The internet is an interesting thing. You can be
communicating
with somebody across town today, somebody in another state tonight,
and somebody on the other side of the world tomorrow, all with
equal
ease. In fact if their e-mail address doesn't show it, and you
don't
know how to read that routing gobbledygook at the top of the message,
you can be doing one of those three things and not know which
one it
is.
I guess that fits somebody's definition of a Global Village.
The Village appears to be Global in more ways than just that.
People from various places around the world (the latest one was
an
Australian) have pointed out to me that what's going on politically
in
the United States -- the seemingly inexorable Nazification of
a
once-free civilization -- is going on practically everywhere else,
as
well.
Sadly, it's true. Almost every day the news is filled with clear
indications that -- to any extent that they weren't always that
way --
governments everywhere around the world have suddenly gotten too
big
for their breeches. Every day you read about the choke-chain being
tightened a little more around everybody's throat. Fingerprint
records
failed to violate the fundamental human right to privacy and anonymity
sufficiently, so now they're planning to start taking DNA samples
at
birth.
More and more spy cameras are going up everywhere every time
you
turn around (Not-So-Great-Britain holds first place for that variety
of lunacy just now) and facial recognition software gets better
and
better. Which is to say, from a freedom-friendly viewpoint, worse
and
worse.
For a long time now we've all had to obtain -- and often pay
dearly for -- all sorts of permission from the government to do
all
the ordinary things that living, and improving our lives, requires,
from owning and driving a car, to building and maintaining a house,
to
keeping housepets. In Singapore, it's illegal to be caught chewing
gum. A driver's license, once a simple certificate of proficiency,
now
threatens to become -- as our credit cards and telephone records
and
Internet activity have -- a vile leash, an observer of everywhere
we
go, everything we do, approved or not, and a potential witness
against
us.
Meanwhile, politicians and bureaucrats positively ache to tattoo
our kids as if they were already the concentration camp inmates
the
government plans for them to be someday. Or they want to inject
radio
transponders under their skin -- and how long will it be before
such a
device can deliver a healthy shock if you won't do whatever's
required
of you? Much that we buy today has been similarly lowjacked; virtually
all of our personal electronics have been redesigned to government
specifications to betray us whenever the government wishes to
track us
down.
Everybody I discuss this situation with dislikes it intensely
(I
don't know that many "useful idiots") but nobody appears
to know what
to do about it. I do know that the only hope we have is the Internet,
but so do the badguys. New York's Commissioner of Police has reported
that the InterNet is "the new Afghanistan" where Muslims
are perfectly
free to radicalize American youth and turn them into terrorists.
The
problem, he says, is that you can't actually do anything about
such
communication because, until a certain point, nobody has committed
a
crime.
Apparently he wants to arrest people before they commit a
crime.
Wouldn't it be infinitely better to teach -- and behave consistently
with -- a set of values that our kids couldn't be talked out of
by
anybody?
I'm just old enough so that I've heard every bit of this garbage
before -- only the last time, it was the Communists who were going
to
kill us and cook us and eat us. Of course the real threat to America
is the Commissioner, himself -- and all of the other vicious parasites
like him who depend on human cowardice and stupidity to write
their
paychecks -- not his imaginary youth-radicalizing digital Muslims.
Listening to this man -- giving him any credence or credibility
at all
-- is how the light of civilization starts to go out, all over
the
world.
I have been thinking about politics -- specifically, the politics
of individual liberty -- for almost half a century and after all
that
thinking, I am convinced of one thing. None of this would be happening
if the Founding Fathers hadn't made one simple, fundamental, possibly
fatal mistake: not writing a stringent penalty clause into the
Bill of
Rights.
Forget "stringent" -- how about "draconian"?
If, for example, the first time Abraham Lincoln had attempted
to
suspend the right of habeas corpus, or initiated an income tax
or
military conscription, officers from the Department of Bill of
Rights
Enforcement had frog-marched him out of his office in belly-chains,
manacles, and leg-irons, our subsequent history would have been
very
different.
You can make up similar scenarios about politicians like Teddy
Roosevelt, who hated the Constitution because it got in the way
of his Progressive ambitions, or Woodrow Wilson, another Progressive,
who used World War I as an excuse to rape the Bill of Rights,
or Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who did much the same and more,
including outlawing the possession of gold, or Harry Truman, who
killed a quarter of a million individuals with a single signature
and used the army to break strikes, or Richard Nixon, who believed
that firearms in private hands are "an abomination",
or Lyndon Baines Johnson, who persecuted his critics untill they
killed themselves, and had people's mail opened by the post Office,
or Jimmy Carter, either of the George Bushes, Bill Clinton, or
any of the other "great men" in our bloodsoaked history
who've based their "legacies" on using the Bill of Rights
for toilet paper.
