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Letter from J. Neil Schulman

Re: "Alongside Night: A Movie Review" by Sean Gangol

Sean,

Thanks so much for your wonderful Alongside Night movie review. I've just sent in a link to IMDb to list it from that site and had already linked it from Facebook.

Just to clean up a few items in the review since it's going to be read long-term:

Paragraph 1: Schulman, not Shulman [ Fixed—Editor ]

Paragraph 4: Elliot, not Danny [ Fixed—Editor ]

Paragraph 5: "Hogan's Alley simulation", not "simulation game" ; "death sticks" not "poison sticks" [ Fixed—Editor ]

Paragraph 8: "2001, which ironically was the date that the story was originally set" Not by me. I never gave a year in the text of the novel. It was always the publishers doing that to sell the book. [ Fixed—Editor ]

Cheers!

J. Neil Schulman
[email protected]

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Letter from Jeff Fullerton

Re: "Necessity is the Plea" by Jeff Fullerton

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham—Wikiquote

The Elder Pitt
Like Son Like Father.
The spirit which now resists your taxation in America, is the same which formerly opposed loans, benevolences, and ship-money, in England: the same spirit which called all England on its legs, and by the Bill of Rights vindicated the English constitution: the same spirit which established the great, fundamental, essential maxim of your liberties, that no subject of England shall be taxed but by his own consent. This glorious spirit of Whiggism animates three millions in America; who prefer poverty with liberty to gilded chains and sordid affluence; and who will die in defence of their rights as men, as freemen.

I learned that almost two decades ago from Charles Adams, Those Dirty Rotten Taxes: Tax Revolts that Built America. The American Revolution started in England. The tried to tax the Brits first and the Johnny Bulls went apeshit - rioting and tarring and feathering the tax collectors. The government pulled back and defaulted to taxing the colonies and the rest was history.

Loosing the colonies was a real blow to the economy and ego of England. The crown realized it had made a big mistake and started to reverse policy which in time- according to Adams- led to a vibrant economic renaissance that peaked in the Victorian Age. Some of the accounts of William Pitt reflect the start of that trend where George III essentially hired the younger Pitt to effect that course change.

Considering the sad state of American Freedom today—in many ways the rule of George the Third might even be considered a Libertarian paradise in comparison to a government that has given new meaning to the term "Swarms of Officers sent to harass us"—above and beyond the worst imaginings of the Founders!

Jeff Fullerton
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Another Letter from J. Neil Schulman

Mirror, Mirror on the web ...

J. Neil Schulman @ Rational Review (jneilschulman.rationalreview.com) is now a mirror site of J. Neil Schulman @ Agorist.com (jneilschulman.agorist.com).

All back articles of this blog are now also archived at the new site.

My gratitude to Thomas L. Knapp for offering me this space for my blog back in 2009 and for assisting me in maintaining it ever since.

J. Neil Schulman
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Letter from A.X. Perez with reply from L. Neil Smith

Re: "Open Carry" by L. Neil Smith (this issue)

Open carry is a baby step on the way to constitutional carry.

About all it really does is guarantee that if you are a CCL holder and reach for your cigarettes or lighter an over zealous cop can't arrest you for improperly '"flashing" your gun if you unintentionally reveal your piece.

A.X. Perez
[email protected]

To which L. Neil Smith replied:

I don't believe in baby steps Albert. I've known too many legislators, county commissioners, and city councilmen.. They're a barrier to freedom. Accept open carry. go back in five years and demand Vermont carry, they'll say, "Whaddya want? we gave you open carry!" That's one reason (and only one) that I oppose permits.

Gradualism is a loser's strategy.

L. Neil Smith
[email protected]

To which A.X. Perez replied:

I agree. Contrariwise, that leaves supporters of Constitutional Carry in a position of being able to show that OC did not lead to mass carnage and get organized to push CC next session. This includes getting rid of certain committee chairpersons who bottled up CC in committee, make sure that certain supporters of CC are not saying dumb things that will cause people to vote against CC.

One of the tricks our opponents have used is gradualism, and they've come within an ace of legally (not actually!!!) stripping the American people of all our weapons. I like beating my enemies at their own game, the trick is to just don't get complacent and stop when the work is half done.

Which brings up one advantage of gradualism, it can keep people committed to the cause and delay the day they become complacent and start letting the other side take away their victory.

Meanwhile, Constitutional Carry is still in Committee, We Texans have about five and a half weeks to get it passed before the legislature goes home for the next two years. Then we get twenty months to build support for CC, dump the legislators who opposed it and blocked CC, and make sure our opponents are in disarray.

Open carry with a license is just enough to piss off the victim disarmers while not enough to satisfy the supporters of gun rights. the next two years will be a test of which side can do a better job of getting its act together in Texas.

To use the Battle of Iwo Jima as an analogy, we've taken the beach, but we still need to plant the flag on Suribachi, and after that finish clearing enemy resistance.

A.X. Perez
[email protected]