LEVER ACTION -- ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTES -- by L. Neil Smith -- Delivered at the Libertarian Party National Convention Salt Lake City, Utah, September 3, 1993 -- Good morning, Comrade Libertarians. I am the author of _The Probability Broach, The Venus Belt, Their Majesties' Bucketeers, The Nagasaki Vector, Tom Paine Maru, The Gallatin Divergence, Lando Calrissian and the MindHarp of Sharu, Lando Calrissian and the FlameWind of Oseon, Lando Calrissian and the StarCave of ThonBoka, The WarDove_, without Lando Calrissian, _BrightSuit MacBear, Taflak Lysandra, Contact and Commune, Converse and Conflict, Concert and Cosmos, The Crystal Empire, Henry Martyn_, and _Pallas_, 18 novels -- and I've always wanted to do that -- 16 of which have found their way into print with publishers like Random House/Del Rey, Berkley/Ace, Avon, Warner Communications, and Tor/St. Martin's Press. Many of them have been published in Europe. _Pallas_ is forthcoming this November. And _Concert and Cosmos_ was canceled by its publisher for political incorrectness. (What publisher? That was Warner Communications. For what it's worth, _Pallas_, forthcoming in November, was very nearly canceled for the same reason.) I have written stories and articles for publications including _Stellar Science Fiction Stories, Alternatives, New Libertarian_, Marvel Comics, _Guns, Nomos_, Laissez Faire, _LP News, Colorado Liberty, Reason-Frontlines, APAlogia_, and _The Orange County Register_. And yes, I am an unsung, but ridiculously well-paid, source of gags for cartoonists like "Frank & Ernest"'s Bob Thaves, "Ziggy"'s Tom Wilson, Bunny Host of "The Lockhorns" and _Parade_ Magazine, Doug Sneyd of _Playboy_, Chon Day of _The New Yorker_ ... and our own Rex F. May, better known as "Baloo", of _Liberty, National Review_, and _The Wall Street Journal_. It's a fact that I'm known primarily as a science fiction writer, and a fact like that is likely to be regarded differently by different people, mostly depending on whether they read SF themselves or not. One thing science fiction writers are known for, justifiably or not, is an ability to predict the future. This ability, if it exists, doesn't rely on tea leaves, Ouija boards, or crystals, but on identifying and extrapolating significant historical, technological, social, political, and economic trends. Sometimes SF writers do a very bad job. In the 60s, for example, _Star Trek_ predicted genetic wars and interstellar travel by 1996 -- although it _is_ more common for science fiction writers to err on the conservative side. Science fiction writers failed to predict meteor craters on Mars, for example, although in retrospect it should have been obvious that the planet would be lousy with them. While forecasting commuter aviation and the video telephone for decades, neither of which have fully materialized yet, they failed to predict the invention and subsequent cultural importance of the pocket calculator. Future-predicting is not an SF writer's primary job; accurate prediction may be the _last_ thing he really wants. It's clear that _Brave New World_ and _1984_ represent predictions Aldous Huxley and George Orwell hoped would never come true. They hoped making predictions like that would _prevent_ them from coming true. Nevertheless, when they make predictions, and their predictions are on target, science fiction writers can be forgiven if they take pride in what they've done, especially if some _method_ was involved, rather than mere random shots in the dark. In the first story I ever wrote, I predicted the invention of the digital watch. Regrettably, by the time the story sold ... 10 years later ... digital watches were old news. In my second novel, _The Venus Belt_, I predicted the violent turn recently taken by the "right to life" movement. And in my fourth book, _The Nagasaki Vector_, pursuing a line of reasoning anyone familiar with Ludwig von Mises would recognize, I predicted collapse of the Soviet Union and the kind of fighting we're seeing now in Yugoslavia, formerly- Soviet Georgia, and other places. My Random House editor, a conservative "expert" on Soviet affairs, dismissed this prediction at the time as "wishful thinking". A few years ago, at the height of his public approval as the remote-control hero of "The War to Make the World Safe for Backward Middle Eastern Monarchies" (formerly known as "The War to Reelect the President"), I predicted the electoral defeat of George Bush in an article which eventually found its way, something like my first short story, into _LP News_. I also predicted that his defeat -- rather the foolish failure of principle which was the _cause_ of his defeat -- would place a third party on the political map. I never imagined for a moment that the third party would not be ours, but that of a miniature Mussolini like Ross Perot. ***** It's possible that you've surmised by now that I'm about to offer you some political advice. And, quite aside from my ability as a soothsayer, in which you should place no great stock because I don't myself, you may be wondering about my