- The following speech was delivered by Vin Suprynowicz
at a private reception hosted by Teaching Liberty, Inc. and Johnston McKinsley
Strategy Group Limited in the Wedgwood Room at the Fairmont Hotel Macdonald
in Edmonton, Alberta on August 15.
-
- Mr. Suprynowicz is a columist with the Las Vegas Review-Journal
and author of Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement,
1993 - 1998. ___
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-
- Thank you for inviting me here to this important and
auspicious gathering, stalwart sons and gentle maidens of Canada.
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- You'll have to forgive me. I always ramble. I don't ask
forgiveness for that. But I'll ramble a little more than usual. I had to
get up at five in the morning to catch a 6:30 flight out of Las Vegas.
I was scrambling around in the dark, trying to make sure I had everything
but I arrived at the airport to find that I didn't have my passport. So
I checked with the fine ladies at the United Airlines counter and they
said, "You don't need a passport to fly to Canada. You just need a
government issued photo ID and a credit card." They check on your
credit? What, so I can pay my way back? You can see the suspicion that
I had. It's been a long time since I've been through immigration, and maybe
they thought I was coming north to sign up for your health plan.
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- So I'm digging through my wallet looking for photo ID,
and I came out with this: issued by the metropolitan police department
in Las Vegas, my permit to carry a concealed handgun.
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- This is not an unalloyed triumph. I'm not all that proud
to have this. There's a moral compromise that arises when they ask you
to apply for something like this. They are converting a right to a privilege.
And you have to get fingerprinted, and prove you can fire your weapon in
the right direction--which is fine I suppose--but it's part of this whole
privilege and they can take it away if they want to. And they often do
come back later and say, "Oh there's a new requirement. You're going
to have to pay more money more often."
-
-
- So certainly there are Americans who do say, "We
have a Second Amendment in our constitution; 'the right to keep and bear
arms shall not be infringed.' That is my permit." But as a public
figure I freely admit I compromised and decided well, if I get busted for
an illegal weapon our political opponents would say, "See, they don't
obey the law." So I applied for it and received this permit which
now assured me entry into Canada.
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-
- Christine at the counter, a charming woman--and it was
six in the morning!--gave me a big smile and asked me if I would like to
check my weapon through! I said, "I don't think I'll be carrying my
handgun in Canada today, but I'll be all right."
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-
- I spend a lot of time complaining about how they are
eroding our rights, many of our rights, not just our right to bear arms
in the States--which they are--but there was a moment of joy there that
she could be so matter-of-fact and "check my weapon through"
into Canada.
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- In Canada and, as Dr. Mauser and others have discussed,
Australia and England the disarmament side is doing better than ours is.
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- The "rape enablers" I like to call them. They
call it gun control. So you have to go back at them and say, "So you
want to get rid of all the guns. No one would have firearms?"
-
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- They say, "Yes, that's right!"
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- "Well you know? I might be willing to try it. After
all the military and police give them up for a couple of years, we'll see
how it works. And then I'll decide whether I want to sign on."
-
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- Then they say, "Oh, the police! They'll still have
guns on their hips or in the trunks of their cars."
-
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- "Oh, okay, the police. And the criminals, they're
all going to turn in their weapons?"
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- "Well, we'll catch them when they buy a weapon in
a gun store."
-
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- Oh yeah. The guy with no neck who breaks knees in Las
Vegas for collection agents is going to forget he was supposed to buy his
gun from Vinnie out of the back of a car and wander into a licenced gun
shop, fill out the form, register his address, and then he'll be turned
down and arrested and he'll go, "Oh, I forgot I was supposed to buy
it from Vinnie!"
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- Criminals never get caught by these schemes. It's only
the law-abiding citizens that do, so I think we have to call it "victim
disarmament."
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- So let's bring the right to self-defense into play. I
have taken out young women, short women, small women, and taught them how
to shoot firearms. It's delightful to see their faces. At first it's just
fun. They realize it's not going to blow up in their hand; it's not like
holding a rattlesnake that is going to turn around and bite them. It's
a miracle of the engineering of Western culture that we have come up with
these weapons that are extremely reliable, effective, that work properly.
