====================================================================== The Atlanta Declaration: Every man, woman, and responsible child has a natural, fundamental, and inalienable human, individual, civil, and Constitutional right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- handgun, shotgun, rifle, machinegun, \anything\ -- any time, anywhere, without asking anyone's permission. ====================================================================== L. NEIL SMITH'S \LEVER ACTION\ LETTER NUMBER 09c == THE GREAT EXPLOSION == Despite millions of man-hours and billions of dollars spent every year to keep the American productive class voiceless and deprived of an effective franchise, the era of its exploitation by corrupt politicians and even more corrupt mass media is coming to an end. Few productive class Americans understand -- yet -- that we're taxed at five times the legal maximum which burdened a medieval serf. What we do know is that the longer and harder we work the less we seem to have and the less we have to look forward to. Few productive class Americans understand -- yet -- why our grandparents had spacious, comfortable homes and we can't. What we do know is that increasingly we live in tiny cardboard boxes or wheeled tin cans so that our senator can have his mistress and a limousine. Few productive class Americans understand -- yet -- why a red tape noose pulls tighter every year around our necks. What we do know is that life is bleaker every day and offers us fewer options. Few productive class Americans understand -- yet -- what the media gain from their collusion with the State. What we do know is that there's no good news, the papers and TV tell us our neighbors are all criminals and crazies, and life never seems to get any better. Few productive class Americans understand -- yet -- how our rights have been deliberately, systematically eaten away. What we do know is that everything seems to be against the law. Few productive class Americans understand -- yet -- how a federal commission and a phantom national reporting service rig elections as effectively as any banana republic. What we do know is that OUR ballots never count and if voting really changed things, it would be illegal. Few productive class Americans understand -- yet -- the ancient evil inherent in Sovereign Immunity. What we do know is that the State always wins and that we're always in the wrong. Few productive class Americans understand -- yet -- that our beloved Bill of Rights is a one-sided bargain, interpreted and enforced by one entity pretending to be divided powers. What we do know is that our rights never turn out to be quite what we thought. Some productive class Americans blame it all on poor minorities, forgetting that we're a nation of minorities, most of whom arrived without a penny. Sooner or later we'll learn not to blame the welfare mother with her pitiable child-support check, but the $60,000-a-year official whose unproductive way of life keeps everyone destitute. Some productive class Americans blame it all on immigrants, forgetting that we're a nation of immigrants and immigrants' children, many of whom fled the very tyranny threatening everyone today. Sooner or later we'll learn not to blame people with funny names, but to look on our own "representatives" as the foreign tyrants they really are. Some productive class Americans blame it all on unions, forgetting that for every gangster at the top, a million workers only want an honest day's wage for an honest day's labor. Sooner or later we'll learn not to blame the worker, but crooked leaders and regulations which make productive labor all but impossible and nearly always unrewarding. Some productive class Americans blame it all on the rich, forgetting that the system always allows a few to get ahead for the same reason Las Vegas allows the occasional big winner. Sooner or later we'll learn not to blame achievement, but a system which consistently rewards failure and punishes success, and loves to rub our noses in what we can never hope to have. Some productive class Americans blame it all on the lunatic fringe, forgetting that everything we know about these weirdoes the media told us and that everybody is somebody else's lunatic. Sooner or later we'll learn not to blame unconventional individuals, but TV's well-groomed talking heads, reeking with ignorance and hairspray. A Great Explosion is coming. Productive class Americans are sick of being terrorized by laws our parents naively believed were created to protect them. A Great Explosion is coming. Productive class Americans are sick of being looted by bureaucrats with five- and six-digit salaries. A Great Explosion is coming. Productive class Americans are sick of being decimated, gutted by one stupid, senseless war after another, one arranged, conveniently enough, for almost every generation. A Great Explosion is coming. Productive class Americans are sick of being wooed and cast aside in two- and four- and six-year cycles by public figures we wouldn't trust alone with our infant children. A Great Explosion is coming. Productive class Americans are sick of renting our own property, usually to pay for schools that can't even teach kids to read. A Great Explosion is coming. The American productive class are re-arming themselves, intellectually, philosophically, \literally\. Doubtless we've made foolish choices in the past. Doubtless we'll make them again in the future. But in the end the American productive class will triumph, precisely because we ARE productive, while our enemies are not. A Great Explosion is coming. By this time in the Twenty-First Century, with the Welfare/Warfare State all but forgotten, history will want to know what kind of idiots and criminals tried to sell out the American productive class at the very moment we began coming into our own. Then again, history may not care. *Borrowed from a great science fiction novel of the same name by Eric Frank Russell ====================================================================== L. NEIL SMITH'S \LEVER ACTION\ LETTER NUMBER 09c 111 EAST DRAKE ROAD SUITE 7032 FORT COLLINS, COLORADO U.S.A. 80525 L. Neil Smith is the award-winning author of 16 novels including \Henry Martyn, The Crystal Empire, BrightSuit MacBear, Taflak Lysandra, The Probability Broach,\ and the forthcoming FORGE OF THE ELDERS trilogy, beginning with CONTACT AND COMMUNE. Your contributions to this effort, while extremely welcome, are not tax-deductible. ====================================================================== X-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-X Another file downloaded from: The NIRVANAnet(tm) Seven & the Temple of the Screaming Electron Taipan Enigma 510/935-5845 Burn This Flag Zardoz 408/363-9766 realitycheck Poindexter Fortran 510/527-1662 Lies Unlimited Mick Freen 801/278-2699 The New Dork Sublime Biffnix 415/864-DORK The Shrine Rif Raf 206/794-6674 Planet Mirth Simon Jester 510/786-6560 "Raw Data for Raw Nerves" X-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-X