I have gotten several messages such as this one, and I thought I would
circulate widely my response:
"I am curious — and I hope you do not think that this is disrespectful. You do not
strike me as a man who believes in god (I am an agnostic myself), and surely
your cause is just. Since you appear to be condemned to death in the near
future, What would be the consequences of your acquiring a weapon, and using it
on some of these overzealous people? and have you thought of this?"
[NOTE TO the Drug Enforcement Agency: This e-mail, along with all similar
e-mails, has been completely removed from my computer, so please don't come into
my house, again, and take my computer, again, just to find out who your enemies
may be.]
My response:
Yes, I am an agnostic, but that would make me no more violence-prone than
True Believers. Indeed, unlike, say, abortion-clinic bombers, I don't pretend I
am "doing God's work" and that I will "find my reward in heaven."
Besides, to "off" those who spout ideas I find harmful is very much like
arresting a drug dealer — a dozen more are waiting to take his place. And you've created a martyr
for an evil cause.
My enemy is ignorance, not individuals.
It is winning the war of ideas — though fact, logic, persuasion,
and, yes, humor — that brings about lasting change.
What we are facing today in America is not an evil dictator, like Hitler, who
is the head of a snake, and once removed the snake will perish, but overgrown
bureaucracies, like the Drug War, which is more like an anthill. No matter how
many individual ants you kill one at a time, the colony goes on.
Any idiot with a gun can kill. It takes clever perseverance to make lasting
change.
Socrates, Jesus, and Martin Luther King did more for their causes by dying
for them than by killing for them. Not that I'm looking to be a martyr. Not that
the Drug War NEEDS another martyr. But the Drug War certainly doesn't need a
lone gunman, either.
I am not a pacifist, however. If someone were physically coming at me with
violence in his heart, I would have no trouble shooting his balls off. But the
people who are coming at me now do so under rule of law, and that means the law
must be changed, not that those who follow the law (or even make the law or
endorse an unjust law) must be "eliminated" Michael Corleone style.
If there is anything I believe in, it is that we have the right to do with
our own person and property whatever we choose, as long as we do not encroach
upon the equal rights of others to do whatever they choose with their person or
property. This, I believe, is the true definition of "rule of law," the
agreement by which we can live in a society that rises above the law of the
jungle.
This is heart of the Declaration of Independence:
"WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that
among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness — 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."
This is what is laid out in the Preamble to the Constitution. In my view,
this country is founded on that.
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union,
establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence,
promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves
and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United
States of America."
As has been proven with time and again, to "alter" the government in this
country does not take violence, but education. My job is to get the country back
into believing and living under the "supreme law" of the Constitution, not to
kill those who are, while living under the same Constitutional protections,
leading the country astray.
Although I consider, for example, William J. Bennett to be the single most
evil and hypocritical person in this country, I will defend with my life his
right to be wrong. (In a sense, I am doing just that.) As long as he does not
advocate picking up guns and killing the "pagans" such as myself, he can dance
naked in front of me on a rifle range (what a distasteful image) and I will not
lift my gun. (I might, however, pull out my video camera.) Besides, I'd much
rather see him live to watch his ideas (and him) wither and go pathetically out
of fashion. (They already are, and he knows it, as his book "The Death of
Outrage" clearly indicates. He just pouts and pouts and wallows in his own
self-destructive bile. That's much more enjoyable for me to watch than, say,
hearing that someone shot him while yelling, "Sic Semper Tyrannous!")
"I would give the devil himself benefit of law for mine own safety sake,"
Robert Bolt had Thomas More saying in A Man for All Seasons. I believe
this to be true.
The Drug War is intellectually bankrupt, and the Internet is getting the
truth (as in scientific fact) to millions more than ever before. The Drug War
propaganda machine, who can afford to spend billions controlling information,
now has thousands of new enemies online, hosting web sites for $14.95 a month,
emanating the truth 24 hours a day.
150 years ago John Stuart Mill, in On Liberty, I think, talked about
the "collision" of ideas in a free marketplace of ideas, and from the light of
that collision, the truth is there for all to see. I believe in this process. I
believe it is happening. I believe change is happening at exponential rates.
Murder drags the level of that discussion down to primordial levels and degrades
those who take part in it. (Even most of those who are anti-abortion, for
example, are repulsed by the abortion clinic bomb that permanently mangled the
nurse and killed a doctor.)
I support the high road of truth, facts, debate, and education, even if I'm
not along to walk that road much longer, and even if lies, deception,
repression, and ignorance are the direct cause of my death.
Enjoy,

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