.webleyweb.com/lneil/mitzvahmovie.html>">http://www.webleyweb.com/lneil/mitzvahmovie.html></a>
<p>
PRE-ORDER L. Neil Smith's long-awaited _THE AMERICAN ZONE_ plus a new
_trade_ paperback edition of _The Probability Broach_ from Tor Books,
coming in November and December, 2001, respectively, by clicking on:
<<a href="http://www.webleyweb.com/lneil/americanzone.html>">http://www.webleyweb.com/lneil/americanzone.html></a>
<<a href="http://www.webleyweb.com/lneil/lns_tpb-3.html>">http://www.webleyweb.com/lneil/lns_tpb-3.html></a>
<p>
AUTOGRAPHED COPIES of _Lever Action_, _Hope_, _Forge of the Elders_,
_Henry Martyn_, _The Mitzvah_, and a few others are available from the
author. For details, write to him at <<a href="mailto:mailto:lneil@ezlink.com">mailto:lneil@ezlink.com</a>>.
<p>
<hr>
Subscribe to Freematt's Alerts: Pro-Individual Rights Issues
Send a blank message to: <a href="mailto:freematt@coil.com">freematt@coil.com</a> with the words subscribe FA
on the subject line. List is private and moderated (7-30 messages per week)
Matthew Gaylor, (614) 313-5722 ICQ: 106212065 Archived at
<a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fa/">http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fa/</a>
<hr>
<p>
</pre>
<hr>
Visit the <a href="http://www.geocities.com/crazy_atheist">Crazy Atheist Libertarian</a>
<br>
Check out <A HREF="http://www.geocities.com/atheists_united_arizona">Atheists United - Arizona</A>
<br>
Visit my atheist friends at <A HREF="http://www.geocities.com/hashish_arizona">Heritics, Atheists, Skeptics, Humanists, Infidels, and Secular Humanists - Arizona</A>
<br>
<A HREF="http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Cathedral/8650/">Arizona Secular Humanists</A>
<br>
<A HREF="http://www.geocities.com/ash_cooked_books">Paul Putz Cooks the Arizona Secular Humanist's Check Book</A>
<br>
<a href="http://www.geocities.com/government_crimes">News about crimes commited by the police and government</a>
<br>
<a href="http://www.geocities.com/religion_crimes">News about crimes commited by religious leaders and beleivers</a>
<br>
<a href="http://www.geocities.com/news_crazy_government">Some strange but true news about the government</a>
<br>
<a href="http://www.geocities.com/news_crazy_religion">Some strange but real news about religion</a>
<br>
<a href="http://www.geocities.com/news_weird_wacky">Interesting, funny but otherwise useless news!</a>
<br>
<a href="http://www.geocities.com/libertarian_talk">Libertarians talk about freedom</a>
</html>
Visit the Crazy Atheist Libertarian
Check out Atheists United - Arizona
Visit my atheist friends at Heritics, Atheists, Skeptics, Humanists, Infidels, and Secular Humanists - Arizona
Arizona Secular Humanists
Paul Putz Cooks the Arizona Secular Humanist's Check Book
News about crimes commited by the police and government
News about crimes commited by religious leaders and beleivers
Some strange but true news about the government
Some strange but real news about religion
Interesting, funny but otherwise useless news!
Libertarians talk about freedom