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And close with love the way you do ... "I just had the pleasure of reading your Aug 16 column" (on the
harassment of Miami's Joe's Stone Crab by the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission.) "However, without providing/allowing a general public response
to the people that cause these things to happen, you're nothing more that a
noisy gong; you're preaching to the choir; flapping in the wind (like the
rest of us).
"Would it be to much to ask for you to include a statement at the end of
each of your articles that reads something like:
" 'If this bothers you, write to: Appropriate Person, Street Address,
Somewhere, USA, and express your feelings (politely)'?"
I replied:
Although I will occasionally list an address to send funds, or ordering
info for a book, or contacts for a relevant and admirably principled
organization (The Fully-Informed Jury Association, Jews for the
Preservation of Firearms Ownership, Forfeiture Endangers American Rights,
the Separation of School and State Alliance), I purposely do NOT do what
you suggest.
Your implication is that if a reader writes to some government
administrator, or his or her own congressman, it will do some good.
Let's stipulate that if they receive a thousand such letters they might
"pull" or delay passage of some measure until the heat dies down ... though
it'll be back under a different name, never fear.
But outweighing that, at least two BAD things can happen: 1) The letter
writer gets added to a list of "anti-government extremists," which will
bring a visit from two FBI "suits," or an IRS audit, or the first ATF
inspection in years of your FFL license.
This is not mere paranoia. Red Hafter, a champion Olympic pistol marksman
from Arizona , recently wrote to his senator, John McCain, to protest the
assault weapons ban. McCain promptly forwarded that letter to the BATF --
proudly informing the 73-year-old Mr. Hafter he had thus "taken care of the
matter." Within weeks, agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and
Firearms visited Red for the first audit in decades of his Federal Firearms
License. (Yes, those guilty of record-keeping errors have actually been
JAILED.)
2) But the even worse thing likely to happen, is that the letter-writer's
anger is thus ASSUAGED. He or feel she has "done something about that
problem." With the anger thus vented, he washes his hands of the matter.
The problem is that we have gone far past the point when letters will do
any good. You are merely providing the phrases they will test out in their
"focus groups" and feed back to you. All that will do any good now (short
of violent revolution or secession, which I do not yet endorse) is a much
more active and widespread application of the principles of civil
disobedience or resistance. For that to happen, people's anger and outrage
have to BUILD ... not be vented in fruitless mouthings, about as effective
as kicking your stalled car.
So, please don't write any letters. Instead, GET MAD. And then figure out
some way -- hopefully a way that will not put you, your family, or even the
evil bureaucrats and tyrants themselves in the way of any real bodily harm
(yet) -- to disobey, to monkey-wrench, to flout, to RESIST.
This can be as "minor" as figuring out ways to store your family's wealth
in gold (untracked and unsupervised by any government agency), rather than
subsidizing and patronizing the regulated banks which have become
government-agencies-by-extension, with accounts which the government can
track or seize at will. (Thumbprint required for check-cashing? Consider
marketing a flesh-colored plastic glue-on for people's thumbs, carefully
scribed with the authentic thumbprint of John Dillinger. As long as there's
no criminal intent ...)
The government tries to ban firearms? Make it your personal mission to
stockpile 10 times more firearms -- and 100 times more ammo -- than your
granddad ever did, and to teach five more citizens how to pick out and
shoot a militia-style "assault rifle."
The government wants to stack juries with pro-government stooges? Instead
of trying to get out of jury duty, shuffle down there in a bowling shirt,
play dumb, and get empaneled. If you're convinced the accused is actually a
violent predator who hurt a real, human victim, then of course your must
throw the book at the SOB. But if he's merely being railroaded for standing
up on principle against some bureaucratic edict, doing things that wouldn't
even have BEEN against the law 90 years ago, then argue to acquit, or (at
the very least) HANG THAT JURY, as is your right ... and the defendant's.
For a much longer list of suggestions, I suggest Claire Wolfe's "101
Things to Do Till the Revolution," from Loompanics Unlimited, P.O. Box
1197, Port Townsend, Wash. 98368, at $20.90 postpaid, volume discounts
available (loompseditor@olympus.net.)
But "polite letters"? Oh, please.
It is an honor to host this man's work, and we
encourage you to visit his site and read his book. To read other articles by Vin on this site, click here. You can also see his full archives at these two sites: |
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