political credentials. Well, I've been a Libertarian for 32 years, since 1961, when I was 14 and I committed myself to what I estimated then would be a 75-year struggle to liberate America from the clutches of "mysticism, altruism, and collectivism". One reason I evolved the strategy I plan to advocate this morning is that gun ownership brought me into the Party. Not the movement -- that was Ayn Rand's novels -- but watching the legislative steamroller derby that followed the killing of Bobby Kennedy. I saw what was coming and was sickened by the way people allow themselves to be herded by corrupt media and collectivist politicians willing to use _any tragedy_, even the murder of one of their own (or _especially_ the murder of one of their own), as a stepping-stone to advancing their agenda. As soon as I heard there was a Libertarian Party, I was in. Now in 1993 when I am 47 and that 75 years isn't quite halfway over yet, although I get just as discouraged as you do at times, my general view is that considering what's at stake, and the sheer inertia of a society of more than 250 million people -- and despite many recent setbacks (which I think represent hysteria on the part of our enemies who _know_ that time is running out for them) -- we're doing respectably well in all the areas that count. And in fact, my original three- quarter century estimate may have been a trifle pessimistic. Although I've held responsible positions internal to the LP at county, state, and national levels, I've run for public office only once, in 1978, for the Colorado House of Representatives. My Republican opponent was running for his seventh term, unopposed by any Democrat, and was Speaker of the House. I issued six press releases and delivered four speeches (or it may have been the other way around, I can never remember), two of them on the radio. I spent $44, 36 of which was for campaign brochures produced by the '78 Colorado Party which I didn't want and never used. So you could say my effective campaign expenses amounted to $8.00. (Just think what would've happened if I'd spent 16 ...) On the basis of advice that we were given at the time by "older, wiser heads", I did everything wrong. I never wore a tie (unlike this morning; I'm wearing this to remind you that Rush Limbaugh only _thinks_ he's the most dangerous man in America), I wore an old leather sports jacket and my shirt open at the collar. While the rest of that year's repertory company wore nondescript blue suits and mumbled their extemporaneous way through three-minute allotments at the League of Women Voters or the Association of University Women, I gave a humorous _prepared_ speech consisting mostly of projected grocery prices in a society unburdened by taxes or economic regulation. I made a calculated habit of putting my _worst foot forward_, always starting with the Libertarian position on guns whenever I was speaking with liberal groups, and with our position on drugs when I was speaking with conservatives. For those genuinely interested, I'll go into my reasons for having done that, for the method behind the madness, another time. Just now, let me tell you the results: (1) I was the only candidate that year who made an eyebrow rise, who got a groan, a moan, a boo, a cheer, a hiss, a chuckle, or a belly- laugh, some of them even in the right places, from his audiences; (2) a Republican running for county commissioner confessed to me that he'd been afraid to utter the words "private property" before I entered the race -- he won and only recently retired from many years of uttering them where it really counts; (3) local officials of both major parties quietly took me aside, asked me to "give up this Libertarian nonsense" and be their party's candidate next time; (4) I won 10 times the percentage of the vote ever taken by any Colorado Libertarian in a 2, 3, or 23-way race, a record which stood afterward for many years; (5) the '78 Colorado Party spent most of those many years inventing alibis to account for my accomplishment without giving up any of the cherished -- totally ineffective but cherished -- methods which my campaign had discredited; (6) having conducted my experiment and seen the results dismissed as unesthetic and inconvenient, I never ran for office again, but left the LP for 13 years to pursue more productive things -- including writing those 18 novels which, employing exactly the same methods I developed during my '78 electoral campaign, have brought thousands of people into the Libertarian movement. They call me every week. They write me. I hear from them. ***** However, having predicted invention of the digital watch, anti-abortion violence, collapse of the Soviet Empire, defeat of Bush, and the role of a third party in that defeat, I've come back to the LP now because of something I deeply regret having predicted correctly, in _Concert and Cosmos_, the novel that was canceled for political incorrectness, and that is the spectacle of America functioning as a last bastion, not of private capitalism as many of us expected that it might, but of _Marxism_ which, having failed