Proposed Amendments by author L. Neil Smith

[DennisLeeWilson]

From: DennisLeeWilson-Ariz-Wyo  (Original Message) Sent: 7/2/2004 8:06 PM

“Lever Action” by L. Neil Smith, page 131

Proposed Amendment [to the Constitution]

Given the known hostility of the current administration to the Bill of Rights—especially the Second Amendment—the priority American forces are assigning to the house-to-house disarmament of Haitian [and Iraqi] civilians, and the feeble excuses offered for it in the media, it should be clear by now that this operation, like the one in Somalia, is designed to train our troops to do the same thing here in the States. If so, it is important to circulate the following as widely as possible as a warning to those in power of the dangers of abusing it.

 

SECTION I: It is forbidden under any circumstances for any American military or police force to deny – or to be ordered to deny – any American the free exercise of any right protected by the first ten Amendments to the United States Constitution.

SECTION II: In the absence of a formal declaration of war, it is likewise forbidden for any American military or police force to deny – or be ordered to deny – foreign nationals in their own territories the free exercise of any right protected by the first ten Amendments to the United States Constitution.


SECTION III: No claim of emergency, not the age or condition of any person, is sufficient grounds for violating or evading the provisions or intentions of this Amendment.


SECTION IV: Any elected or appointed official at any level of government who violates or evades the provisions or intentions of this Amendment is subject to imprisonment and fine for each violation; should a death occur as a result of said violation, the official in question shall be subject to the death penalty.

“Lever Action” by L. Neil Smith, page 133

Proposed Taxpayers’ Equity Amendment

More and more it seems that nothing can bring this country’s politicos and bureaucrats back under control (to the extent they ever were) as the Founding Fathers intended. Bureaucrats are more anonymous and unreachable every year, and no matter how incensed we get – or how many of us get that way – politicians reelect themselves like clockwork.


Though it’s all the rage among those concerned with such matters, I’ve never been satisfied that term limitations won’t achieve the opposite of what’s intended, removing a final curb on runaway do-goodery and social experimentation. With respect to recent passage of what’s supposed to be the 28th Amendment, the most naïve American today knows more than James Madison did of the way politicians fix things to suit themselves. They’ll override ratification, agree to vote raises for their successors, or simply make their mercenary move early in their terms, in the comforting knowledge that voters will have forgotten what they did by Election Day.


It should be clear now that the imposition of Bill Clinton on the productive class – by 43% of the electorate – has only made things worse. In an age where half the average person’s income already goes to taxes of one kind or another and the other half for goods and services with prices doubled by taxation and doubled again by regulation – and where bureaucrats represent a greater threat to life, liberty, and property than politicians – what’s needed is something more certain than term limitation and harder to get around than Madison’s schedule for congressional pay hikes.


Allow me to introduce the “Taxpayers’ Equity Amendment”:

• No elected or appointed official at any level of government may receive more in total salary, benefits, and expenses during his term of office – or for five years afterward – than his average productive-sector constituent; individuals, and employees of companies, deriving more than 10% of their revenue from government will be excluded for purposes of calculating the average.
  
  
• Those subject to the Taxpayers’ Equity Amendment will be required to participate in the Social Security system for as long as it continues to exist; all outside income (from business, inheritance, investments, a spouse’s wealth, speaking fees – to name only a few examples) – will be “invested in America” by being placed in randomly selected savings and loan institutions until the five year period expires.
  
  
• Those subject to the Taxpayers’ Equity Amendment will be required to file weekly income/expenditure forms for scrutiny by the IRS, the media, and the public; telephone hotlines and lavish rewards for “whistle blowers” will be provided; all salary and benefits of officials under suspicion of having violated the Taxpayers’ Equity Amendment will be suspended pending the results of any investigation.
  
  
• Violations of the Taxpayers’ Equity Amendment will result in summary removal of the official, loss of salary, benefits, expenses – along with all deposited monies – and no fewer than 25 years in the federal maximum-security prison currently deemed most violent; introducing, sponsoring, or voting for legislation meant to evade the Taxpayers’ Equity Amendment, or to falsify the statistical base on which calculations are made, will be treated as violations.

The primary goals of the Taxpayers’ Equity Amendment are:


(A)   to punish politicians and bureaucrats for past, present, and future crimes against the lives, liberties, and property of “We the People of the United States”;


(B)   to make sure their fortunes rise and fall with ours – so they’re forced to scrape along day by day like the rest of us, one paycheck away from bankruptcy; and


(C)  to give them something better to do with their time than to continually threaten, at our expense, our fundamental rights an well-being.


It’ll save taxpayers around $300 billion a year.


The Taxpayers’ Equity Amendment can begin working now, before it is passed into law (even if it never does), if it’s circulated widely via computer bulletin board networks and other means, appears frequently in magazine and newspaper letter columns, and if it’s sent to all your favorite office holders.