But then there's a follow-up. After that initial exhilaration of just experiencing
what it's like to knock the tin can off the fence, after that you watch
the gears turn in their heads and its wonderful. And you see them go, "If
I had one of these and I was the last person to leave the shopping mall
at night and the parking lot was dark, I wouldn't have to look around and
see if there are any strange men who might approach me." And they
feel free, as men are free. Men can't possibly understand what it's like
to be a woman and always have in the back of your mind, "Am I vulnerable?
Am I going some place where I might get into trouble?"
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- There would be those who reply "Oh, so women should
carry guns and shoot everyone who makes them frightened." No. Do we
believe that police officers strap on their arms, load their shotguns in
the trunk of their cruisers, then say, "I really hope I get to shoot
someone today"? No. But it's a question of deterrence, safety and
the right to self-defense.
-
- I came here to talk about guns in Canada. But I like
to look at all freedom fronts in my writing. My focus generally is on collecting
stories, true-life stories, about people who have been trodden underfoot
by government tyranny. I generally give a talk on stories from my book.
Amazing, I know.
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- The other side is pretty good at this. I don't know if
you ever watched Bill Clinton give a State of the Union address, one of
those major televised speeches. They're becoming extremely dramatic now,
these politicians, so I like to do the same thing.
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- In Washington they're very scripted. So when they get
up there to announce their list of 27 or 113 government programs on which
they're spending billions of dollars, they always bring in some crippled
soldier or a woman in a wheelchair, or some poor barefoot mom from Appalachia
with nine kids who's husband died in the mines. And they'll introduce her
and say, "We have this wonderful new program that will provide free
bread and peanut butter for the people of Arkansas." You hear these
tales of woe and how all the problems can be solved by government.
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- I think we should give equal time to people whose lives
have been ruined by government.
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-
- This past week I talked to my friend Steve Kubby and
his wife Michele. They've just relocated to Sechelt, British Columbia.
Steve Kubby, who is just a great soul, a great guy, a guy you just love
to meet, full of vigor, ran for governor of California as the Libertarian
candidate... lost of course. But he did manage to help pass Proposition
215 in California, which is called the Protection of Use Act, which allows
medicinal use of marijuana, or so thought the people who voted for it.
-
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- Well, after it passed they busted Steve Kubby, who for
sixteen years has had adrenal cancer. It's unheard of for someone to survive
a case of adrenal cancer for 16 years. The only medicine we know he takes
is marijuana, which he breeds himself from strains of seeds that people
send him from all over.
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- He was of course very active publicly. For months after
the election everyone was telling him "Watch out; they've got your
house staked out. They're going to bust you because they're going to make
an example of you."
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- He said, "No. Now with the passage of Proposition
215 I have a right to use medical marijuana. I have, as required by the
new law, a written recommendation by a doctor. It's posted on the wall
in my grow room."
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- I said, "Just watch out."
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- Steve has a great story and I don't think he would mind
if I borrowed it. So they are going to arrest him. He is going to be a
test case. He knows it. He can't talk them out of it. Once these police
forces lock in it doesn't matter what the lawyers have said. But how to
communicate with them and explain "We're not violent; we don't have
any firearms; we don't want you to break down our door with battering rams,
waving guns, frightening our daughter or even our dog. We'll surrender
any time and show you where we are growing the stuff. We want to co-operate
and have our day in court, but we don't want your drama"?
-
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- But how do you get that message to a multi-jurisdictional
police force that is hanging in the woods with binoculars? Do you write
to the sheriff? The State police? Do you contact the federal drug enforcement
administration in Washington? How do you know when you've reached the right
people?
-
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- So what he did was draw up a letter, "You're right.
I'm growing medical marijuana. It's no secret. I've got adrenal cancer.
I've got papers from my doctor. If you want a test case that's fine. We're
not going to resist so don't break down our doors." And he put that
in an envelope and wrote on it "To the Police" and he put it
in the garbage and put the lid on the garbage can.
-
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- And later in court they used that as part of their evidence!
They were pouring through his garbage. I hope they perfumed the thing before
they presented it.