If violating any of the first ten amendments to the Constitution
-- even a little -- meant they'd automatically be humiliated and
thrown into jail, they'd probably never have run for office in
the
first place, and history would not have been the same at all.
Happily, I do know how to get from here to there in reasonably
short order, and that's by organizing an International Bill Of
Rights
Union.
There is plenty for such an organization to do. To begin with,
without without anybody's help, you could go the the website of
Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership. At www.jpfo.org/filegen-a-m/bor.htm,
you'll find the Bill of Rights translated into sixteen
languages so far. If you have an Aunt Bogdana, she might enjoy
reading the Bill of Rights translated into her native Romanian.
Otherhandwise, if she's your Grandma Beliita, she might like to
translate it for JPFO into Chechen.
You'll also find an almost unknown Preamble to the Bill of Rights,
explaining that they were written and ratified because: "
... a number
of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution,
expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse
of
its powers ... " How strange: I never saw that in public
school, did
you?
Members of an International Bill of Rights Union could seek
the
adoption and reaffirmation, of the Bill of Rights at the state,
county,
and municipal levels -- or at the equivalent levels in other member
countries. The last time I counted, there were something like
3088
counties in this country, so the undertaking could go on for many
decades, during which everybody will come to a new appreciation
of the
document.
Activists within an International Bill Of Rights Union might
even
try persuading corporations -- or any private organization (fraternal
groups, for example, whose members routinely start their meetings
by
reciting the Pledge of Allegiance) -- to adopt and affirm the
Bill of
Rights.
Another worthy project would be a revision of the formal oath
that
politicians are supposed to take before assuming office, to mention
--
and perhaps even to read aloud -- each article of the Bill of
Rights
separately. Imagine the hilarity when Hillary or Chucky or Nancy
or
Chris choke over the phrase "the right of the People to keep
and bear
arms."
The ultimate goal, however, of any International Bill Of Rights
Union must always be the correction of the Founding Fathers' two
century old mistake by writing and ratifying an effectively stringent
penalty clause for politicians who violate the highest law of
the
land.
An International Bill Of Rights Union should be based upon certain
principles. The first is that the Bill of Rights means what it
says,
and not what some lawyer, judge, or socialist academic can twist
it
into.
Judging by what we know of the Founding Fathers, the Bill of
Rights was clearly meant to be read and understood by everybody,
not
just by those same lawyers, judges, and socialist academics who
almost
invariably claim that it doesn't mean what we all know perfectly
well
it does.
The Bill of Rights must be subjected to no "interpretation"
of any
kind except in terms of the original intent of the Founding Fathers,
a group of individuals had just barely defeated the most overbearing,
ruthless, and dangerously violent government in the history of
the
world. Even the British people were having trouble with it at
the
time.
The Bill of Rights represents an historic bargain between those
who advocated a strong central government -- and whose political
ideas
and wishes are expressed in the main body of the Constitution
-- and
those who did not. Without the Bill of Rights, the Constitution
ceases
to be valid; any legitimate authority that derives from it ceases
to
exist.
Importantly, there has never been any legal provision for setting
aside the Bill of Rights in an "emergency". To do so
is a violation of
a politician's oath of office and a crime. Nor is it up to government
to regulate or limit the Bill of Rights the way that former Attorney
General John Ashcroft claimed could be done with regard to the
Second
Amendment.
Ashcroft, you may recall, briefly made a big hero of himself
(to
those who don't think clearly or have a habit of grasping at straws)
when he announced that the Second Amendment does. indeed, protect
an
individual right -- which the government may regulate whenever
it
feels an itch. That's the same protection, I'm given to understand,
provided by the Canadian constitution, which says, yes, Canadians
have
rights -- subject to cancellation at their government's slightest
whim.
Of course a regulated "right" isn't any kind of a
right at all; a
right is something that's inherent simply in your existence as
a human
being. A regulated "right" is nothing more than a government-granted
privilege you usually have to beg for, and may be taken back at
any
time.