Have fun …
 

[DennisLeeWilson]

From: DennisLeeWilson-Ariz-Wyo Sent: 1/8/2007 11:26 AM

A proposed "WAR" Amendment to the Constitution:

[W]henever the government decides on a war, the "deciders" get to be the very first ones to fight it. Instead of a fantasy or a joke, why not make it into a Constitutional amendment?

These days, it would have to work like this:

First, no American troops could be sent overseas without a good, old-fashioned declaration of war by Congress, requested, presumably, by the President. Criminal penalties would attend any evasion of this law.

Second, if the declaration of war passed, the instant it did, those representatives who voted for it would be required to exit the chamber, where they would find uniforms and weapons being handed out from big piles in the corridor by the military. Then, regardless of age, sex, or physical condition—if need be, we'd organize the very first wheelchair corps and call it the "Franklin Roosevelt Brigade—those who voted for a declaration of war would be sent straight to the front.

The President, in his own brand new uniform, would lead them.

Think about it.

Now here's the part that's almost magical: no such amendment would ever actually have to be passed, in order to break this seemingly endless cycle of American wars. Simply imagine the effect, when the pollsters reported (publically or not, it doesn't matter) that, say, ten percent of the American people thought this amendment was a good idea.

Now imagine the effect when ten percent became twenty.

Or forty.

Or seventy-five.

My guess, based on about half a century of history-reading and people-watching, is that things would begin to change a lot sooner than might otherwise be expected. I don't believe we'd need more than about six percent, before both werewolves and vampires saw the writing on the wall. Things would begin to change, and the really nifty part is that we wouldn't have to choose between the damn werewolves and vampires.

Excerpted from Werewolves Out, Vampires In by L. Neil Smith
http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2007/tle400-20070107-02.html 

[DennisLeeWilson]

From: DennisLeeWilson-Ariz-Wyo Sent: 11/25/2007 1:12 PM

Bill of Rights Enforcement

Let's start with a Constitutional Amendment:

ARTICLE ZERO

• I. Any public official or employee who, knowingly or unknowingly, violates—or participates in the violation of—any provision of the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution shall, in full public view and over such media as exist at the time, be hanged by the neck until he is dead.
  
  
• II. The word "he" is not to be construed so as to exclude female public officials or employees.
  
  
• III. This amendment, upon ratification, shall be inserted in the Constitution just before the First Amendment.

I think it was Hobbes (the philosopher, not the tiger) who pointed out that "the covenant without the sword"—that is, a law without teeth—isn't worth a bucket of warm spit. At least I think it was Hobbes.

But I don't think he meant spit.

The Anti-Federalists imposed the Bill of Rights on the Federalists as the price for ratifying the Constitution, but they failed somehow to include teeth in the form of an enforcement clause. Old Alexander Hamilton has to have been laughing in his grave for the past couple of centuries.

This is the enforcement clause we've needed all along.

And it's an educational exercise, too. Can you imagine the lesson to be learned in a future nation that has ratified this amendment, watching creatures like Charles Schumer and Diane Feinstein dancing on the hemp, their tongues swollen and their eyes bulging out of their sockets?

Can you imagine a gun control poll even being conducted in such a nation?

Excerpted from The Zeroth Amendment by L. Neil Smith

http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2007/tle445-20071125-02.html

 
 

[DennisLeeWilson]

http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2009/tle550-20091227-02.html

THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE
Number 550, December 27, 2009
"It will not end with medicine."

The Cure
by L. Neil Smith
lneil@netzero.com

Attribute to The Libertarian Enterprise

Had enough, yet?

As you are no doubt aware, the United States Senate has joined the House of Representatives in forcing medical Marxism down the throats of tens of millions of Americans—a clear and unmistakable majority, if democracy still means anything to you—whether they want it or not.

Given the fact that the regime he has imposed on us, against our wills, should end up killing thousands, if not millions of people by denying them treatment they could simply bargain over and pay for in a free country, Harry Reid deserves a place in history beside other mass-murderers like Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, and Pol Pot.

Having continuously fought various deadly forms of socialism throughout the 20th century, including the Nazi movement in World War II, Chinese communism in Korea, the Ho Chi Minh variation in Vietnam, and Russian Marxism in a long, drawn-out "Cold War" that went on from 1945 until about 1989, the United States has now been handed over to collectivism, rendering all of that struggle and sacrifice utterly meaningless.

Former Soviet Premiere Nikita Khruschev was right: in the end, Americans—make that American politicians—have junked the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and everything else the Founding Fathers gave us and embraced, instead, the vile, murderous criminality Khruschev stood for, raising the hammer and sickle over their own heads.

And ours.

At this point, all that remains is for the Senate and House to edit their disparate versions into agreement and take a final vote. But that is only the beginning. They have found a way to ram through any legislation that strikes their fancy, and it will not end with medicine.

It will not end with medicine.

