L. Neil Smith's
THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE
Number 325, June 26, 2005

"We're All Indians, Now"

The Naked Supremes
by L. Neil Smith
lneil@lneilsmith.org

Exclusive to TLE

The last couple of weeks have been illuminating, to say the least. In two separate declarations, the United States Supreme Court has given us all a lesson in civics that nobody should ever be allowed to forget.

In the first, the court held that, no matter what the Constitution says (or doesn't say) to the contrary, the federal government has the legal power to outlaw marijuana—or anything else, for that matter—and that power supercedes any right a state or the people have to disagree.

In the second, it asserted that government has a legitimate power to steal your home or anything else you possess and hand it over to whatever crooks shelled out the biggest contributions the last time around.

I've never seen so many angry messages flying around the Internet before. I understand completely. What the court is saying in the first instance is that an item of discredited and outdated legislative trash—its laws prohibiting certain kinds of drugs—is more important in the scheme of things than sparing those suffering an agonizing death.

Never mind that there is absolutely nothing in the Constitution—which represents the basic "operating system" for the United States government (See Article 1, Section 8, which spells it out in detail)—that gives it any power whatsoever to outlaw drugs or much of anything else.

Never mind that a century of drug laws—and hordes of mad-dog machinegun-toting cops swarming across the countryside enforcing them—have clearly damaged the nation more than any kind of drug ever did.

What's important, of course, is that the authority of the state never be questioned or challenged, and that the paychecks and pensions of the politicians and police never be threatened or diminished in any way. As Abraham Lincoln clearly demonstrated back in the 1860s by slaughtering 620,000 individuals simply to preserve an artificial political construct, no amount of suffering and death (other people's suffering and death, that is) is too much when political power is at stake.

This, of course, is what modern legal pundits mean when they refer to the Constitution as a "living" document—in the same way a loaf of bread can be said to be "living" when it's covered with mildew and maggots.

Which brings us back to the Supreme Court. What it's saying in the second instance is that politicos—any old politicos, including the white-belted plaid-pantsed halfwits and drunks making up the average city council—know better than you do what use to make of your property.

If you worked all your life to build a business or make a home and the Rotarian Socialists decide they want your real estate for their friends at GrabCo, you're screwed. While they're sipping pina coladas on an island cruise at GrabCo's expense, you'll be packing up your possessions and watching thugs bulldoze the home you worked yourself half to death for, right along with your rose trellis, your wife's gazebo, the barbecue pit you built by hand, and your daughter's playhouse.

Any discomfort you feel about this is your own fault. You were supposed to absorb your tax-supported compulsory indoctrination like good boys and girls, then put on a uniform and go beat up and kill helpless Third World peasants to steal their oil for corporations in the government-mercantilist daisy-chain. Provided you survived, you were expected to indenture yourself meekly to the same corporations and let politicians smash every hope or aspiration you ever cherished, take everything you ever gave up the precious, irreplaceable days of your life to earn, suck you dry, and steal whatever was left over for your kids. When your value to the state is over, you will go quietly, without complaint, in the manner most profitable to the government's friends.

None of this nasty cheap weed that grows down by the railroad tracks, now. You must undergo properly-approved chemotherapy and radiation to the full extent of your med insurance company's willingness to pay.

We should be grateful to the Supreme Court for demonstrating once again what government thinks government is really all about. There can be no denying that, at least since neolithic times and the invention of agriculture, governments—every last one of them—have been created for the express purpose of devouring the productive class. Each one always comes equipped with its own set of assertions about what it was "really" created for—of the people, by the people, for the people, blah, blah, blah—but those assertions, all of them, are lies.

On the other hand, if we have learned nothing else over the past two blood-drenched centuries—thanks as much to mistakes made by the Founding Fathers as to their successes, thanks as much to megalomaniac mass-murderers like Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and their present-day successors as to any philosophers of humanitarianism or individual liberty—it's that there is absolutely nothing that any government is or does that can justify the interruption of a single human life, nor even of a single cent or microsecond stolen from the individual.

So what can we do about it?

Doesn't the Supreme Court have the final say?

Isn't the argument over?

Not at all. These won't be the first unbelievably stupid decisions the Menopausal Nine have made. Likely they won't be the last. You're on the Internet (or you wouldn't be reading this, would you?). Google the Dredd Scott case. Or understand that, despite a 13th Amendment, which some historians believe was written as much to prevent military conscription as it was to abolish black chattel slavery, the Supreme Court has ruled on several occasions that the draft is perfectly legal.

Members of the Supreme Court are nominated by the President, at the behest of his owners and handlers. Membership on the Supreme Court is approved (or rejected, as more and more of us are becoming aware) by the Senate, with whom every decent individual has another score to settle anyway. These are the slimewads who have labored to arrange it so that it's almost impossible to dislodge them from office. These are the criminal scum who swept away what was left of the Old Republic by approving the vile USA Patriot Act almost unanimously, without reading it.

Given their general disregard for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights—for example, I'm told that FEMA is informing local police that the Constitution is invalid and no longer the highest law of the land—there isn't a single politician or bureaucrat in office anywhere today who deserves to be in office (and out of jail, for that matter).

I make the usual exception for Congressman Ron Paul, of Texas.

It's time for total disentrenchment, a general policy of never voting for any politician presently in office anywhere. They got us into this bloody mess and they pretty clearly refuse to get us out. Therefore we have to get them out and bar them from holding office again.

We do this by pledging publicly to one another never to vote for any incumbent, and to turn that into a mighty political campaign. The slogan "Vote for No Incumbent" should grace every lapel button and automobile bumper until—well, until somebody thinks of a catchier slogan.

The time to start is now.



ATTENTION AGENTS, PRODUCERS, DIRECTORS, EDITORS, and all interested parties: L. Neil Smith's novel CERES is now available to option as a motion picture project, as a stand-alone work, or as the conclusion to the epic Ngu Family Trilogy. Address serious inquiries to the author at lneil@lneilsmith.org.

Three-time Prometheus Award-winner L. Neil Smith is the author of 24 books, including The American Zone, Forge of the Elders, Pallas, The Probability Broach, Hope (with Aaron Zelman), and his collection of articles and speeches, Lever Action, all of which may be purchased through his website"The Webley Page"at www.lneilsmith.org. Autographed copies may be had from the author at lneil@lneilsmith.org.

Neil is presently working on Ares, another sequel to his 1993 novel Pallas and the middle volume of the epic Ngu Family Trilogy, on a decensored and electronically published version of his 1984 novel, Tom Paine Maru, and on Roswell, Texas, with Rex F. "Baloo" May. The stunning 185-page full-color graphic novel version of The Probability Broach, featuring the art of Scott Bieser and published by BigHead Press www.bigheadpress.com may be had through Laissez-Faire Books or from Amazon.com Amazon.com.


TLE AFFILIATE


Serenity, the FIREFLY movie
Serenity: The Official Movie Website

Help Support TLE by patronizing our advertisers and affiliates.


Next
to advance to the next article
Previous
to return to the previous article
Table of Contents
to return to The Libertarian Enterprise, Number 325, June 26, 2005