Posted on 06/21/2007 10:36:55 AM PDT by tpaine
When You Wish Upon a Star ...
by L. Neil Smith
Was it Frederick Pohl or Alexei Panshin who first observed, "The future isn't what it used to be"? Maybe it was Karl Marx. Maybe it was Groucho Marx.
Whoever said it, that's more or less what science fiction seems to be telling us right now. If you stood in front of your bathroom mirror every morning and repeated a hundred times, "I'm a stupid, worthless pile of excrement and I'm not fit to live," how long would it be -- days, weeks, months -- before you started to believe it? How long would it be -- days, weeks, months -- before it was true?
'How the hell did we get into this mess?'"
The classic case is the Volstead Act of 1919.
For decades before its passage, its fanatical supporters, members of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, the Anti-Saloon League, and the Prohibition Party -- we're talking about the original "Botherhood of Man", here -- people who believed that drinking is a Bad Thing (which, indeed, it may be) and demanded a law to compel those whom they had been unable to persuade, to behave as if they'd been persuaded -- ignored complaints that they were making a mockery of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and of the traditional American respect for privacy and individual liberty.
For more a decade afterward, they ignored the secondary effects of alcohol Prohibition which proved more damaging to civilization than any use of alcohol ever had. Alcohol Prohibition never stopped people from making, selling, or using alcohol, but it is to blame for a great deal that's still wrong with America today.
For starters, it was the beginning of a widespread popular disregard for the law. In 1919, millions of ordinary, decent people who believed that they had a right to drink alcohol became outlaws overnight through no fault of their own -- that is, because of nothing that they did themselves. They responded by drinking more than ever -- many of them for the first time -- simply to assert that right.
Even worse, with the stroke of a pen, a previously acceptable variety of behavior was suddenly lumped together with acts that everybody agreed were wrong -- like murder and kidnapping. For millions of ordinary, decent people, moral lines in America became hopelessly blurred, and have tended to stay that way ever since. In a way that could never have happened if the do-gooders of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, the Prohibition Party, and the Anti-Saloon League hadn't meddled in their private affairs, millions of ordinary, decent people were suddenly, and for the first time, exposed not only to criminal violence, but to legally-sanctioned violence as well -- the axes and submachineguns of Eliot Ness and his thuggish colleagues -- just as if they were criminals themselves.
In 1919, millions of ordinary, decent people believed they had a right to drink alcohol and we all know how that turned out: bathtub gin, Al Capone. The federal agency created to enforce alcohol Prohibition burned 105 people to death -- more than a dozen of them children -- in Waco, Texas just last summer.
Are we capable of learning anything from history? Today, millions of ordinary, decent people believe they have a right -- and a duty -- to own and carry weapons. With 750 million firearms -- three quarters of a billion guns -- of modern design in working condition already in private hands in America today, how do you suppose the Brady Bill and the assault weapons ban are going to work? Forget your worries about the North Koreans -- what American city is the BATF going to nuke first?
As I often say, whereas libertarianism and conservatism are perfectly respectable -- if somewhat divergent -- political philosophies, liberalism is just another form of mental illness.
But before you conservatives in the audience begin feeling too smug, maybe it's time to examine your own mindset. You could be just as guilty of the same kind of self-righteous nonthinking. Liberals are often accused, and correctly, of believing that if a policy doesn't work -- say, banning guns -- the answer is to do it more.
Conservatives believe that if a policy doesn't work -- say, putting more people in jail, per capita, than any other nation in the world -- the answer is to do it harder.
Take the so-called "War on Drugs" ... please. The War on Drugs is nothing more than alcohol Prohibition dressed up for the 1990s. It certainly can't stop people from making, selling, or using drugs, any more than the Volstead Act ever stopped them from making, selling, or using alcohol, but it has succeeded in boosting the price of drugs from mere pennies a pound to hundreds of dollars an ounce -- which anyone who knows anything about economics will immediately recognize enormously increases the incentive to enter the illegal drug market.
It's driven the weakest competition out of the market and created not just a livelihood where there wasn't one before, but a monopoly for the most violent and ruthless criminals in the world today -- and, not incidentally, for millions of bureaucrats, politicians, judges, lawyers, and cops, honest and otherwise. It's corrupted every American institution at every conceivable level.
Worst of all, it's given the bureaucrats and politicians another excuse -- an excuse that appears acceptable to the media and the public -- to raise taxes exponentially and stamp CANCELLED across the Bill of Rights, especially the Second Amendment.
Never mind that what you do to your body is your business or you haven't any rights at all. Never mind that the one and only way to protect your children from drugs is simply the long, hard, grownup task of bringing them up right; let's start by abolishing public schools, which concentrate and distribute self-destructive behavior the way public hospitals concentrate and distribute disease.
Never mind that before the turn of the century, addictive drugs were freely available everywhere and nobody showed much interest in them. Never mind that there wasn't any drug problem -- I repeat, there wasn't any drug problem -- until your fellow voters, the bureaucrats, and the politicians created a drug problem.
From the original classic Star Trek, Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine through Babylon 5, TekWar, Time Trax, and Wild Palms, to the late, unlamented Space Rangers, the message we get from most science fiction is the same: the historically and politically unique civilization that was born at Concord Bridge -- and specifically constituted to prevent travesties like alcohol Prohibition, business Prohibition, drug Prohibition, or weapon Prohibition -- is headed nowhere now but toward an increasingly oppressive police state that has already nullified everything the Founding Fathers, and the Bill of Rights they left us, once stood for.
