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Why I Am Canceling My
Appearance by Aaron Zelman September 19, 2001 Jews For The
Preservation of Firearms Ownership, Inc. Would you pay to have the Bill of Rights used
as toilet paper? Would you write a check to have every liberty the Bill protects
flushed into the sewer? Would you pony up your credit card for permission to be
mangled in the inhuman and inhumane machinery of a corporate police state?
If your answer to these questions is no -- and
hell no! and DON'T TREAD ON ME -- then you'll understand exactly why I am
canceling my scheduled appearance at the annual Freedom Summit, the weekend of
October 6 & 7, 2001.
To reach the Summit in Arizona, I would have to
fly from my home in Wisconsin. This I can no longer do -- not with the latest
"heightened [and useless] airport security measures" designed to treat
me like a criminal, a serf, or both.
I will never set foot on a commercial airliner
until the airlines, the airport authorities, the FAA, and all other would-be
regulators of air travel respect my rights. (And I'm talking about inborn
rights, the ones Americans have bled and died for, not government-granted
privileges that can be withdrawn at the whim of some faceless bean counter.)
SUBMISSION ISN'T SAFETY.
Tragedy and threats of war -- even the most
horrible the U.S. has ever seen -- must not be allowed to become an excuse for
the murder of liberty.
Arbitrary searches don't halt violence. But as
if they missed that entire point on September 11, 2001, the airlines and the
regulators they're cozy in bed with want more of the same. Walk through their
scanners. Humbly answer their questions, praying that you don't sound nervous or
"suspicious." Open your bags. Open your purses. Open your shaving kits
or your lipstick tubes. Bend over and open whatever orifice they might wish to
inspect once they've determined your willingness to submit.
Disarming me and you doesn't make the nation's
skies safe. But -- tragically missing that point, also -- these police-statist
cowards now want to make sure that millions of people are deprived even of their
razor blades, Girl Scout knives -- and even plastic knives from fast-food
joints.
What will they want to take next? Our shoes so
that we can't kick them? Our pens so that we can't gouge them? Our teeth so that
we can't bite them? Our fingernails so that we can't claw them?
Because believe me, if we comply with their new
demands -- if we docilely go along for the sake of convenience and the false
promise of "safety" -- they will eventually take everything that makes
us free human beings. Corporate airlines and their pals in the bureaucracy and
in Congress will take our arms, our rights, our courage, and our fight-back
spirit -- and leave us as cowed as good Stalinist subjects, and as defenseless
as newborn kittens.
They saw the consequences on September 11 of
disarming Americans and teaching them to be passive. And their reaction? To make
us even more vulnerable, so we can't protect ourselves, each other, or our
nation's freedom.
These Beltway Bozos will make us unsafe on the
ground as well as in the air. Remember several years ago, when gangs of
criminals in Florida were targeting -- and sometimes killing -- tourists who'd
just gotten off airplanes? Why? Because the thugs knew their victims were
disarmed. Now, with the new FAA guidelines, airline "security" agents
are busily "disarming" travelers of their disposable razors, manicure
sets, aerosol deodorants, hairspray, corkscrews, garden shears, sparklers, nail
files, pen knives, and in one case reported by the Sacramento Bee, even an empty
ammunition box. They want to make sure we can't fight back against anybody with
any tool. "Thanks, FAA," say the criminals, as they lie in wait for
debarking passengers. "You've just made our job SO much easier."
I say it halts here -- in my life. Furthermore,
you and I have a chance to put a total stop to these abuses of our liberty using
our economic clout.
STOP COMPLYING NOW.
Don't pull out your checkbook. Don't hand over
your credit cards. Don't give the government-regulated airlines your business.
They're already in financial trouble, and they've earned it. Let them go
bankrupt. Let them pay the price for conditioning us to act like cattle and
lulling us into submission with their phony FAA-inspired promises to keep us
"safe."
The airlines are private companies, even though
they and the federal government are in each others' pockets (like so many other
big corporations). The jets they fly are privately owned. Airlines have the
power to tell the government to go to hell. And if they don't, then we should
tell THEM to go to hell.
Give them the Smith & Wesson treatment.
Remember what happened when that gun manufacturer crawled under the sheets with
Bill Clinton? S&W figured it would make politically correct guns, violate
your privacy, compromise your safety, be paid off in lucrative government
contracts and get federal protection from lawsuits. Weren't the compromisers
surprised when gun owners (who they thought were paper tigers) and dealers (who
they thought would put up with anything) turned around and broke S & W?
So let the airlines go under. Help put them
under. Some libertarian can buy up their assets for 10 cents on the dollar and
run a new airline. Flight attendants on the future LibertyAir can hand out
frangible ammunition instead of pretzels. That way nobody will poke holes in a
fuselage while poking holes in a hijacker. And no costly, uniformed,
authoritarian, fumble-fingered, rent-a-cop "Sky Marshals" will be
needed.
To put it bluntly, corporations, regulators,
and legislators who don't approve of free, armed Americans flying on airplanes
are domestic terrorists. We already saw the mass bloodshed they helped
perpetrate on September 11, after decades of encouraging citizens to comply with
evil and idiocy, decades of conditioning us to surrender our rights to anyone
who makes a strident enough demand, decades of depriving us of both mental and
physical tools for serious resistance.
Why should real Americans be subjected to the
herd-think that turns so much of the rest of humanity into mere subjects? Did
our ancestors not fight to free us of such subservience?
More acts of terror are inevitable. And when
they strike, the blood of innocent people will be on the hands not only of the
attackers and their controllers, but on the hands of airline presidents,
faceless rule writers, "just-following-orders" airline security
inspectors, and authoritarians like Charles Schumer, Barbara Boxer, Orrin Hatch,
Dianne Feinstein, Peter Jennings, and Dan Rather whose vision of utopia has
their friends in charge and the rest of us cowed, tracked, stamped, numbered,
disarmed, and helpless to resist.
FIGHT BACK WITH TECHNOLOGY & PRINCIPLES.
The mission statement of the Freedom Summit (www.freedomsummit.com)
says:
"Socialism and other coercive
centralized planning schemes have failed to improve, and indeed worsened, the
human condition. ...[T]he Freedom Summit encourages individuals to promote
freedom in non-coercive ways which are best suited to their individual
talents." I completely support that mission. But it's
more important to support it with actions than with words. By all means, attend the Freedom Summit if you
can. That is, if you can walk there, bike there, drive there, or otherwise
arrive without submitting to the police state. The Summit's organizers and
speakers deserve your support. But for this and all other activities, rethink
your priorities. Don't put yourself at the mercy of airlines, now or ever, until
the police statists and human-cattle herders relent.
Hold video conferences, not face-to-face
meetings. Get on the Internet if you haven't already and use every electronic
opportunity for communication. (You'll get more accurate, less
"managed" news, too, while you're at it.)
Drive, don't fly, on your vacations or your
visits to family.
If you're a pilot or flight attendant, quit if
they won't allow you any meaningful self-defense. Go to work for people who
don't want you to be a victim. True, that's easier said than done, but you owe
it to yourself, your loved ones, and America.
Everyone: Arm yourselves and don't surrender
your right to be armed for anybody's greasy assurances that if you behave meekly
enough they'll keep you safe.
Finally -- and soon: Let the airlines crash
(financially) as emphatically as they let four of their planes crash on
September 11, 2001. Don't help underwrite the bloody terror that inevitably
arises from submission and disarmament.
Don't conspire in the contract-murder of the
Bill of Rights.
Freely,
Aaron Zelman Related Reading http://www.KeepAndBearArms.com/AirRKBA
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