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- But this is how you have to communicate with these people.
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- Sure enough, they busted Steve Kubby. He made the argument
to a jury that under Proposition 215 he has a right to medicinal use. It
was not a unanimous jury verdict. But in this I believe it was 11-1 for
acquittal and so the judge dismissed all the marijuana charges. But he
was found guilty of incidental charges of having a small amount of either--and
this is something they should know but the police can't make up their minds--a
piece of a peyote button or a piece of a psilosybe mushroom stem. They
described it variously as different types in various court proceedings
so nobody is really sure what it is. But he was convicted of this, which
was a misdemeanor. The judge threw it down to a misdemeanor.
-
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- Now, there was another proposition that passed--they
have these ballot initiatives where the citizens get to pass a limited
number of laws--Proposition 36, [no jail time for first-time drug offenders].
Nevertheless, they issued a bench warrant to arrest Steve Kubby to put
him in jail. Without his medical marijuana his doctors believe he would
die. So he had to flee to Canada.
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- As I said I telephoned him last week. And I'll tell you
it was a shock to an American to hear someone say, "We are so happy
to breathe the free air of Canada!"
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- This is what the original idea of the United States was,
that there would be 50 different states, 50 different jurisdictions, and
you would vote with your feet.
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- So maybe now the United States might demonstrate to Canada
that crime rates go down when we allow law-abiding citizens to carry concealed
weapons, as John Lott has demonstrated. Then Canada can demonstrate to
the United States that medical patients can have marijuana and they won't
go mad in the streets.
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- Steve Kubby's story will be in my next book along with
a story about a fellow who had a little zoning problem with the authorities
in New Hampshire. Anyway, that's the kind of thing I write about in my
books.
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-
-
- In the States when we speak about government it often
involves an annual debate about the Second Amendment in the U.S. Constitution.
I really can't discuss the issue without making some reference to that.
It's very short and succinct. It says, "A well-regulated militia being
necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep
and bear arms shall not be infringed."
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- There it comes to an end... for the most of us, but then
we are not lawyers.
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- Here in Canada, parsing the meaning of these particular
precise words in an 18th century sentence is probably less relevant to
whether individuals have a right to bear military-style arms. In fact I
suspect the issue may even be clearer if you are not actually diagramming
18th century sentences. If you ask, what did the Englishmen talk of in
their constitution, when they refer to an unwritten constitution of the
common law, and the rights of the Englishman, which Blackstone of course
defines very well. The notion that Americans have, that if you write it
down then no one can get it wrong, didn't properly foresee Bill Clinton
trying to parse what "is" means. The notion that a lawyer can't
defeat your purpose just because you wrote it down I'm afraid is naÔve.
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- But I'll break it down a bit and talk about it because
questions come up here with some of you listeners about American governance.
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- People just asked me, "What about that militia clause?
It seems to imply that the right to bear arms is only somehow related to
joining a militia unit." And then also, "All these radicals who
think people have a right to own any arm, and are you saying that the guy
across the street should have the right to own a nuclear weapon?"
Those are tough questions. There's a temptation to sidestep them. I've
seen Libertarian political candidates go up and say, "I'm certainly
not going to be calling for the ownership of nuclear weapons in this campaign,
ha ha." And give a little laugh.
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- But that only works to a point. You're sidestepping the
issue, not answering the question. I will answer these and other questions.
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- The first question; is there a right to self-defense?
And if so, why?
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- Now, if the police believe that I've been kidnapping
teenagers on the street and keeping them chained in the basement for illicit
purposes, I think we'd all agree that there would be a legitimate need
for the police to act, and legitimate methods for them to use. They go
to court, get some kind of warrant showing probable cause that a crime
has occurred. They come to the door, they knock on the door and go, "Here's
the warrant. It matches your house number and we suspect a crime has been
committed so you have to let us in to search the place." In civilized
countries there has been a tremendous respect for--and from--people who
live within the system. "You've got a warrant. You've got to come
in." They search, and if they find there's nothing at all in my basement,
they apologize for the mistake. But if there are sex slaves down there
I'll go to prison. But if it was just a Boy Scout troop down there and
someone has misinterpreted what was going on there would be apologies all
round. There doesn't have to be a gun fight and people killed at the wrong
address. They just follow the usual procedures that have been in place
for hundreds of years.