everywhere else, still reigns supreme in American academia, mass media, Congress, and the current administration. America faces terrible danger and the LP -- unprecedented opportunity. I've offered my credentials here as a writer and political observer, but my best credential is that I know more about the issues I'm about to discuss than anybody else, in or out of the LP, because I have dealt with them longer and in greater detail. I call your attention now to _three facts_ with a potential to alter the course of American, and therefore human, history. The first is that the LP has never won a million votes in a presidential election. Our first presidential candidate John Hospers ran in 1972 and got a few thousand votes. In terms like these, the only terms that count, we have never been a successful party, climbing slowly in our totals, maxing out at around 900,000 in 1980 with the Clark campaign, which had no less than five million bucks to throw around, and doing progressively less well ever since. There are reasons for this. Rather than creating its own unique style and structure, consistent with the content of its ideas, the LP tried to imitate others and strove for some vague appearance of respectability. This was a mistake. The LP failed to differentiate itself from conservative Republicans -- except by imitating liberal Democrats in the Clark campaign. This was another mistake. And the LP never decided who its customers are -- and that was the worst mistake of all. It is wrong, it is infantile, to petulantly shake our little fists at the two-party system or the networks or their current beneficiaries and blame them for our failures. In 1992 Ross Perot proved once again, as Norman Thomas and half a dozen others did before him, that a third party can indeed alter the course of American, and therefore human, history without electing anyone to office, simply through a fear on the part of the established parties that somebody from a third party might actually get elected. This phenomenon, Comrade Libertarians, is called "competition", and we're supposed to be the experts on it. It's true that Perot had a couple of things going for him -- like three and a half gigabucks and the "general, unfocused anger of the populace" as Ted Koppel puts it. His disadvantages were: all the money in the world won't buy you _content_; and he didn't dare try to _focus_ that anger (he doesn't dare today) because the instant he does he will lose supporters at one end of the conventional spectrum or the other. In short (nothing personal, Ross) he can't make policy because he can't afford to differentiate himself along any lines other than his own shriveled little personality. On the other hand, differentiation will be _our_ salvation and stock-in-trade. In the future, we will present ourselves, as we are uniquely entitled to do, not just as the purveyors of the wildest political ideas around (as true as that is, and as much as it may appeal to us on occasion) nor as respectably empty clones in sincere blue suits, but as the _only legitimate heirs to the Founding Fathers_. The first step to achieving that kind of differentiation is "preaching to the choir" (as my wife points out, they're the only ones who show up in church reliably) gathering every precious, sorely-needed individual who already agrees with us. We haven't ever tried to do that. Instead, we have sent out mixed signals, alienating real individualists with one unprincipled, ill-advised attempt after another to court uncertain allies at both ends of the spectrum, trying to please too wide an audience, too many people at a time. The result is our increasingly poor showing at the polls, and a feeling that whatever votes we do get may have no more meaning than chimpanzees pulling our lever at random. The next step is to decide who our customers really are -- or who our real customers are. And what that amounts to is selecting an ideologically amenable group that suffers more from government excesses than any other (or is about to), suffers less from any illusion that a major party will help them, and has nothing to lose by switching to a third party -- to us -- and, within principle, to go after them with all our heart and all our soul and all our might. Which brings us to the _second fact_ with a potential to alter the course of American, and therefore human, history: the Republican Party has been trying, at least since 1988, to "broaden its appeal" by "moving toward the center", a process which consists of dumping traditional constituencies that Republican leadership perceive as "marginal" in terms of social acceptability or political correctness. Foremost among those marginal constituencies are gun owners. Consider the following ... Sarah and Jim Brady, those mavens of victim disarmament (and by the way, don't say "gun control" any more, say "victim disarmament") -- Sarah and Jim are REPUBLICANS. Sarah still calls herself a "conservative". John Chaffee, Senator from Rhode Island who introduced a bill last year to confiscate every pistol and revolver in the United States of America, is a REPUBLICAN. George