2. Happy What?
   by L. Neil Smith
   lneil{at}lneilsmith.com
Special to TLE

It would be remiss of me not to wish everyone I regularly communicate with
as happy an Independence Day as they can have. However -- as I observed in
one of my earliest books -- what the hell is there left to celebrate?

Certainly not the fact that when we go out in public --  and especially
when we fly on a plane -- we are forced not to provide ourselves with that
one item proven to ensure our safety, the only thing that could have
prevented the September 11th atrocity, the personal sidearm. Maybe some of
us can celebrate the fact that it's possible to beg our masters for their
permission to do so, as long as they get to sodomize our rights first.

Certainly not the fact that the traditional means of celebrating  the
beginning of our independence from European thinking -- fireworks -- have
become a vitual monopoly of our masters and their corporate collaboraters.

Certainly not the fact that every second of our lives, every breath we
take, wherever we go and whatever we do there, is being monitored by our
masters, and that every day their corporate collaboraters invent new ways
to deprive us of a right to privacy they grandly inform us does not exist.

Certainly not the fact that our masters siphon off 7/8 of our productive
capacity and use it to build themselves palaces, arm themselves with
weapons they forbid us, and take their mistresses on long rides in
limousines so they can sneer at their serfs through tinted windows. What
was it Maria Muldaur sang about "the owners ate the cane and the
workers ate the weeds"?

Certainly not the fact that our masters have a federal agency -- NASA --
dedicated to keeping us slaves right here on the Global Plantation, trapped
on this planet, while pretending to explore outer space.

So I will spend Independence Day with my family, as I always have. My
mother Marie will fix a big meal, all our relatives will be there. We'll
think about my dad, dead now for 11 years. A few smelly "snakes"
will get burned along with a box or two of sparklers, while everybody waits
for the cops to show up -- on a day when I ought to be firing my combat
12-gauge or one of my .44 Magnums into the air as much as I can afford. But
of course if I actually do that, our masters will send their thugs to come
to get me and I probably won't write too much more of this kind of thing.

This holiday coincides, more or less, with the 20th anniversary of my
marriage to Cathy L. Z. Smith. That relationship, and the existence of our
daughter, Rylla, has afforded me more pleasure, pride, and comfort than I
can articulate here and now. In a world gleefully throwing itself into a
fascist meatgrinder, where all of my work of the last 40 years -- literary
and political -- seems futile, because humanity is more profoundly enslaved
now than when I started, sometimes the love of my family and the presence
of my friends is the only real compensation I can rely on.

I think I'm about ready to abandon this holiday to the jackals that have
stolen it from us, and focus on December 15, the day the Bill of Rights was
ratified, instead. That would certainly send a message to the thieves,
rapists, and murderers who fondly imagine they've been freely selected by
people who want them, or who believe they've been hired by a lawful
process. It's entertaining to imagine what this city government, or any
other, would do to try and celebrate a holiday that calls, effectively, for
an end to their existence and possibly their incarceration, too.

That's what I'll be thinking about this July 4th as listen to the
collectivist fireworks from my mother's back yard, how to celebrate Bill of
Rights Day without the left wing and right wing collectivists taking it
away. The best way, I think, is to make it something they won't want to
touch.

I hope you'll think about that, too. If that doesn't appeal, go see the new
_Charlie's Angels_ movie. We loved it, and it was a relief to forget
Homeland Security and the USA Patriot Act for a couple of hours.

I like Lucy Liu best, but that's just me.

--
Three-time Prometheus Award-winner L. Neil Smith is the author of 23 books,
including _The American Zone_,  _Forge of the Elders_,  _Pallas_, _The
Probability Broach_, _Hope_ (with Aaron Zelman), and his collection of
articles and speeches,  _Lever Action_, all of which may be purchased
through his website   "The Webley Page"   at 
http://www.lneilsmith.com. Autographed copies may be had from the author at
lneil{at}lneilsmith.com.

L. Neil Smith writes regular columns for _The Libertarian Enterprise_
, _Sierra Times_  ,
and for _Rational Review_.

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