-
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- But what if, and we're seeing this more and more, especially
with the war on drugs in my country, they use the battering ram in the
middle of the night, rush into the house all clad in black and stick German
submachine guns up my nostrils and manhandle and pistol whip the wife and
daughter. And in the process of this military operation, with tanks and
helicopters, burn my house to the ground. If all we have is a right to
life and liberty, then presumably a court could just tell me, "Well,
you're still alive. You're free to go anywhere you want. You still have
your life and liberty. We don't see any cause for action." So it's
a mockery of freedom to say we don't have these ancillary rights; for instance
you no longer have a right to property. It's important to understand the
corrosive effects on society if we don't because then we're telling people
why waste your time building up a marriage, building up a family, building
a house, building an estate, saving your money, maintaining that property,
paying your property tax on it, if they can take it or burn it down with
impunity at any time. You might as well be a hobo who hangs out on the
corner and begs for your new, charming two-dollar coins and consorts with
prostitutes because there's no incentive for you to build anything. This
isn't just theory. Go to the former Soviet Union, go to Eastern Europe.
Look at how things look. Ask those people, "Why inside your apartments
are fairly nice--you've got your Russian icons from your Grandma, etc.--but
on the outside it smells like burnt urine? It's just hideous." And
they'll tell you, "If we made the place look attractive, the first
party member who drove by would go, "This looks like nice place! Tell
Boris to give it to me!" They could take anything they wanted, there
was no right to property, no incentive for anyone to build that society,
to save capital, to invest, all the things that made the western world
a great and wonderful and prosperous free place to live. All these start
to fall apart if you also don't have the right to property, to have a family,
a right to freedom of interference from the government.
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- Where do you we get those rights? Why do we have those
rights? We have those rights because we're not medieval serfs. With the
medieval serfs, the feudal baron of the land could take as much of their
property as he wanted, he could come and take your wife and impregnate
her on your wedding night. The feudal barons ruled the world and the serfs
had basically some inherited rights to fish or pike or pond. But they were
at the mercy of the armed knight, the nobleman who was armed. This went
on for almost a millenium, from the fall of Rome to the middle of the 14th
century. A handful of these guys who were wealthy enough to have the armor
and war weapons, six or eight of them could put down a revolt by every
peasant in the shire because all they had was scythes and pitchforks. It
was hopeless. And so the commoners had no rights. What happened to change
that?
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- We don't think about this enough. Do we really think
there was a dinner party where all the barons in England got together and
one who was a particularly inbred moron said, "Oh I know what! Let
us give up all our power and hand it entirely over to the peasants! Oh
shall we? It will positively vex Mama!"?
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- Something else happened. The commoners won their rights
on the battlefield. At CrÈcy in the 14th century, at Agincourt in
the 15th century. Because what happened? The cream of European knighthood
finds itself drowning in mud under fallen horses, and they've all been
shot dead by a bunch of commoners, a bunch of commoners using the Welch
longbow!
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- It's a boyish hobby to study war I suppose, but I remember
reading a history of CrÈcy and Agincourt and wondering how fast
could they fire those arrows? Apparently they would stick them in the ground--a
quiver on their back--they would pick up an arrow and fire it at considerable
elevation to hit a horseman at 300 yards. And how long before the first
arrow hits did you get your second shot off? I actually asked and did some
research. The answer is astonishing. It's a trick question. By the time
you've fired your sixth arrow the first one hits--six arrows in the air
at a time. Watching those things come at you would be like standing beside
a major airport at night with all the planes stacking up as they come in
to land, you can see their landing lights off towards the horizon. That's
the way those arrows rained down. And of course the noblemen put more and
more money into heavier and heavier armor to try to block the fall of the
arrows, but they couldn't put that much armor on the horse, enough to protect
both the man and the horse. So horses were being hit and killed. They'd
fall over, and the rider couldn't get up wearing all that armor. At Agincourt
they charged across a muddy field, fell off their horses and drowned, stacked
three deep on top of each other.