Everything those of us who value liberty have fought them on over the years, over the decades they have been picking away at freedom and the rule of law, will be relentlessly eradicated until we end up dead and our children slaves in a shattered nation that looks just like East Berlin did for years after World War II, or Beirut after it was destroyed.

While this particular crime has been committed by the Democratic Party—not entirely without Republican help—Americans can't trust Republicans not to do exactly the same kind of thing when they once again acquire power. Theirs is the party, after all, that reintroduced abduction, secret imprisonment, and torture as routine government expedients, that built "relocation" camps all over America, ready to be filled with dissenters, that brought thousands of soldiers back from overseas and maintained them in a state of readiness to conquer their own country in order to preserve the wealth and power of their masters.

What the future holds now is unclear. Republicans will replace Democrats beginning in 2010, and regain presidential power in 2012, or Democratic tampering with the election process will keep them in power despite the wishes of an extremely angry majority. Neither option is good news for Americans tired of being drained, spied on, and pushed around, but the people of this country have demonstrated plainly that they would rather be enslaved than to consider voting for third party candidates.

Perhaps it's just as well. The only third party that might once have offered them hope is now just as putresecently corrupt as the two major parties, having substituted—precisely imitating Republicans and Democrats—what they falsely believe is electoral expedience for principle, and having allowed themselves, like the political gulls and hicks they are, to be destroyed from the inside by the enemies of freedom.

Short of the violent revolution the current administration appears eager to foment, there's only one course left. Those currently in control of this country are weak and timid. They hate and fear the American people deeply. Defeat them once, decisively, they'll crumple just like the communist governments of eastern Europe did twenty years ago.

And here's the weapon:

AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION
OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

No law shall be made, nor any ordinance, promulgation, statute, decree, or regulation, with respect to the provision and reception, by private individuals, of medicine, medical consultation, or medical care.

Any public official, elected or appointed, who violates or evades any prohibition within the Constitution shall be removed from office, stripped of pay and benefits, and imprisoned for life at hard labor, without hope of clemency or parole.  

That's it: separation of medicine and state. You will note that, correcting the tragic error of the Bill of Rights, it contains a penalty clause that future adjudication will interpret, as courts will, to cover every one of the amendments, and not just this one. There is a lot that any individual can do to advance this cause. You don't need to wait for an election. You don't have to spend any time explaining away the stupid things being said and done by a candidate. It doesn't depend on any party, it doesn't require the support of the Old Media. The procedure for initiating Constitutional amendments is clear.

Separation of medicine and state. And there's a bonus: rather than see these deeply threatening ideas enacted into law, professional politicians of all parties will happily repeal the medical Marxism legislation being shoved through now. All it will take is for this amendment to become a credible threat.

Separation of medicine and state.

Let me rephrase that so it's clear: this amendment doesn't have to be ratified in order for it to succeed. For once, all of your letters, telegrams, e-mails, and phone calls to politicians (keep them polite, it's the idea itself that will do the job) will actually accomplish something. More importantly, the idea has to get talked about on the radio, in letters to the editor, in the barber shop and beauty parlor, over the back fence, at the grocery store and especially in the pharmacy.

Separation of medicine and state.

It's entirely possible that I'm introducing this in the wrong place, to the wrong people. Libertarians seem uniquely subject to "analysis paralysis", a tendency to sit on their thumbs and nitpick a proposal to death, or to generate endless, extremely reasonable sounding excuses, rather than to get to work and actually do something.

Prove me wrong. Send copies of every letter you write supporting this idea to The Libertarian Enterprise. (We'll publish the ones we like best.) Let us know what talk show hosts you called, and what lame excuses and bad logic they used in a futile attempt to fight the idea off. Don't stop at one letter, write a dozen—a week. Call those radio shows again and again and again. Become an obnoxious pest—for liberty.

Separation of medicine and state.

In the immortal words of Captain Peter Quincy Taggart, "Never give up!

"Never surrender!"


Four-time Prometheus Award-winner L. Neil Smith has been called one of the world's foremost authorities on the ethics of self-defense. He is the author of more than 25 books, including The American Zone, Forge of the Elders, Pallas, The Probability Broach, Hope (with Aaron Zelman), and his collected articles and speeches, Lever Action, all of which may be purchased through his website "The Webley Page" at lneilsmith.org.

Ceres, an exciting sequel to Neil's 1993 Ngu family novel Pallas is currently running as a free weekly serial at www.bigheadpress.com/lneilsmith/?page_id=53

Neil is presently at work on Ares, the middle volume of the epic Ngu Family Cycle, and on Where We Stand: Libertarian Policy in a Time of Crisis with his daughter, Rylla.

See stunning full-color graphic-novelizations of The Probability Broach and Roswell, Texas which feature the art of Scott Bieser at www.BigHeadPress.com Dead-tree versions may be had through the publisher, or at www.Amazon.com where you will also find Phoenix Pick editions of some of Neil's earlier novels. Links to Neil's books at Amazon.com are on his website