3.  NEIL, YOU WERE RIGHT
    by Angel Shamaya 
    Exclusive to TLE

    TO: L. Neil Smith

    FROM: Angel Shamaya
    Founder/Executive Director
    KeepAndBearArms.com
    Director{at}KeepAndBearArms.com

    RE: Neil, You Were Right

    July 3, 2002

Neil,

Back during the 2000 presidential selections, I explained to you and
several other libertarian friends my reasons for supporting Texas Governor
Bush for the presidency. I explained that while I'd only ever voted
libertarian all of my adult life, I'd be holding my nose and punching
ballot in his name -- because I knew he'd blow it, and I believed that his
failure to enforce our rights as a Republicrat would best assure a third
party success in 2004 or 2008. Somehow, I convinced myself that only a
Republican victory and the sure-to-follow failure as a Constitutional
leader would produce significant Third Party Momentum.

I was wrong. Way wrong to the point of "what the hell was I
thinking" wrong. And not only did I settle my vote for the allegedly
lesser evil, I involved our organization in the post-election fury over
lost military votes and other Bush-getters, as well.

So I thought I'd tell you what I learned and vow that I will never -- ever,
in my entire life -- vote for a Republican presidential candidate again. If
a governor who signed a concealed carry bill in his state can avoid true
defense of our rights and scat all over our Founders' graves while swaying
hordes of people with mere lipservice to Liberty and redoubled efforts to
kill her, the national party and its governing "philosophies" are
so utterly subverted they're beyond salvage.

And a sad minority even notices, when it comes right down to it -- happy
idiots believe what the talking head tells them, as long as the beer's not
too warm.

One need only look at W's record -- and the record of his administration --
to see what these police statists are made of:

* "USA PATRIOT" Act, read by few, hawked by many, pimped by the
"saviour" AG, and signed by W

* Homelanderschtadt Securidad, complete with "reorganization" to
the tune of billions, with Liberty absolutely in the 10-ring

* Pressure to deny "Supreme Court" hearing of two valid Second
Amendment cases that could've dramatically helped right this country's
crime problems and its identity as "land of the free"

* Refusal to allow pilots to carry firearms overshadowed by willingness to
deploy F-16's to kill everyone on board and whoever the wreckage destroys
when the pilot's axe fails to help stave off multiple determined attackers

* The "It's Gonna Last for a Really Really Really Long Time" war
on (and billionically increased funding for the war on) Everything, spiced
with tribunals that banish Constitutional rights for citizens who allegedly
live under a Constitution

There's more, a whole lot more, and more is on the way.

You said in late October 2000 that our rights would probably fare better
under Gore than Bush -- that it might just be a good thing for all of us if
Gore were to win. You may have been right about that, too -- probably so.

Under a Gore presidency, I can't help but wonder if the misnamed "USA
PATRIOT" Act would've been squashed -- or at least
read, and some of its worst tenets pared down. Instead,
people who challenged that Dark Horse as it neared signing were labelled as
unpatriotic -- as if questioning the dissolution of centuries of rights
protection can be anything but good -- and Republicans toed the line in
lockstep with their leadership like good little spineless ass kissers. The
few that disagreed gave a valiant effort -- right up until the next
paycheck rolled in, in most cases -- and it's back to business as usual
with only small attempts to address the issues that would've been center
stage, from "our" camp, had a Democrat tried to pull that sh*t.

Under a Gore presidency, we'd have had a Reno-type Attorney General --
probably not someone who'd pass out on stage while muttering about how sad
it was that she "had to" torch little children -- but it
certainly wouldn't have been John Ashban. (The AG's new nickname comes from
his commitment during congressional hearings to enforce the "assault
weapons" ban King George III doesn't have the intestinal fortitude to
let sunset.) While a Gore-appointed Attorney General would probably have,
like Ashban, insisted that the "Supreme Court" ignore its duty
recently to hear the valid Second Amendment cases in both Emerson and
Haney, he or she would've taken very hot heat from at least 
some of the Republicans, and certainly the NRA, for so doing.
Instead, we've got NRA telling us SCOTUS' refusal to hear either of these
worthy cases is "a victory" -- overt Bravo Sierra to anyone with
half a thinking cap, but eaten up like cotton candy from the masses of
wishful-thinking dolts who seemingly cannot bear to face the results of
this "win" -- and establishment Republicans pretending the truck
didn't run over grandma's gun collection, or banking on the fact that it
did, knowing their future advisor-choreographed wailing about it will help
win re-elections.

