Ask yourself this question: if you were one of America's Founders, and you'd just surprised the world (and yourself) by winning a war of secession ag… - L. Neil Smith
" "Ask yourself this question: if you were one of America's Founders, and you'd just surprised the world (and yourself) by winning a war of secession against the most powerful and heavy-handed government on the planet, and the last thing in the world you wanted for yourself, for your children, or for your grandchildren was to fall beneath the heels of its jackboots again, what would you want the Bill of Rights to mean? And if the first act, under martial law, of that powerful, heavy-handed government had been to try to take your guns away at Lexington and Concord, would you have written a Second Amendment to guarantee its 'right' to own and carry weapons? Would you have written a Second Amendment that was subject to whatever government claims is 'reasonable regulation'? Or would you have written the Second Amendment to forbid government from having anything to do with your guns? Anything whatever.
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About L. Neil Smith
Lester Neil Smith III (12 May 1946 – 27 August 2021), also known by his nickname El Neil, was a libertarian science fiction author and political activist, whose works include the novels Pallas, The Forge of the Elders, and The Probablity Broach, each of which won the Libertarian Futurist Society's annual Prometheus Award for best libertarian novel.
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Lester Neil Smith III
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Lester Neil Smith
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Additional quotes by L. Neil Smith
Over the years, I've made a lot of predictions that have come true. Remember this one: two years from now, even those who supported Barack Obama most enthusiastically will be feeling a certain nostalgia about George W. Bush and secretly wishing they'd voted for John McCain. Yeah, I know, disgusting. But that's the way the world works. Nobody alive today would willingly admit to voting for Adolf Hitler, although the third or fourth worst mass-murderer in history (behind Mao Tse Tung, Joseph Stalin, and, on a per capita basis, Pol Pot) won by a landslide. Once the outrages to come have ended and there are thousands — perhaps even millions — of Obama's crimes to account for, would you want to admit to having voted to make those crimes possible?
We must agree right now that the Bill of Rights takes precedence over everything else and may not be suppressed by a pall of political correctness on campuses, in the media, in corporate life, or anywhere else. There is no right not to be offended by the free expression of others. Those of us who can afford it should sue those who try to deprive us of our freedom of speech. Mine is worth at least ten figures.
We're all a bunch of badminton birdies who just got batted from the Republican side of the court to the Democrat side. We'll eventually get batted back again, of course, unless libertarians can manage to do something about it. If your principal concern, like mine, is freedom, there's absolutely no discernable difference between the two 'majors,' and for all practical purposes, they're one big party — the Boot On Your Neck party — pretending to be two.
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