F. Will, columnist, theorist, and REPUBLICAN, demanded repeal of the Second Amendment months before Michael Gartner, the "ultraliberal former president of NBC news". Please remember that, the next time you see an NRA commercial. William Bennett, former REPUBLICAN Secretary of Education & Drug Czar (pardon me, that's "WAR on Drugs Czar") calls for banning "assault weapons" -- and I guess this is the place to tell you, if you don't know, that these "assault weapons" bills are invariably written to include the .25 automatic in your mom's purse, the .45 your dad brought home from Korea, the .22 rifle you learned to shoot with, and the shotgun over your mantelpiece. But their real goal is to outlaw that precise class of weapons most useful in controlling government. Pete Wilson, REPUBLICAN governor of California, cheerfully allowed that state's Roberti-Roos "assault weapon" law to pass when he could have vetoed it -- and he's by no means any worse than his predecessor, REPUBLICAN George Dukmejian. Speaking of Republican Georges, REPUBLICAN George Bush began his first campaign whimpering about small revolvers, and later betrayed the Second Amendment with an edict against imported "assault weapons". It should never be forgotten that the Waco massacre was _rehearsed_ during Republican George's administration. REPUBLICANS of the New Jersey Senate refused to repeal that state's ban on semiautomatic "assault weapons". REPUBLICANS of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee and later the entire U.S. Senate approved the appointment of _Jackboot Janet_ Reno despite her publicly stated wish to confiscate every private weapon in America. William F. Buckley, REPUBLICAN novelist, syndicated columnist, host of_Firing Line_, and editor of _National Review_, is said to have endorsed the Brady Bill. Jack Kemp, the Great White Hope of REPUBLICAN conservatism demanded on a recent CBS _Face the Nation_, a universal ban on semiautomatic "assault weapons". And even Rush Limbaugh, "the most Republican man in America", although he pays occasional lip service to the Second Amendment, is good friends with Jack Kemp and an outright toady to Bill Bennett. Rush was a towering mountain of _Jello_ all through the Waco siege. Those examples are just off the top of my head and careful research will expose many more. But to get this picture hanging straight on the wall, Comrade Libertarians, during the time when the dump-the- marginals strategy was being cooked up, REPUBLICAN Chairman Lee Atwater, who is, I'm happy to report, finally a _good_ politician, stated that Republicans could afford to ignore gun people, who would vote Republican no matter what, because where else were they gonna go? I propose to hold a seance and tell him! The _third fact_ with a potential to alter the course of American, and therefore human, history is this: as a direct result of the Republicans' feeble-minded, self-destructive "strategy" of moving to the center by dumping marginal constituencies, Republican George _lost_ in 1992 by a number of votes smaller than that of the "marginal" number of single- issue gun-owners. Let me repeat that -- it doesn't seem to have ... I seem to have phrased it wrong: the number of single-issue gun voters is _greater_ than the number of votes George Bush lost by. ***** Okay, to recapitulate: Libertarians have never won a million votes; Republicans are dumping voters they consider unfashionable; Republican George lost the election by fewer votes than the number he dumped. The next question is, what can we do with these facts? Can we use them in some way to change the course of American, and therefore human, history? There are 65 million gun people in America. Twenty million of them report that they have occasional political feelings on the subject. Five million of them are single-issue voters. Only half of them are represented by the National Rifle Association, owing to hideous blunders and failures of courage on its part which make the LP's blunders and failures resemble tactical genius. Let me give you just an example, okay? They needed desperately to get the word out -- they wanted new members and so forth ... at enormous expense, they got themselves an uplink, got themselves a satellite channel -- and _encrypted_ it. Gun people are an angry, desperate folk to whom we can appeal without any loss of integrity as long as we make it clear -- and I always do -- that the price of our support is the practice on their part of tolerance for those they despise. We can get between 5 and 20 million votes in the next general election simply by _asking_ for them. But until now, we have not asked in the right way. Which is where _differentiation_ comes in. In 1996, the LP can make as influential a showing as Perot did in 1992 if we keep our heads, remember who our real customers are, stick to our guns -- and theirs -- whether it's fashionable or not, and _differentiate_ ourselves. We can't afford to compromise on even the slightest detail. A willingness to accept anything less than total victory _generates_ the very self-destructive psychology from which