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- It destroyed what had been a military reality, and thus
a political reality, for nearly a thousand years. Suddenly now they had
to deal with these commoners. What did the British kings and queens do?
They didn't ban the commoners from possessing these dangerous weapons,
which soon of course became muskets and rifles. They required them to practice
with them one Sunday a month. Why? Because that is where they are going
to get their army because England doesn't have the population of the central
European nations. They needed a bunch of commoners who could be called
up on short notice and sent overseas to win these battles.
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- So the commoners start going, "Hey! We've got power
now. They need us." The commoners got their rights, lock, stock, and
barrel, just as Mao Tse-tung said, from the barrel of a rifle. When they
had military usefulness, when the militia became something the land barons
required, they had to bring rights to these soldiers. We got the rights
from the gun. We didn't get the guns from the rights. We got the rights
from weapons of military usefulness.
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- So we come back to this question that I always run into
in the United States, people parsing that sentence, "A well-regulated
militia being necessary to the security of a free state comma the right
of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
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- First it should be said that the introductory clause
is not necessary, as grammarians will tell you. You could say, "The
moon being made of green cheese comma the right of the people to keep and
bear arms shall not be infringed." It would still be fine. You still
wouldn't be able to infringe on the right of people to keep and bear arms
even though we would've been a little bit wrong about the moon. But in
fact it turns out to be more than that problem. "A well-regulated
militia being necessary to the security of a free state." The founders
of the United States were not simple men. They did not put unnecessary
words. What's the word free doing there?
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- Germany didn't need a militia; it had a standing army
that goose-stepped all across Europe. Well, it sort of happens. But a militia
is necessary for the security of a free state. If you want to remain free
you can't allow the central power to have a standing army which can overpower
you and therefore threaten you and frighten you out of trying to claim
your rights. That's what the militia was all about. If you read the debates
from 1787 when the federalists are trying to get the Constitution ratified,
passed and enacted, they are screaming up and down, "Don't worry!"
Daniel Webster, a prominent federalist said, "Don't worry! There is
no way that this central government we're creating will ever enforce unjust
laws by the sword because if they ever tried, a militia of at least a million
in strength will rise up and defeat any army that the central government
could put in the field on any pretext." It was the notion that the
vast number of armed citizens would be able to protect their own liberties.
That's why the United States was built to depend on a militia.
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- People come back on us and say, "You forgot that
it says 'A well-regulated militia' and this must mean that the militia
has to be regulated." They are purposefully misreading what that says.
If you go to a British gunsmith even today and you take him an old Holland-Holland
double rifle and say, "Can you regulate this rifle?" he will
ask you for what distance, for what charge. He will. That's what they ask.
If the two parallel barrels are regulated so they will take .404 Jeffrey
cartridge--where in the old days it might have taken a lead ball and 40
grains of black powder--that means that both barrels will hit the same
target at the distance for which they are regulated--usually sixty yards.
Then that weapon is regulated. It works properly. A well-regulated militia
as used by Andrew Fletcher who in 1698 wrote "A Discourse of Government
with Relation to the Militias" which all the founding fathers of the
United States had read--they refer to it in a lot of their works--pretty
much coined the phrase "A well-regulated militia." It means a
group of people, of men who are practiced in the arts of war, who have
practiced on the weekends so they are familiar with the voice of their
commanding officer, so they know what it means when somebody runs up a
flag, when someone says circle the enemy from the right. They can stand
and load their rifles and fire them. They're well practiced; they're well
regulated. That's what that means.
-
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- But what it's being used for in the United States now
is a completely fraudulent argument, "Oh what it means is a militia
that is regulated by the federal government and we don't have one anymore.
We replaced it with the National Guard." I think Canadian service
is similar. After people have put in a certain number of years of full
time service with the military and they leave, they are encouraged to accept
a small stipend of additional pay for belonging to the National Guard or
the Reserves. One weekend a month they put on their uniforms and go out
and have a little jamboree and do some training, though I don't think they
are buying them ammo anymore to train with. Hilarious. Given the money
our federal government bestows on Israel and Egypt and foreign enclaves
and African kleptocrats, they can't afford practice ammunition for their
troops.