If Gore had become America's 2000 Dictator, "Homeland Security"
wouldn't have the nazilike momentum for liberty's destruction that it has
today -- if for no other reason than he'd be spending so much time
inventing teleportation routers to interface with his internet. Gore's
attempt to create some of Bush's most infringing, privacy-invasive,
liberty-sapping "security measures" would've rallied the troops.
Instead, the "Right" is mostly obediently going along to get
along while "our side" pays W homage and pretends his nakedness
is how it's supposed to be. What little anger we hear from the
"radical" Republicans is tame compared to the bald, galling truth
-- and many on the Left are making lots of sense these days when it comes
to the things the Bush administration has done to walk all over their
favored rights, assuring that their socialistic strength will grow as a
result. And that doesn't even address the things that are being handed to
the Left as consolation prizes for Bush having won an election with a
margin smaller than the number of people you'll find in the bathrooms
during the 7th inning stretch of a Major League baseball game -- the Bush
Democrat-Socialist Entitlement Highway opened for
business even before he was declared the victor in the election Liberty lost.

Then there's the coming vote on whether or not to let the illegal,
unConstitutional so-called "Assault Weapons" ban sunset. Gore
wouldn't have let it sunset, but his failure to do so would've brought
gunowners out in numbers, to many worthy ends. Instead, we've got president
Push -- EPC, for Evilly Politically Correct -- to not let it sunset, and a
mostly quiet hayride while and after he renews it. The NRA intends to urge
"The Administration" and their sometimes-rented congressmen to
let the AW ban sunset because "it hasn't been effective in fighting
crime" -- as if crime has any damned thing at all to do with the
Second Amendment -- and when their president Boy shuts them down hard on
the issue, they'll still spend millions of dollars in his failed
re-election bid and guilt their gullible flock to fork over more squandered
federal reserve notes "for freedom".

W's re-election will fail in 2004 -- but he won't lose
to a Libertarian, and that's why I have to say I was wrong and you were
right. Where I once thought Bush's destined insolence toward the liberties
to which he translucently espoused loyalty would have gun owners and
liberty advocates rush to go Third Party, I now understand that most people
who believed W was the Second Coming are perfectly willing to dimple a chad
on his behalf again even while admitting, with substantial and
incriminating evidence, that he's got horns and a tail.

Any president of the united States of America who'd rather blow a hijacked
plane out of the sky than let pilots shoot hijackers is downright EVIL --
dark, sadistic, malicious, power-crazed to the point of maniacal, and
malignant -- and anyone who can't stare that fact squarely in the eye needs
to imagine both scenarios, imagine the 3,000-ish lives lost on 9/11 due to
pilot vulnerability, and deal with the reality of who benefited most from
the WTC and Pentagon attacks.

If Gore had been selected in 2000, we probably wouldn't have had to see him
with a beard, either -- I like beards on Real Americans, but seeing one on
him was like seeing one on the school nurse while she tells you to swallow
castor oil because it's good for you. Only a baclava will cover what needs
covering there.

Good things will definitely happen as a result of W's presidency:
libertarians and other third parties will see greater numbers in the 2004
presidential elections than they've previously recorded -- as will many
lesser elections along the way and thereafter -- and the advancement of
Establishment Republican Disillusion will be more apparent than ever before
in our lifetimes.

But it wasn't worth throwing my vote away on the guy whose cronies told the
Supreme Court not to do their jobs on behalf of the Second Amendment.

Neil... you were right.

This Independence Day, one more thing I'm celebrating is my Independence
from the George W. Bush administration -- it's full of, run by, propped up
and fed by rabid domestic enemies.

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