====================================================================== 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 15 " ... AND TO PROVIDE NEW GUARDS ... " In \Lever Action\ Letter Number 3, I asked some not-so-rhetorical questions which all boiled down to the same thing: how much do you want to keep your guns? Would you agree to leave others alone to live any way they please if they agreed to let you keep your guns? I gave some examples -- pornography, chemical substances, religion, race, abortion, sexual preference -- which may have made answering that question fairly hard, pointing out that no sane being sacrifices those personal rights he considers most precious merely for the sake of imposing his values on others. Yet it often seems that each of us disapproves of, and wants to outlaw, some one little thing someone else cares about. With millions of us all working for one kind of Prohibition or another, it's no wonder the controls seem to ratchet tighter around our lives every day. We can work together to reverse the process by making a commitment to respect each other's rights no matter how much we may disapprove of any particular exercise of them. I don't know about you, but I don't care what my allies do with their own lives -- the one limit being an obligation never to \initiate\ force against others, since that's how we began losing our rights to start with -- as long as they want to be free and can help me stay that way. So how do we get started? The Covenant of Unanimous Consent was originally written to change the way we're used to thinking about personal freedom, make it more consistent, put some teeth into the Bill of Rights, and limit \forever\ the power of politicians, bureaucrats, lawyers, and Prohibitionists to control the way we live. Some of its Signatories feel that it may turn out to be as important as the Declaration of Independence. I wrote the Covenant of Unanimous Consent because I intend to keep my guns, and the rest of my rights, as well. The other side's counting on us to remain divided and intolerant. That's how they got us where they want us in the first place. Nobody is ever \asked\ to sign it, but if you have the courage and intelligence to renew your personal commitment to the American tradition of individual liberty, I've made it easy for you by reproducing the Covenant of Unanimous Consent here, on the other side. Let me hear from you before it's too late. ====================================================================== L. NEIL SMITH'S \LEVER ACTION\ LETTER NUMBER 15 111 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. ====================================================================== ========================== A NEW COVENANT ============================ [Of Unanimous Consent] WE, THE UNDERSIGNED Witnesses to the Lesson of History -- that no Form of political Governance may be relied upon to secure the individual Rights of Life, Liberty, or Property -- now therefore establish and provide certain fundamental Precepts measuring our Conduct toward one another, and toward others: [Individual Sovereignty] FIRST, that we shall henceforward recognize each Individual to be the exclusive Proprietor of his or her own Existence and of all Products of that Existence, holding no Obligation binding among Individuals excepting those to which they voluntarily and explicitly consent; [Freedom from Coercion] SECOND, that under no Circumstances shall we acknowledge any Liberty to initiate Force against another Person, and shall instead defend the inalienable Right of Individuals to resist Coercion employing whatever Means prove necessary in their Judgment; [Association and Secession] THIRD, that we shall hold inviolable those Relationships among Individuals which are totally voluntary, but conversely, any Relationship not thus mutually agreeable shall be considered empty and invalid; [Individuality of Rights] FOURTH, that we shall regard Rights to be neither collective nor additive in Character -- two Individuals shall have no more Rights than one, nor shall two million nor two thousand million -- nor shall any Group possess Rights in Excess of those belonging to its individual Members; [Equality of Liberty] FIFTH, that we shall maintain these Principles without Respect to any person's Race, Nationality, Gender, sexual Preference, Age, or System of Beliefs, and hold that any Entity or Association, however constituted, acting to contravene them by Initiation of Force -- or Threat of same -- shall have forfeited its Right to exist; [Supersedure] UPON UNANIMOUS CONSENT of the Members or Inhabitants of any Association or Territory, we further stipulate that this Agreement shall supersede all existing governmental Documents or Usages then pertinent, that such Constitutions, Charters, Acts, Laws, Statutes, Regulations, or Ordinances contradictory or destructive to the Ends which it expresses shall be null and void, and that this Covenant, being the Property of its Author and Signatories, shall not be Subject to Interpretation excepting insofar as it shall please them. ______________________________ ___________________________________ Signatory date Witness date ______________________________ ___________________________________ Name (please print) Name (please print) * From \The Gallatin Divergence\ by L. Neil Smith, Del Rey Books, 1985, as amended by unanimous consent October, 1986. Send to: 111 E. Drake, Ste. 7032, Ft. Collins, CO 80525. ENCLOSE $2 TO COVER ARCHIVING. Include SASE for confirmation of receipt. 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