Date: 25 Mar 95 17:16:05 -0700
From: [l--e--l] at [lever.ncdl.com] (L. Neil Smith)
To: [N--B--N] at [tomahawk.welch.jhu.edu]
Subject: CYBERCENSORSHIP!
TAKE A BYTE OUT OF CRIME
by L. Neil Smith
The US Senate, showing their true colors once again, are
going through the motions of "considering" whether to censor what
we read and write on the internet. What they're "considering" is
the Exon/Gorton "Communications Decency Act". As usual, the
excuse they're using is our own children; as usual, the target's
supposed to be obscenity.
But the object is political and everybody knows it. American
politicians on both sides of the aisle feel a desperate need
these days to bring all this unsupervised talk between Americans
-- which altered the character of Congress last November and will
soon do the same for the Senate -- to an immediate, screeching
halt.
In a way, you can't blame them. Like the kindly old lady in
the song who got bitten by a snake she took in from the cold, we
shouldn't act surprised; we knew what they were when we elected
them. The Democratic Party -- like socialist institutions the
world over -- is at death's door. The Republicans are in worse
shape: they're going to be the first politicos in history who
are forced to keep their promises because half a billion eyes are
on them and the owners of those eyes are in communication with
each other.
I believe this unconstitutional travesty must be laid at the
feet of those who -- more than anyone else -- are truly to blame
for it, that mealy-mouthed, hypocritical, self-serving, cowardly,
essentially fraudulent organization, the American Civil Liberties
Union.
They're the ones with the hallucination -- which they try to
inflict on as many others as they can -- that the Bill of Rights
is some kind of menu from which you can select Item Number 1 and
maybe 4 and 5, but you should never, never, never touch nasty old
Item Number 2, because you don't know where it's been, it's got
all kinds of fat, sugar, sodium, caffeine, cholesterol, and even
nicotine, and besides, only illiterate rednecks with obese wives
and pimply children would have anything to do with that icky old
thing, yuck.
As a consequence -- because of a longstanding collectivist
political agenda that differs significantly from the goals it
publicly proclaims -- the ACLU promotes the pernicious idea that
individual rights are divisible, which allows anybody who opposes
our rights for one reason or another to attack them singly,
sniping from the bushes and picking off stragglers, while these
"civil" libertarians stand around whining, weeping into their
beards, and wondering loudly how it all happened. In short, like
government itself, the ACLU is a disease masquerading as its own
cure.
As you've probably figured out by now, I'm an _uncivil_
libertarian. I agree with Edgar Friendly, from the movie
_Demolition Man_:
" ... I'm the enemy. Because I like to think. I
like to read. I'm into freedom of speech. Into freedom
of choice. I'm the kind of guy who wants to sit in a
greasy spoon and wonder, 'Gee, should I have the T-bone
steak or the jumbo rack of barbecued ribs with a side
order of gravy fries?' I _want_ high cholesterol. I
want to eat bacon and butter and buckets of cheese,
okay? I want to smoke a Cuban cigar the size of
Cincinnati in the non-smoking section. I want to run
through the streets naked with green jello all over my
body and reading _Playboy_ magazine, why? Because I
suddenly might feel the need to ... "
And if that isn't enough for you, I want to be just like P.J.
O'Rourke when I grow up. (I wonder what he wants to be when _he_
grows up.) Unlike the ACLU, I believe rights are indivisible,
because there's really only one: the right to remain unmolested
by the government or anybody else. When some geek, official or
otherwise, informs me that he's scrutinizing my communications
with others and I could find myself beaten up or killed if I say
the wrong thing, that's molestation -- and my answer is to fight
back.
How? Well, I can assure you that my formula for self-defense
doesn't include donating my time, money, or energy to the ACLU or
any other group that helped to get us in this mess by claiming to
defend certain of our rights it generously condescends to approve
of while fastidiously refusing even to recognize certain others
that make it go goose-bumpy and queasy all over. The world
doesn't need white knights who get the vapors and need to go lie
down.
It does mean doing all I can to help the only political party
in America which has dedicated itself to energetically enforcing
the Bill of Rights -- which just happens to be the highest law of
the land -- by putting those public officials who try to break
it, whether they style themselves "senator" or "constable" or
anything in between, in a concrete box with steel bars on the
windows. And that most especially includes those senators who
believe there ought to be thought police on the information
superhighway.
Slam City, gentlemen.
When that happens, you can count on the ACLU to be there,
ready to defend them. You sure can't count on it for much of
anything else.
-------------------------------
L. Neil Smith is the award-winning author of 19 books including
THE PROBABILITY BROACH, THE CRYSTAL EMPIRE, HENRY MARTYN, THE
LANDO CALRISSIAN ADVENTURES and PALLAS. He is an NRA Life
Member and founder of the Libertarian Second Amendment Caucus.
--- Blue Wave/RA v2.12 [NR]
--
| Internet: [l--e--l] at [lever.ncdl.com]
| Standard disclaimer: The views of this user are strictly their own.
| Northern Colorado Data Link - Ft. Collins, CO (NCDL)
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 1995 23:42:24 -0500 (EST)
From: [P--O--R] at [delphi.com]
To: [N--B--N] at [tomahawk.welch.jhu.edu]
Subject: Re: NOBAN Dominos: One More Thing...
>Regarding our Domino's Boycott:
>
>Another way to make this even more forceful is to be sure to call Domino's
>whenever you're going to have pizza from somewhere ELSE. Remind them,
>EVERY TIME, that you are specifically NOT buying their product because of
>their stance against a person's right to defend themselves. It will
>quickly become a subject of discussion among their staff, and that will
>ripple up to local management.
>
>Besides, it's a local call. Costs you nothing but 60 seconds or so. Call
>early, and call often!
When you make those phone calls or write letters, besides the making
obvious point that if you were going to rob someone you would go after
a Dominos driver, (now that you've got a Corporate promise they'll be
unarmed) - you might mention Gary Keck's findings that people who use
guns for self-protection in robberies are less likely to be injured.
Some of these people may not be bad-guys, they might just be ignorant.
This might be a good chance to educate some folks instead of just pissing
them off. Might not hurt to mention it to their drivers too, since
they're the people at risk.
In case you don't have the info handy, this is the quote...
"People who use guns for self-protection in robberies and assaults are
less likely to have the crime completed against them (in a robbery, this
means losing their property), and, contrary to widespread belief, are
less likely to be injured, compared to either victims who use other forms
of resistance or to victims who do nothing to resist. (Criminals take
gun away from the victim in less than 1% of these incidents.) The
evidence does not support the idea that nonresistance is safer than
resisting with a gun."
Gary Kleck, Ph.D.,
criminologist at the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice,
Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida
========================================================================
Patricia ([p--o--r] at [delphi.com])
"No man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. The strongest reason for
the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last
resort, to protect themselves against the tyranny in government.
-- Thomas Jefferson, June 1776
=======================================================================
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End of NOBAN-D Digest V95 Issue #35
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