======================================================================

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.

======================================================================


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