That, believe it or not, is the sole contention in the celebrated
Parker case, in which a lower court has ruled that Washington
D.C.'s
handgun ban is an unconstitutional violation of an individual
right
protected by the Second Amendment. Now the enemies of liberty
-- many
of them afraid, no doubt, that laws like New York's Sullivan Act
will
be next -- are headed for the Supreme Court where they hope to
see the
right to own and carry weapons converted back into a collectivized
privilege.
Another point: although many of us may have strong feelings
with
regard to certain issues, an International Bill of Rights Union
cannot
-- must not -- entangle itself with unrelated subjects (especially
those that have traditionally divided the general freedom movement)
like abortion, immigration, or global warming. It must always
remain
on-topic: the adoption, affirmation, and enforcement of the Bill
of
Rights.
But why, I now pretend to hear you asking, should the inhabitants
of other countries be interested in adopting the American Bill
of
Rights?
In the first place, most of them are probably even more unhappy
with today's newly-fascistic politics than Americans are, and
more
interested in limiting the power of their politicians. Although
we
often think of America as a young country, our 218-year-old Bill
of
Rights is the political basis for one of the world's oldest continuous
governments.
Individuals in other countries who understand economics know
that
the Bill of Rights is the source -- or at least a manifestation
of the
source -- of America's historically unprecedented prosperity and
progress.
Properly respected, the Bill of Rights is a potential deterrent
both to runaway authority and runaway democracy. It's also a far
more
desirable alternative to -- possibly a preventive or a remedy
for --
the involuntary democratization and forcible "regime changes"
that are
all the rage today. Thus, from a non-American viewpoint, it could
help
to get the United States back under control again, which, in their
terms, means not dropping bombs on them or starving their children
to
death.
Who needs a corrupt, freedom-hating United Nations cluttering
the
political landscape? Who needs a European Union or a North American
Union? What the world truly needs is an International Bill of
Rights
Union?
Some closing thoughts:
The Founding Fathers didn't say that your church or your religion
must be recognized by the government before it's real; the Founding
Fathers didn't mean for some kinds of communications to be permissable
and others to be banned; the Founding Fathers didn't say you need
a
permit to get together, and then only under police supervision.
They
said that we all have a right to worship, speak, and assemble
as we
will.
Period.
The Founding Fathers didn't say that the people have a right
to
keep and bear arms -- subject to regulation by the government
-- the
Founding Fathers, pure and simple, wanted us to own and carry
weapons.
"Take a gun with you on every walk," was the way Thomas
Jefferson put
it.
Period.
The Founding Fathers didn't say minions of the government could
search us if they were sufficiently sneaky about it, or that they
could search us if they didn't touch us, or that they could search
us
if we wanted to travel freely by whatever means. The Founding
Fathers,
pure and simple, didn't want the government to know what's in
our
pockets.
Period.
This essay has focused mostly on the United States, but we should
consider, for a moment, the effect a successful International
Bill of
Rights Union might have in other places, too. Would Vladimir Putin
or
the Russian Mafia still run Russia? Would Castro's blabbermouth
hand-
puppet, Hugo Chavez retain power in Venezuela? And what about
the
heirs of Mao Tse Tung? The question need only be asked in order
to be
answered.
And, given the fact that every major mass-atrocity in recent
history has been preceded by a period of weapons confiscation
-- as
opposed to the Second Amendment's mandate for a universally armed
populace -- it could mean there will never be another genocide,
ever
again
If that seems like a good idea, and you'd like to do something
to
make it happen, you might start by sending this essay to everybody
you
know. We have a lot of work ahead of us, getting from here to
there,
and we're unlikely to see the end of it, ourselves, although if
we do
our job right, our children or grandchildren will. And in a society
built on the Bill of Rights, a society of peace, prosperity, progress,
and above all, on freedom, maybe we'll still be around to accept
their
thanks.
Or maybe we'll have taken off for the stars.
=============================================================
Four-time Prometheus Award-winner L. Neil Smith has been
writing about guns and gun ownership for more than 30 years.
He is the author of 27 books, the most widely-published and
prolific libertarian novelist in the world, and is considered
an expert on the ethics of self-defense. His writings may be
seen on the following sites:
The Webley Page: http://www.lneilsmith.org
The Libertarian Enterprise: http://www.ncc-1776.org
The Probability Broach: The Graphic Novel, Roswell,
Texas, and TimePeeper (August 2007): http://www.bigheadpress.com
LNS at Random (blog): http://www.bigheadpress.com/lneilsmith/
LNS at JPFO: http://www.jpfo.org/filegen-a-m/lneilsmith.htm
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