The natives are restless

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Tue, 14 Aug 2001 13:03:34 GMT

FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED AUG. 14, 2001
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
The natives are restless

"As key Democrats and Republicans huddled behind closed doors trying to break an impasse over a proposed new Tennessee income tax, 2,000 protesters rushed up the Capitol steps, screaming, 'No means no!' and smashing a few windows," the Los Angeles Times reported from Nashville in mid-July.

"It was a bona fide tax revolt, and it worked. ... The tax-thwarting protest was the handiwork of two talk show hosts who took to the airwaves and put out an urgent S.O.S. ..."

Next, coming on the heels of the successful Tennessee revolt, "Taxpayers in Tennessee's parent state of North Carolina held their own protest ... during which they tossed teabags at legislators and gained the upper hand on Democratic lawmakers who are pushing for a dramatic tax hike," wrote Andrew Cline, managing editor of the Carolina Journal, last week for the National Review online (www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-cline080301.shtml.)

"They just keep raising taxes," Cline quoted one protester, as "About 1,000 North Carolina taxpayers rallied behind the state legislative building on Tuesday for a 'Tar Heel Tea Party' in hopes of halting in its tracks a nearly $600 million tax increase proposed by the Democrats who control both houses of the state legislature and the governor's mansion. ..."

Is something happening here? And if so, why is the news so well hidden by much of America's print media?

"If this was a groundswell around the nation to have bottle bills, it would be the cover of Time magazine, 'Bottle Bill Mania Sweeps the Country,' comments Grover Norquist of the Washington-based think tank Americans for Tax Reform.

Print coverage may have been less thorough than broadcast coverage of these events for three reasons, surmise Mr. Norquist and John Hood, of North Carolina's John Locke Foundation, which helped promote the North Carolina event.

First, the events are happening far from Washington, D.C., from which many of the nation's news desks now operate. It's easier for the cable TV networks to pick up colorful footage of protesters dressed as grim reapers or colonial Minutemen and beam them around the country in minutes than for deskbound editors to dispatch reporters to seldom-visited locales like Nashville and Raleigh during the understaffed summer.

Second, the more hidebound media outlets tend to be pro-government and pro-tax in their outlook -- there may be evidencing a subconscious reluctance to give credence to such groundswells.

And last, these events are being promoted by talk radio hosts. Some in the print media are still reluctant to acknowledge the growing upscale audience of these radio stations in the cell phone era, and also still look down on them as unworthy competitors "leading the hunt for the black helicopters."

But why are the protests happening in the first place?

"In history class we learned about rising expectations," replies Mr. Norquist of ATR. "People revolt not when the French king is at his most Draconian, but when the French king is loosening up, liberalizing. Then people say, "Well, we want more of this," Similarly when we cut taxes we remind people that it's possible to cut taxes. ...

Federal spending has fallen from 22 percent of GNP to 18 percent today, while the percentage of the nation's economic output being consumed state and local spending has grown from 9 to 12 percent over the past 20 years, Mr. Norquist notes.

"So thanks to the victory in the Cold War, thanks to welfare reform, thanks to some restraint from the Republican Congress ... that's almost a 25 percent cut in the size of the federal government as a percentage of the economy. There has been no state that has done anything close to that level of reform. ..."

"Six percent of the nation's GDP is spent on education, and private schools spend half what government schools do (per student.) So ... you could drop state and local spending by a quarter just by getting state government schools as cost-effective as private schools ... I think that people are coming to demand of state and local governments the reforms that they've seen in the past six years in Washington. ..."

Norquist identifies Florida, Arizona, Colorado and Texas -- but not Nevada under Gov. Kenny Guinn, who he declines to identify as a fiscal innovator -- as states where Republican dominance in both statehouses and governors' mansions could soon bring that kind of cost-cutting to the local level.

"Tax reform, tort reform, property rights -- it's Reagan and Gingrich brought down to the local level. After Reagan was elected it took 14 years to have Reaganism take over the House and Senate, and now that's finally being pushed down into the state level. ...

"People are growing impatient, because they're not seeing those kinds of reform at the local level. So in those states that are refusing to reform, that are in fact moving in the wrong direction with new tax hikes like Tennessee and North Carolina, you're seeing riots."

Successful riots.

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Subscribe to his monthly newsletter by sending $72 to Privacy Alert, 561 Keystone Ave., Suite 684, Reno, NV 89503 -- or dialing 775-348-8591. His book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available at 1-800-244-2224.

Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com

"When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right." -- Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926)

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken

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Quotes

Government doesn't work. Never did. Never will. Can't. But there are lots of good people. Love them.

-- Bill St. Clair

The Atlanta Declaration

Every man, woman, and responsible child has an unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission.

-- L. Neil Smith

Reread that pesky first clause of the Second Amendment. It doesn't say what any of us thought it said. What it says is that infringing the right of the people to keep and bear arms is treason. What else do you call an act that endangers "the security of a free state"? And if it's treason, then it's punishable by death. I suggest due process, speedy trials, and public hangings.

-- L. Neil Smith

A Penalty Clause for the Bill of Rights

Any official, appointed or elected, at any level of government, who attempts, through legislative act or other means, to nullify, evade, or avoid the provisions of the first ten amendments to this Constitution, or of the Thirteenth Amendment, shall be summarily removed from office, and, upon conviction, deprived of all pay and benefits including pension, and sentenced to imprisonment for life.

-- L. Neil Smith

Based on 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, and some of its own empirical work, the panel couldn't identify a single gun control regulation that reduced violent crime, suicide or accidents.

-- John Lott, commenting on the National Academy of Sciences report on gun control laws.

Who is a libertarian?

Zero Aggression Principle ("Zap")

"A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim."

-- L. Neil Smith

(Formerly called the "Non-Aggression Principle", or "NAP")

Why Did It Have to be... Guns?

Make no mistake: all politicians -- even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership -- hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it's an X-ray machine. It's a Vulcan mind-meld. It's the ultimate test to which any politician -- or political philosophy -- can be put.

If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash -- for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you.

If he isn't genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking home without asking anybody's permission, he's a four-flusher, no matter what he claims.

What his attitude -- toward your ownership and use of weapons -- conveys is his real attitude about you. And if he doesn't trust you, then why in the name of John Moses Browning should you trust him?

-- L. Neil Smith

Concise

"Tell me," I was once asked, "What do you think about gun control? Give me the short answer." To which I replied, "If you try to take our firearms we will kill you."

-- Mike Vanderboegh

Also from The Atlanta Declaration:

... like going to the bathroom, breathing, eating, sleeping, or making love, it turns out that self-defense is a bodily function one cannot safely or effectively delegate to a second party.

-- L. Neil Smith

This does not mean that "Marijuana should be available by prescription." It means that morphine sulfate should be available in five pound bags at the supermarket for a couple of bucks, like sugar... but probably in a different aisle, to avoid confusion.

-- Vin Suprynowicz

If you refuse to pay unjust taxes, your property will be confiscated. If you attempt to defend your property, you will be arrested. If you resist arrest, you will be clubbed. If you defend yourself against clubbing, you will be shot dead. These procedures are known as the Rule of Law.

-- Edward Abbey

The state can only survive as long as a majority is programmed to believe that theft isn't wrong if it's called taxation or asset forfeiture or eminent domain, that assault and kidnapping isn't wrong if it's called arrest, that mass murder isn't wrong if it's called war.

-- Bill St. Clair