-
-
- But the argument is that the National Guard has replaced
the militia. Therefore there is no longer a need for a citizen's militia
therefore the Second Amendment no longer applies. But what is the test
of reality? How is the National Guard active in crises like Waco, Texas,
(which I have a chapter on in my book)?
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- The Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms is
coming up for a funding hearing in Congress in Washington. The orders go
out to the various branch offices, "Do you have a case you are working
on where we could stage a televised raid and film it and demonstrate the
need for these SWAT capabilities so they won't cut back our funding?"
And the winning bid came in from the Oklahoma City office in the Murrah
Building; "Yes, we're investigating this religious cult so-called
in Waco, Texas. We think they may have illegal weapons." "Good,
that's what we need. Let's stage a big raid. It has to be big; it has to
be impressive because we need more funding from Congress for tanks and
helicopters. We want to really lay it on. We want hundreds of people in
black suits. We want helicopters swooping in. Makes for really good television."
So they went to the National Guard and said, "We need helicopters."
And the Texas National Guard filled up the tanks and said, "There
you go."
-
-
- The notion that the National Guard functions as the militia
that the founding fathers said we would have to resist federal tyranny
is turned 180 degrees on its head. They gassed up the helicopters to help
the ATF swarm this church, fire through the walls killing innocent women
and children, and with the aid of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's
"hostage elimination team" we call it.
-
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- I don't usually like to read aloud, but I'll quote from
Fletcher's 1698 "Discourse of Government with Relation to the Militias"
because it goes so to the heart of this. Fletcher writes:
-
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- "A good militia is of such importance to a nation,
that it is the chief part of the constitution of any free government...
But in the best constitution that ever was, as to all other parts of government,
if the militia be not upon a right foot, the liberty of that people must
perish. The militia of ancient Rome, the best that ever was in any government,
made her mistress of the world: but standing armies enslaved that great
people, and their excellent militia and freedom perished together... The
Swiss at this day are the freest, happiest, and the people of all Europe
who can best defend themselves, because they have the best militia... And
I cannot see why arms should be denied to any man who is not a slave, since
they are the only true badges of liberty; and ought never, but in times
of utmost necessity, to be put into the hands of mercenaries or slaves...
Is it not a shame that any man who possesses an estate, and is at the same
time healthful and young, should not fit himself by all means for the defense
of that, and his country, rather than to pay taxes to maintain a mercenary,
who though he may defend him during a war, will be sure to insult and enslave
him in time of peace."
-
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- That's what these guys were talking about when they talked
about having a militia; that the citizens themselves should be armed and
trained enough in military tactics so they can defend their homes. There
is an argument; "Oh military tactics have changed. Now they require
a great deal of sophistication. You need to know how to fly an F-18 Hornet.
The average Joe who practices with his deer rifle on the weekends, how
is he going to take part in these extremely complex convolutions of the
modern military?" Bulls--t. Call and ask the United States Military
Governor of Vietnam how things are going. That was an army with 19th century
rusty bolt action rifles. Call the Russian Military Governor of Afghanistan
and ask him how he's doin'. Peasant armies with mostly bolt action rifles,
1903 Springfields, Enfields some from the turn of the century, have defeated
these modern military organizations. Why? Because they were defending their
homes.
-
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- Yeah, this militia force, probably not very good for
launching an aggressive war and conquering the oilfields of Kuwait or Iraq,
but for home defense? Quite competent, does a good job even against the
most sophisticated modern armies. Then why are we going overseas and trying
to extend our power? But I don't have to lecture you on that. Canada doesn't
seem to be particularly guilty of that. Americans certainly love to extend
their power.
-
-
-
- The Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership,
a wonderful group run by Aaron Zelman of Hartford, Wisconsin, a suburb
of Milwaukee, picked up some of this dialogue and asked me to send it out
to his subscribers because, I think, people tend to duck these questions.
