Where Are We Going?
By John H. Webster
editor's note: This article was originally written
by Mr. Webster in January of 1989. It was subsequently used as a
political campaign message during his bid for election to the U.S. House
of Representatives from the thirteenth district in California.
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These
famous words are from the Declaration of Independence, written by the fore-fathers
of our country. To them, the primary purpose for government was to
secure those natural rights.
The
founders of our country created a government dedicated to protecting the
natural rights of its citizens. They set up checks and balances to
slow down the process by which it might forget what its original purpose
was. It took a while, but the government has forgotten.
Over
the years, government decided that some natural rights of the individual
could be sacrificed for the "good causes" of the majority. It decided
that for the "common good" it was justified in forcing society's values
onto peaceful citizens with different values. The path was set toward
more government intervention. The rest is history.
What
resulted was a stampede of groups seeking special benefits for themselves
and demanding that government get involved in and control every aspect
of everyone else's life and business. Government was there cheering
us on with promises of equality, fairness and prosperity if only we would
just give up that last freedom in our lives and that last dollar of our
paychecks.
Don't
let them take it. We have lost too much already.
| • | With taxes, we no longer own the products of our own labor. | |
| • | With labor and emigration laws we no longer have the right to contract freely. | |
| • | With food and drug laws, we no longer can decide what goes into our own bodies. | |
| • | We now are a resource that is protected, controlled, and owned by our government, all supposedly, for good causes. |
We
all have a choice to make: should we allow our government to continue
its growth and acquisition of power and control, or should we restrict
it to its primary purpose as the protector of our freedoms and of our natural
rights?
| "... That to secure these rights, governments are instituted
among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,
that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends,
it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute
new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing
its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their
safety and happiness."
— from the Declaration of Independence
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Dead Right
by Sam Aurelius Milam III
On
Tuesday, May 16, 1995, by a vote of 101 to 46, the Texas legislature passed
a law providing that Texans can now apply for a permit to carry concealed
weapons.1
Gun rights advocates are celebrating another victory. That's utter
nonsense. Any right the people of Texas might have had to carry concealed
weapons is now as good as dead. The final nail will be driven into
its coffin when Governor George W. Bush signs the bill.
A
right is something that is within your ability, for which you don't need
permission, and that is generally or customarily accepted or condoned.
If you have to ask for permission, it isn't a right. It's a privilege.
In
order to exercise this particular privilege, an applicant will (so far)
have to be 21 years of age or older, submit to as many as 15 hours of training,
pass a test, and pay a fee of $140 for a 4 year permit. No doubt
the good folks of Texas will fall eagerly into line.
The
power to grant a privilege is identical with the power to control or to
deny that privilege. In this particular case, there is nothing to
prevent the Texas legislature from increasing the age requirement or the
training time or the fee. Only God knows how onerous the training
and testing might eventually become. Of the 40 states that now allow
concealed weapons, 16 already require that an applicant must demonstrate,
to the satisfaction of the licensing agency, a need to conceal the weapon.
Absolutely any requirement can be imposed is a prerequisite to the exercise
of a privilege. A little imagination stimulated by some knowledge
of history will easily convince you that the government will certainly
abuse this kind of arrangement.
It's
no surprise that the law passed the legislature by such a wide margin.
This law doesn't increase people's access to weapons. It gives the
Texas government yet another tool by which the people's access to weapons
can be restricted. If people want a right to carry concealed weapons,
there's only one way to get it. They must just do it, en masse, without
notice or apology, and above all else, without asking their masters for
permission.
| Milam's
Notes ....
When permission is requested, freedom is surrendered. When permission is granted, freedom is denied. — October 24, 1978
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NBC Nightly News With Tom Brokaw, Tuesday, May 16, 1995 |
More Thugs
by Sam Aurelius Milam III
On
Thursday, May 18, 1995, in San Diego, California, the police killed another
American.2
He had stolen an army tank and used it to smash various cars and other
obstacles. When they shot him, the tank was effectively disabled,
its weapons were not loaded, and the man was effectively surrounded.
He could not, at that point, do further harm so why did they kill him?
Maybe it was revenge. After all, one of the slaves had dared to defy
them. Maybe they thought they could teach the rest of us a lesson
about obedience. Most likely, they did it simply because they're
jackbooted Gestapo style thugs. If they think with more than their
trigger fingers, they seem to think that it's better and cheaper for the
government to kill a suspect than to prosecute him.
Unlike
those wimps at the NRA, I won't apologize for my statement. If the
government goons don't like people calling them names, they'll just have
to stop deserving it.
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ITN World News, Thursday, May 18, 1995 |
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