Republicans and the NRA chronically suffer and which, I might add, got us into this mess in the first place. A Libertarian refusal to sell our principles out is the one thing -- _the one and _only_ thing_ -- that differentiates us from all the others in this arena. It is the reason, in the end, that gun people will come to trust us when others have proven untrustworthy. The case against Democrats is self-evident; no effort is required to differentiate ourselves here. The hard work is differentiating ourselves from Republicans, and what we're up against is a long-held reputation they have -- which they fail increasingly to deserve -- for legislative friendliness to gun people. And there is the more serious matter of the NRA's slavish attitude toward Republicans and its suicidal unwillingness to make endorsements on any rational basis whatever. What we have to fight with, in addition to our unique determination to operate strictly from principle, is (A) increasing liberal pressure on gun people, (B) widespread angry disappointment with the NRA among its own membership, and (C) that growing list of Republican betrayals (the morons hand us more ammunition every day) which offer the makings of countless inexpensive advertisements -- in _Guns & Ammo, Women & Guns, The American Rifleman_, and so forth -- advertisements which will yield 5 to 20 million votes, _if they're done correctly_. ***** Long ago at an LP regional conference, held in this city I think, I heard Ralph Raico give a talk which touched on the differences between Libertarians, liberals, and conservatives. Ralph asked us to imagine an archetypal "little old man in a raincoat", whose only human contact and pleasure in life is a dirty movie, a dirty magazine, an occasional moment with a prostitute. Ralph pointed out that a conservative's first, instinctive reaction to this kind of abject misery is a desire to _add_ to it, to take even those meager pleasures away, because, in the innermost recesses of their souls (and this is what differentiates _them_ from Libertarians), conservatives are _mean_. Now, if you call yourself a conservative and you _don't_ feel this way, it's likely that you've misidentified yourself somewhere along the line or are in imminent danger of becoming one of _us_. If you believe that Ralph was wrong, just think about Pat Buchanan -- or better yet, read his autobiography: conservatives are ever on the lookout for new people to hurt and new excuses for hurting them. Nothing tickles them more than hearing that somebody's just been gassed or fried up at the Big House. I report this without rancor, as a fact of reality that we have, for better or worse, to deal with (I mean that sort of generically). In fact it's this basic meanness which, projected onto others -- conservative meanness projected onto others psychologically -- that gives rise to many of their uniquely conservative policies. (I've often said that conservatives tend to think all individuals are just a little bit _evil_, whereas liberals tend to think all individuals are just a little bit _stupid_. Guess it's a matter of projection on the part of the liberals, too -- but I digress.) There is a sci-fi cliche (and "sci-fi", by the way, is not the same thing as "SF") splendidly beaten to death by Don Adams of _Get Smart_, that goes to the effect: "If only he'd used his genius for good, instead of evil." My plan, Comrade Libertarians, is to use conservative _meanness_ for good instead of evil. Here it comes, I think: I used to believe the LP was in such bad shape because, having failed to hurt our enemies, it was only human to turn and hurt each other. Unlike other parties, Libertarians were, theoretically, less interested in gaining power, either personal or collective, than in achieving certain results -- which, unfortunately, always tended to be couched in excessively abstract terms, such as, "creating a free society", and were therefore rather difficult to pursue, let alone achieve. It's very well to argue over doctrinal details; I've done it myself and I won't apologize. It made us the unique entity we are, the Party of Principle. It's well to say that we want a free society, but it's too general. Whereas it's bad to focus on elections for their own sake until you're willing to lie, cheat, or steal to get votes: that tendency, along with the endless factional backbiting and nitpicking that occur whenever small-minded people struggle over minuscule amounts of power, was the reason I got out of the Party 13 years ago, and, as you can see from its obvious lack of results, it didn't work anyway. Which was only one of my _lesser_ objections to it. Now, I think that the problem all along might simply have been _lack of an achievable mission_ -- and I also believe that our enemies have finally handed us one that will put us on the map in an unprecedented way, while making life a little more livable for each of us, every day, from now on. It's something that almost all of us can agree to and it'll give most of us something useful to do, which will minimize the internecine gouging which has all but destroyed