Unless you do something to stop it.
And wishing will not make it so.
Don’t drive in Britain!
While I wouldn't welcome one, yes - I could imagine it.
Tito was once asked how his partisans, armed primarily with a bunch of old rifles, could possibly fight the Germans, armed with lots of new tanks. Tito said, "When the Germans get out of their new tanks to take a piss, my partisans will shoot them with their old rifles." OK, so that's more of a flip answer to a stupid question than a well thought out strategy, but it illustrates the point that NO insurrection of average folk against an army can - or should - fight toe-to-toe with tanks, fighters, choppers, artillery, etc. Is that how the Iraqis are fighting us?
Here's something else to consider: let's say that a particular city shows a lot of resistance - what's a future tyrant going to do, level the city? Such a use of disproportionate response will backfire in public opinion, even if public opinion is carefully managed (people aren't THAT stupid).
Another thing: an insurgency doesn't have to prevail in battles to be successful. What would happen if truckers refused to go on certain roads because of the risk of having the truck hijacked or destroyed (with them inside)? How much food and fuel would reach the cities? What if gas and oil pipelines were hit?
What if certain key leaders were targeted - or their families? That'd do a lot to confuse or dishearten the enemy, and would make others less likely to want to step into their shoes or follow their orders. If the remaining leaders were greatly angered, then they'd be more likely to make stupid mistakes (most likely of the PR kind, like ordering a city to be leveled).
The point is that with 250 million guns and something like 85 million gun owners, you don't have to have a very large percentage actively fighting a tyrant in order to have a very large effect. What if only 1% fought? OK, now you have 850,000 fighters - the ones who are the most motivated, and who are probably very well equipped and with substantial resources. Quite probably a lot of ex-military would be among them, giving lots of tactical and organizational expertise to the fight. Plus, they'll be spread out all over the country, likely without any centralized leadership that could be easily knocked out or compromised in some way.
The big question mark is whether segments of the police, NG and military would obey orders to fire on fellow citizens IN LARGE-SCALE OPERATIONS. Waco and Ruby Ridge are one thing - what if several states out West told a tyrant to shove it? Is the army going to bomb and rain down arty on cities and towns? Will the army fight a mob of several hundred citizens armed with shotguns and .22s? Maybe yes, maybe no. But there will almost certainly be those in the organized forces who will either sit on their hands or actively participate in the rebellion (and maybe from the inside by passing intelligence). I can't answer those or a whole host of related questions, but it ain't going to be quite so easy. If it was so easy, then the North Vietnamese and VC would've been crushed by our 550,000 soldiers and much of our Air Force. So, too, would the Afghans have collapsed and submitted to the Soviets. It won't be so simple. Especially not when a lot of those targeted by a tyrant will have nothing to lose by fighting, and a lot of self respect, revenge and the possibility of success by fighting.
Good point.
I buy lots of milsurps (more than I need, less than I want). None of them are, technically speaking, "new" guns. Wink, wink. :>)
I actually got away with that one.
For when you're not able to get away with it, have this one up your sleeve: "Yeah, I know that guns cost more than shoes. But do your shoes go up in value? When's the last time you saw me giving my rifles to the Salvation Army or trashing them?
We gots to help each other.
Most of mine are older than I am. Most of those are older than my father.
Alternatively, "My rifles will last me the rest of my life. You'll replace most of your shoes by this time next year."
Have to keep quiet, though, about what it costs to feed the rifles.
Reloading helps, and gives you more accurate and non-corrosive ammo in all cases.
Most of mine are older than I am. Most of those are older than my father.
I have one that's older than my grandfathers, though it shoots a modern, hard-hitting, easily-reloadable cartridge quite accurately.
That would be why I reload. ;-)
And the current primer inventory is sitting at nearly 4000.
The whole "prohibition" mindset can also be applied to the "war on guns", the "war on religion", the "war on free speech", or any other cause de jure the Nanny State masses wanna see restricted, banned, or even just demonized...
I’ve got 9. Planning on another 6....
Looks like we’ll both end up around “15”.
DW:
Any idea where he came up with this number? It suggests 2-3 weapons for every man, woman and child in the country.
The most common number I've seen is roughly a third of that.
I started collecting at 21, and have probably averaged owning close to 40+ guns over the last 40 years.
Figuring 'modern' cartridge arms have been manufactured and imported for 150 years, I'd hesitate to bet that there are less than 3 or 4 hundred million still around.
I’ve got 13 right now with 3 more definites in the near future and who knows what else.
I need a lot more than that.
Every time any state or federal gun law passes I celebrate by introducing 2 new people to the shooting range. If a really big law passes, I buy a really big gun or the equivalent value in ammo. If any of my converts show a real interest and understanding, I give them a ‘gate-way’ gun. For the cost of a cheap .22 rifle and a few bricks of ammo, many a fence sitter has come to internalize what the 2nd amendment and freedom to be self reliant means to them.
Every time a gun control law passes we get better guns and more diversity in the market place. But if confiscation starts, forget fighting the jackboots directly. Just discard a cheap home-made gun in some enviro-socialist’s sand box and call the appropriate authorities. There won’t be enough gun narcs to keep up with all the latent terrorists that will be turned in to the snitch lines. If it’s guns they want, make sure the guns they get come packaged with an unsuspecting policy supporter to tie up the system. I’m sure we all know someone who is in need of poetic justice.
Thats a keeper!
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