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Posted on 09/20/2001 10:14:51 AM PDT by Brian Allen

Why I Am Canceling My Appearance at the Freedom Summit -- By Aaron Zelman

Would you pay to have the Bill of Rights used as toilet paper?

Would you write a check to have every liberty the Bill protects flushed into the sewer?

Would you pony up your credit card for permission to be mangled in the inhuman and inhumane machinery of a corporate police state?

If your answer to these questions is no -- and hell no! and DON'T TREAD ON ME -- then you'll understand exactly why I am canceling my scheduled appearance at the annual Freedom Summit, the weekend of October 6 & 7, 2001.

To reach the Summit in Arizona, I would have to fly from my home in Wisconsin. This I can no longer do -- not with the latest "heightened [and useless] airport security measures" designed to treat me like a criminal, a serf, or both.

I will never set foot on a commercial airliner until the airlines, the airport authorities, the FAA, and all other would-be regulators of air travel respect my rights. [And I'm talking about inborn rights, the ones Americans have bled and died for, not government-granted privileges that can be withdrawn at the whim of some faceless bean counter]

SUBMISSION ISN'T SAFETY

Tragedy and threats of war -- even the most horrible the U.S. has ever seen -- must not be allowed to become an excuse for the murder of liberty.

Arbitrary searches don't halt violence. But as if they missed that entire point on September 11, 2001, the airlines and the regulators they're cozy in bed with want more of the same. Walk through their scanners. Humbly answer their questions, praying that you don't sound nervous or "suspicious." Open your bags. Open your purses. Open your shaving kits or your lipstick tubes. Bend over and open whatever orifice they might wish to inspect once they've determined your willingness to submit.

Disarming me and you doesn't make the nation's skies safe. But -- tragically missing that point, also -- these police- statist cowards now want to make sure that millions of people are deprived even of their razor blades, Girl Scout knives -- and even plastic knives from fast-food joints.

What will they want to take next? Our shoes so that we can't kick them? Our pens so that we can't gouge them? Our teeth so that we can't bite them? Our fingernails so that we can't claw them?

Because believe me, if we comply with their new demands -- if we docilely go along for the sake of convenience and the false promise of "safety" -- they will eventually take everything that makes us free human beings. Corporate airlines and their pals in the bureaucracy and in Congress will take our arms, our rights, our courage, and our fight-back spirit -- and leave us as cowed as good Stalinist subjects, and as defenseless as newborn kittens.

They saw the consequences on September 11 of disarming Americans and teaching them to be passive. And their reaction? To make us even more vulnerable, so we can't protect ourselves, each other, or our nation's freedom.

These Beltway Bozos will make us unsafe on the ground as well as in the air. Remember several years ago, when gangs of criminals in Florida were targeting -- and sometimes killing -- tourists who'd just gotten off airplanes? Why? Because the thugs knew their victims were disarmed. Now, with the new FAA guidelines, airline "security" agents are busily "disarming" travelers of their disposable razors, manicure sets, aerosol deodorants, hairspray, corkscrews, garden shears, sparklers, nail files, pen knives, and in one case reported by the Sacramento Bee, even an empty ammunition box. They want to make sure we can't fight back against anybody with any tool. "Thanks, FAA," say the criminals, as they lie in wait for debarking passengers. "You've just made our job SO much easier."

I say it halts here -- in my life. Furthermore, you and I have a chance to put a total stop to these abuses of our liberty using our economic clout.

STOP COMPLYING NOW.

Don't pull out your checkbook. Don't hand over your credit cards. Don't give the government-regulated airlines your business. They're already in financial trouble, and they've earned it. Let them go bankrupt. Let them pay the price for conditioning us to act like cattle and lulling us into submission with their phony FAA-inspired promises to keep us "safe."

The airlines are private companies, even though they and the federal government are in each others pockets (like so many other big corporations). The jets they fly are privately owned. Airlines have the power to tell the government to go to hell. And if they don't, then we should tell THEM to go to hell.

Give them the Smith & Wesson treatment. Remember what happened when that gun manufacturer crawled under the sheets with Bill Clinton? S&W figured it would make politically correct guns, violate your privacy, compromise your safety, be paid off in lucrative government contracts and get federal protection from lawsuits. Weren't the compromisers surprised when gun owners (who they thought were paper tigers) and dealers (who they thought would put up with anything) turned around and broke S & W?

So let the airlines go under. Help put them under. Some libertarian can buy up their assets for 10 cents on the dollar and run a new airline. Flight attendants on the future LibertyAir can hand out frangible ammunition instead of pretzels. That way nobody will poke holes in a fuselage while poking holes in a hijacker. And no costly, uniformed, authoritarian, fumble- fingered, rent-a-cop "Sky Marshals" will be needed.

To put it bluntly, corporations, regulators, and legislators who don't approve of free, armed Americans flying on airplanes are domestic terrorists.

We already saw the mass bloodshed they helped perpetrate on September 11, after decades of encouraging citizens to comply with evil and idiocy, decades of conditioning us to surrender our rights to anyone who makes a strident enough demand, decades of depriving us of both mental and physical tools for serious resistance.

Why should real Americans be subjected to the herd-think that turns so much of the rest of humanity into mere subjects? Did our ancestors not fight to free us of such subservience? More acts of terror are inevitable. And when they strike, the blood of innocent people will be on the hands not only of the attackers and their controllers, but on the hands of airline presidents, faceless rule writers, "just-following-orders" airline security inspectors, and authoritarians like Charles Schumer, Barbara Boxer, Orrin Hatch, Dianne Feinstein, Peter Jennings, and Dan Rather whose vision of utopia has their friends in charge and the rest of us cowed, tracked, stamped, numbered, disarmed, and helpless to resist.

FIGHT BACK WITH TECHNOLOGY & PRINCIPLES

The mission statement of the Freedom Summit

www.freedom summit.com

says: "Socialism and other coercive centralized planning schemes have failed to improve, and indeed worsened, the human condition. ...[T]he Freedom Summit encourages individuals to promote freedom in non-coercive ways which are best suited to their individual talents." I completely support that mission. But it's more important to support it with actions than with words.

By all means, attend the Freedom Summit if you can. That is, if you can walk there, bike there, drive there, or otherwise arrive without submitting to the police state. The Summit's organizers and speakers deserve your support. But for this and all other activities, rethink your priorities. Don't put yourself at the mercy of airlines, now or ever, until the police statists and human-cattle herders relent.

Hold video conferences, not face-to-face meetings. Get on the Internet if you haven't already and use every electronic opportunity for communication. (You'll get more accurate, less "managed" news, too, while you're at it.)

Drive, don't fly, on your vacations or your visits to family.

If you're a pilot or flight attendant, quit if they won't allow you any meaningful self-defense. Go to work for people who don't want you to be a victim. True, that's easier said than done, but you owe it to yourself, your loved ones, and America.

Everyone: Arm yourselves and don't surrender your right to be armed for anybody's greasy assurances that if you behave meekly enough they'll keep you safe.

Finally -- and soon: Let the airlines crash (financially) as emphatically as they let four of their planes crash on September 11, 2001. Don't help underwrite the bloody terror that inevitably arises from submission and disarmament.

Don't conspire in the contract-murder of the Bill of Rights.

Freely,

Aaron Zelman
Executive Director, Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership

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