us. This is where "using meanness for good instead of evil" comes in: remember how conservatives are always looking for new people to hurt and new excuses to hurt them? Well, let's _give_ them somebody to hurt. From now on, don't just say the LP will do this or the LP will do that. Why should anybody listen to that? Why should they believe us? People _do_ listen to questions, however, and they _will_ believe the answers they supply for themselves. So whenever you get a chance -- or better yet, whenever you _make_ one -- it might be well to begin something like this: "Will the _Republicans_ promise to veto all future victim disarmament legislation?" Sort of a standard, predictable opening gambit. Then how about: "Will the _Republicans_ promise to repeal, nullify, or otherwise dispose of (I like that phrase, "otherwise dispose of") every victim disarmament law -- not one of which is constitutional -- presently on the books? "Will the _Republicans_ promise to decriminalize the act of self-defense, so that it no longer costs, on average, your entire life savings to defend yourself from the state, once you've successfully defended yourself from a freelance criminal? "Will the _Republicans_ promise to arrest any senator, congressman, state legislator, county commissioner, or city councilman who introduces, sponsors, or votes for victim disarmament legislation, and throw him in jail where he belongs? "Will the _Republicans_ promise to do the same with sheriffs, chiefs of police, mayors, governors, and _presidents_ who enforce these unconstitutional laws?" And at last, now you can ask: "Then why the hell are you still voting for _Republicans_? And why are you still waiting for the NRA to help, when the Libertarian Party, with its perfectly unbroken record of uncompromising commitment to the Second Amendment, can do more than merely _promise_ -- if you'll simply give us the _power_ to do all of these things, by giving us your _vote_? And now you can say: "The Libertarian Party is grimly determined to put Jackboot Janet Reno, Howard Metzenbaum, and every one of their gun-grabbing, criminal co-conspirators behind bars where they belong -- if not today, then tomorrow, if not tomorrow, then next year, and if not next year, then five years from now, or ten years from now, or twenty -- because if it's good enough for Simon Wiesenthal, it's good enough for us. "_There can be no statute of limitations on crimes against the Bill of Rights!_" But wait, there's more: "If Metzenbaum should have the bad manners to croak before we can get to him, then we'll dig him up, wherever he may be, and replant him in a prison graveyard. And once we're done with Howie, and with repealing, nullifying, or otherwise disposing of every victim disarmament law in America, we'll go on to Canada, to Japan, and to England and take _their_ victim disarmament laws away from them, because we're sick and tired of being beaten over the head with them -- and because we have friends in Canada, Japan, and England who have rights." Now: does that sound mean enough for you, Comrade Libertarians? Think we can get a few million single-issue voters to go for it? Think something like that may just alter the course of American, and therefore human, history? And isn't it better than getting only 900,000 votes? Or 400,000? Or 200,000? And the broader result? Well to begin with, it shouldn't be too awkward to widen our agenda from uncompromising enforcement of the Second Amendment to equally uncompromising enforcement of all the rest. To put it another way, let me suggest that, quote, "putting the civility back into civilization through the most stringent enforcement possible of the highest law of the land, the Bill of Rights", unquote, is better-delineated, more achievable, and of more suitably limited scope than anything we've ever tried before. I repeat: _"Putting the civility back into civilization through the most stringent enforcement possible of the highest law of the land, the Bill of Rights"._ It also _recreates_ the LP as the hard-headed, no-nonsense party of Law and Order. Or, we could just say: "stringent enforcement of the Bill of Rights". Or, we could say, as often and as publicly as we can: "_Bill of Rights Enforcement_". (You can almost hear Jack Webb say that.) "_Bill of Rights Enforcement_". From now on, whenever I'm asked, "Bill of Rights enforcement" is _the_ mission statement of the Libertarian Party. Since the Bill of Rights defines American political life, and is the centerpiece of our common heritage (it is, after all, the only thing that keeps us from being the world's largest banana republic), this simple mission is much likelier to be shared by other voters and clearly understood -- even by the mass media -- than anything we've ever offered before. Bill of Rights Enforcement. Norman Thomas never got elected to anything, dear Comrade Libertarians, but the Democrats, mortally afraid that he would, adopted more and more of his platform until he didn't have to. We Libertarians can _force_ the Republicans and the NRA to begin co-opting _our_ platform, too. And I, for one, would