-
-
- I had a reader write to me, an interesting reader, a
doctor who has left the United States and moved to Canada because of the
war on drugs; he wrote in and asked me, "Why do you always sidestep
the question about what the founding fathers meant by well-regulated militias?
Also, you'd permit citizens to have heat-seeking anti-aircraft missiles
as part of their Second Amendment right. Then why not nuclear bombs?"
These are difficult questions because people cringe, "Geez, am I going
to be stuck saying that the nut who yells at his shopping cart down in
front of the Post Office should be given a nuclear bomb?" It's a challenge.
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- Well, I think we've dealt with the notion of the well-regulated
militia. The people who are using that argument I don't think are being
forthright. Noah Webster said that the government shouldn't be able to
enforce unjust laws with the sword. We've seen that the National Guard
didn't perform as it was supposed to perform in Waco, Texas.
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- The name of our meeting here tonight, That Every Man
Be Armed, is the main object, that every man be armed, that every citizen
must be able to possess weapons of military capability and know how to
use them. I'm paraphrasing, but that was the argument with the founding
fathers; if you want this constitution approved for a strong central government
in Washington you have to guarantee us that the people will maintain a
pragmatic veto, which is military arms, over the usurpation of a strong
central government that might want to take away our liberties. And phooey
on this notion that it won't happen here. It's just in the nature of people
who seek power that they always want more power. They think they know better
than we do how to run our lives. And if you've ever had a run-in with a
bureaucrat who is telling you that you are violating a very important zoning
code by painting your door the wrong colour, they're adamant that they're
there on behalf of all people who have decided that your door should be
brown and there's just no arguing with them; they think they know best.
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- Now onto the next question which is a conundrum, a challenge
for a lot of people. It's really easier to answer in the United States
because if you believe our founding documents, the Declaration of Independence
and the Constitution, they make it clear. The central government is created
by the people. It only has those rights which are delegated by the people.
So how does Harry Truman get the right to drop a bomb on everybody in Japan?
If he hasn't been put on trial for murder, then maybe we can presume that
he had some kind of right to possess and use a nuclear weapon. It had to
be delegated to him by the people of the United States. You cannot delegate
a right that you don't possess. Therefore the people of the United States,
both individually and as a group, have a right to possess a nuclear weapon.
How else could they delegate it to the government?
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- You can take the opposite argument, and people are entitled
to arguments from principle, believe me. But people go, "Uhphh"
because we're used to arguing by pragmatism. We're used to utilitarian
arguments. "Boy, this is not going to work out because it's not going
to be a nice thing to let the guy across the street have nuclear weapons."
So we come up with some rationale to curb that right. But you have to realize
that when you are arguing from pragmatism, using the utilitarian argument,
then you are no longer arguing from principle. I'll discuss that in a second.
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- But the only alternative is to say central government
begins with all power and it then delegates to its slaves, its serfs, only
those rights which it wants us to have. Consider it a model on how governments
can be organized. It's not to be confused; one or the other. There isn't
really any middle ground.
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- Now, let's acknowledge that there aren't many of us who
would want to own a nuclear weapon. There aren't many private persons who
would be able to afford it. The very few who have an interest know how
to find what they want. You think that criminals don't have guns? You think
our desire to keep these things away from certain people stands as a deterrent?
Of course not. There's bartering going on for nuclear warheads from the
former Soviet Union in the markets of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan even as
we speak. To say, like in medieval times that it is treason to reveal the
secret of gunpowder--these are fantasies. You cannot keep a chain on the
bomb forever. It's an impossible goal, to stop the proliferation of nuclear
weapons. School children write papers now on how to structure a plutonium
core. It's absurd to think we can keep these secrets out of the hands of
people.
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- So what's going on with this argument? "So you think
the nut pushing his shopping cart through the streets should have a nuclear
weapon?" What they are trying to do is engage you in an argument from
utilitarianism, make you prove a need, and then start you backing up. "Ok.
I want to seem reasonable. Ok, ban nuclear weapons."
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- Then, germ warfare. "Eee--yeah."
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- Poison gas? "Ok, ban it."
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- 155 mm canon? "Don't have room for that in the backyard."
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- There's no need for private individuals to have helicopters.
"No."
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