Big Head Press


L. Neil Smith's
THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE
Number 620, May 22, 2011

"We understand that we're all living in a police state"


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Barack Obama Wants Your Eyeballs
by L. Neil Smith
[email protected]

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Attribute to The Libertarian Enterprise

With only one or two exceptions, I've yet to meet a politician, bureaucrat, or cop who doesn't hate, loathe, despise, and fear the Internet.

And why shouldn't they? It ought to be clear by now that the perfection of unsupervised and uncensored horizontal communication between every individual in America—or the world, for that matter—means the end of the Old Game and the beginning of a new one that the politicians, bureaucrats, and cop don't know have a clue how to play.

Every day brings news of one new scheme after another to sabotage that communication, or bring it under control by authorities terrified by the very "transparency" they invariably promise during election years, but which the people, at long last, have begin to supply for themselves.

Thanks to that new transparency, only the slowest mouthbreathers and droolers among us can doubt any longer that there is nothing and nobody, anywhere on this planet, that represents a greater threat to the life, liberty, and property of the American people (not to mention everybody else) than the United States government. The problem that this realization represents to conventional power-wielders long since accustomed to running this country, and the world, as if it were their own personal amusement park—and cattle ranch—cannot possibly be overestimated.

Which is why, for example, Hillary Clinton has long argued for some sort of system for certifying writers and their writings in the Internet to insure their suitabilty—to politicians, bureaucrats, and cops. It's why her husband, the vile Waco Willie Clinton wants to impose some form of "rumor control"—for which you may read "truth management".

It's also why various members of Congress have introduced bills practically every week to limit the damage that free communication threatens to do to their prestige, power, and prospects for leaving public "service" millions of dollars richer than they were to begin with.

Bureaucrats, whose corrupt and repulsive practices the Internet exposes on a daily basis, are equally desperate to destroy this new and frightening facet of freedom. And the increasingly clear—and disturbing—view that it affords the once docile American people of police violence renders it unanimous, among those who think they own us.

Nobody hates, loathes, despises, and fears the Internet more than Barack Obama. Along with talk radio and New Media publishers, it has all but destroyed every Marxist hope and dream he ever cherished, disappointed and infuriated his handlers, and taken away his reason to live.

Now he wants to attach some sort of eyeball scanner, presumably to every desktop, laptop, smartphone, and other Internet-capable device to make sure that it's safe—for him; Jackboot Janet Napolitano will do the picking and choosing—to let you talk to anybody else. We'll all be "trusted travelers" on the Information Highway—or we'll be gagged.

All of this insanity has to stop before they manage to rewind the 21st century all the way back to Alexander Graham Bell and Gutenberg. We have to show them what interfering with Internet liberty will cost them. The only way to do that is to write to members of Congress and tell them what you will do if they won't get their hands off the Internet.

Offer them the prospect of diselection. Tell them you will vote for anybody else, the next time around, rather then leave them in office to destroy everything America was supposed to be about. In time, their replacements may prove just as hostile to the Bill of Rights, but they'll be dealt with, too, in this manner and several others.

Tell them that you will finance and support candidates in other constituencies, as well. I'm from Colorado, which is bad enough. But if a politician in Wyoming or New Mexico—or Massachusetts or Maryland—threatens the First Amendment, you will assist their opposition.

It is time for mass recalls, organized by the National Recall Coordinating Committees, an institution-in-potential that has lain dormant since I first thought of it, years ago (as a writer, I have only a limited amount of time and energy), but which is clearly needed now. Once we have a recall coordinator in every state—volunteers should write to me—we'll start appointing them in 3000+ American counties. Be sure to include that in your communications with your representatives.

The Founding Fathers worst, most calamitous mistake is that they neglected (deliberately, one suspects, on the part of the Hamiltonian Federalists) to include a severe penalty clause for politicians who violate any aspect of the Bill of Rights. It's time to correct that omission, by giving the Bill of Rights a penalty clause with real teeth.

It might go something like this:

"Any official, appointed or elected, at any level of government, who attempts, through legislative act or other means, to nullify, evade, or avoid the provisions of the first ten amendments to this Constitution, or particularly of the Thirteenth Amendment, shall be summarily removed from office, and, upon conviction, deprived of all pay and benefits, including pension, and sentenced to imprisonment for life."

Likewise, the clause in the Constitution—Article I, Section VI—that renders politicians immune to prosecution for absolutely any unconstitutional travesty they may introduce, sponsor, or vote for in office, must be repealed, almost certainly along with the traditional secret ballot, so that voters can be sued for having elected these criminals.

Finally—and remember that we are saying this to the politicians—one of the most frequent excuses offered for destroying some aspect of individual liberty that those in authority hate, loathe, despise, and fear, is to claim that it's being done "to protect the children". Of course what they're really trying to protect is their own corrupt backsides, by taking freedom away from you and me now, and, ultimately from the very children whom they obscenely protest that they want to protect.

This is child exploitation as surely as any kiddy porn, and it must be punished. The increasingly unreliable FoxNews has been pushing this as justification for interfering with people's free use of the Internet. One wonders if they're beginning to see the 'Net as a threat to their monopolistic schemes, an intolerable rival for the attentions of those they aspire to convert into a captive audience. If so, then it's time to turn them off by changing channels and writing to their sponsors.

The General Freedom Movement made them.

The General Freedom Movement can break them.


Four-time Prometheus Award-winner L. Neil Smith has been called one of the world's foremost authorities on the ethics of self-defense. He is the author of more than 25 books, including The American Zone, Forge of the Elders, Pallas, The Probability Broach, Hope (with Aaron Zelman), and his collected articles and speeches, Lever Action, all of which may be purchased through his website "The Webley Page" at lneilsmith.org.

Ceres, an exciting sequel to Neil's 1993 Ngu family novel Pallas is currently running as a free weekly serial at www.bigheadpress.com/lneilsmith/?page_id=53

Neil is presently at work on Ares, the middle volume of the epic Ngu Family Cycle, and on Where We Stand: Libertarian Policy in a Time of Crisis with his daughter, Rylla.

See stunning full-color graphic-novelizations of The Probability Broach and Roswell, Texas which feature the art of Scott Bieser at www.BigHeadPress.com Dead-tree versions may be had through the publisher, or at www.Amazon.com where you will also find Phoenix Pick editions of some of Neil's earlier novels. Links to Neil's books at Amazon.com are on his website


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