Texas Constitutional Convention Updates

A JULY FOURTH MESSAGE TO THE PEOPLE OF TEXAS AND TO TEXANS-IN-SPIRIT EVERYWHERE

From L. Neil Smith

Permit me to begin by saying that I'm very grateful to those among you who asked me to address your gathering today, and regret deeply that I wasn't able to attend in person. What follows are the remarks I would have made had I been there with you, the advantage being that you can lay them aside or delete them when you've had enough, whereas, if you were listening to me, you'd have to squirm -- uncomfortably but politely -- on a folding metal chair until I'd finished.

You are here now to launch the great vessel of Texas on a new course, one of independence and, it is to be most fervently hoped and striven for, one of freedom. What I would have come to you to say -- what I'm saying to you now -- is simple. Don't make the mistake America did. Don't make the mistake that makes you -- and millions of other people just like you from Maine to California and from Florida to Oregon -- wish to escape to a country of their own.

What was that mistake? Simply forgetting -- sometimes by accident, more often deliberately, conveniently -- what America was supposed to have been all about.

America was supposed to have been all about free individuals exercising absolute ownership and control over their own lives and all the products of their lives. As long as people believed that that was what America was about, America flourished as no civilization in history before America, or anywhere else on the face of this poor, war-torn, blood-soaked planet ever flourished before.

If Texas is to become a nation unto itself or -- as some believe -- that's what it is already, then that's what Texas has to be all about, too: free individuals exercising absolute ownership and control over their own lives and all the products of their lives. And for the most practical of reasons: why should I, as a productive individual with something to contribute, come to Texas, why should anybody come to Texas, if it winds up being about anything else?

And why should anybody stay?

Remember that there's no such thing as "society". Point to what somebody else may call a "group", all I see are individuals, associated with each other to pursue some strictly-limited, temporary objective. Anyone who claims to see anything else is a liar or a fool. Anyone who invokes "society" or claims to speak for it, wants something from you for himself, and is cynically using the myth of "society" as an excuse to deprive you of your life, liberty, and property.

Remember that, and Texas will become the richest, most powerful culture on Earth within the first quarter of the 21st century. Forget it, and your own children will begin to wonder how they can escape from Texas, just as you did America.

When you draft your "Bill of Rights," don't call it that. Call it your "Bill of Limits" on the actions and authority of government. State plainly, in black-and-white, that these limits are inviolable and absolute, or there'd have been no reason to draft them in the first place. Include as an integral part of them what America's Founding Fathers forgot: the severest punishment imaginable -- in all seriousness, I urge you to consider public hanging -- for an elected or appointed official who dares, or even proposes, to violate these limits.

As you inaugurate your new nation, I urge you to reject the very notion of taxation. What does it teach children when we foolishly mistake government for civilization, and attempt to finance it through extortion, beating up or killing anyone who resists? Find some other way -- some decent, ethical way -- of paying for whatever miniscule amount of government you ultimately decide may be permitted to exist. And to your Bill of Limits, add the words of Ayn Rand: "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of production and trade."

I urge you again: permit nothing to be "permitted" by your government; do not give it license to license anything. Above all, never forget that each and every man, woman, and responsible child has an unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission. Get a copy of H. Beam Piper's "Lone Star Planet" (sometimes known as "A Planet for Texans"), adopt the simple, sensible checks and balances he proposes, and keep them wholly.

Become the first nation to make the Non-Aggression Principle --The idea that no one has a right, under any circumstance, to initiate force against another human being for any reason -- your social, economic, and political cornerstone.

Otherwise, you (or even worse, your children or grandchildren) will find yourselves right back here where America finds itself today, not at "Square One", but at "Ground Zero", trembling on the brink of a violent civil war -- given the Clinton administration's utter depravity, a nuclear civil war -- that no sane individual really wants, but into which they may be forced inexorably, not so much by events beyond their control, as by power-hungry lunatics in government who would rather wield absolute power over a pile of smoking rubble than take part as equal members in a civilization where peace, freedom, prosperity, and progress are goals shared, respected, and pursued by everyone.

Beyond that -- and in spite of all the essays and books I've written, in spite of all the speeches I've delivered -- I can't offer you much in the way of a formula to follow in order to preserve and extend individual liberty. The malevolent inclination of those who pathologically desire power above all things to wilfully misunderstand the plainest language and bend it to their sick, twisted purpose is endless. And the simple truth is that for some very compelling reasons, I don't believe in government, and haven't for a very long time.

It might be well to carve in foot-high letters across the facade of every public building in Texas, and into the wall over the head of every judge, the sobering and incontrovertible fact that governments (which invariably attempt to justify their hold on our throats by claiming to protect us from other governments and each other) have -- in actions entirely separate from war -- murdered more than a hundred million individuals in this century alone. And in their incessant, pointless, stupid wars, they've murdered another hundred million.

Lest anyone attempt to comfort himself in the belief that his government is different, remember Operation Keelhaul, in which American troops rounded up hundreds of thousands of Russian refugees in the final days of World War II and shipped them back in cattle cars to Russia, where they were all shot to death.

Remember Philadelphia, where the city dropped a bomb on noisy citizens, killing 11 and destroying 60 homes. Remember Ruby Ridge, where an FBI hit-man blew a woman's head up with a high-powered rifle as she held her baby in her arms.

Most of all, if you remember nothing else, remember Waco.

As a Libertarian, I abominate all forms of sacrifice. And yet none of those innocents will have died entirely in vain as long as you make of Texas the shining beacon of liberty that America was for the better part of two centuries.

I implore you, Texans, give the world another reason to hope. Give them a civilization that will keep its promises for centuries to come, and usher a fully liberated human race out into the greater freedom of the galaxy around us.

Give them -- give yourself -- a free Texas! --

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