be perfectly happy if that happened, because all I want out of this is a free society! In the end we can expect one of two outcomes: a coup like Norman Thomas pulled off, the Republicans forced to straighten up and fly right -- in effect _becoming_ the LP the same way the Democrats had to _become_ the Socialist Party -- or (and I suppose we could all regard this as the worst case) Libertarians becoming a political power in their own right, and more importantly, _on their own terms_, beginning with a paltry few million votes that the Republicans were planning to throw away, anyway. ***** Non-Libertarians always complain that we never explain (and probably have no concept of) how to get "there" from "here". Well, I'll _tell_ you how to get there from here. Hell, I've been telling you for the last 15 years. Never let a local gun show go by (hundreds are listed every weekend in the _Shotgun News_) without a table offering Libertarian literature and conversation. Never let a local gun shop go without a friendly monthly visit, and lots of literature. Never let a demand for more victim disarmament go unanswered on radio, TV, or in the newspaper. Never let your answers be compromising or timid. Always offer more (and for those of you who're taking notes, this is the part you're supposed to write down) always offer more, within principle, than the competition can bring itself to offer. You will note, here, that I have just redefined the word, "radical": always offer more, within principle, than the competition can bring itself to offer. When the NRA offers so-called automatic concealed carry permits -- which are a big thing right now -- Libertarians must offer "Vermont Carry": no concealed carry law of any kind, whatever. Stop being a hypocrite. Stop thinking about it. Stop talking about it. If you don't already have one, it's time to get a gun and learn to shoot. _NOW!_ And then teach somebody else. For preference, somebody in academia or the media. In and of themselves (and there's no way for a non-gun-owner to know this, okay; it's like sex, or having a baby, or something like that) gun-use and gun ownership are astonishingly contagious and persuasive -- in and of themselves -- and far more effective than any hundred campaigns or candidates. Above all, if for some reason you can't do any of these things, _for the love of liberty, don't deprive those of us who _can_ of the tools we need to do the job!_ If I were an undercover federal agent -- or being paid by the Republican National Committee -- I couldn't think of a more agreeably suicidal notion to urge on Libertarians than to eliminate the Non-Aggression Pledge and water down the platform. If we tolerate this bastardization of our principles, we will lose the differentiation which is our only real political asset, and destroy the time-proven method for reaching prospective voters which works best on conservatives: reminding them (A) "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch", an idea they already endorse, (B) that even liberty isn't free, then adding, (C) that the cost this time isn't monetary, but ethical; if gun people wish to preserve their Second Amendment rights, they must, in return, tolerate and defend the rights that other people (such as gays or recreational drug users) cherish. This point cannot be overemphasized: gun people have suffered enough at the hands of pablum-peddling politicos to recognize disingenuous "marketing" tactics the instant they smell them. Gun people will not buy anything any "Committee for a Libertarian Majority" has to sell. The only way to convince them that the LP is for real is to have the guts to tell them things they don't want to hear -- in the same breath they're told they never have to worry about losing their guns again. The _Real_ Libertarian Party (think about it: "The _Real_ Ghostbusters", "The _Real_ Libertarian Party") is intellectually and ethically _tough_ on its prospective members, in order to win their respect. _To mean something, it must cost something to join us._ Libertarians from a liberal background seem incapable of grasping this, and one-time conservatives fail inexplicably to apply the methods and standards to hypothetical others that attracted them to the LP in the first place. Think about it: did you join the Party because you were told what you wanted to hear -- or what you needed to know? If we proceed with the foam rubber agenda being pushed on us by these Nerf Libertarians -- these low-fat, low-sugar, low- sodium, low-cholesterol Libertarians and their flavor-free, substance-free, courage-free, intelligence-free notions -- we will forever remain the merest shadow of the other two parties, tiny and insignificant, just as we are today. What the hell ever happened to "Take big bites," as Lazarus Long advised us, and, "Anything worth doing is worth overdoing"? Who are these people, anyway? If they proclaim to the micromultitudes that Libertarians don't really oppose all taxes (because, oh dear, that would be _soooo_ immoderate) and I say in an article read by half a million people that we oppose all taxation on _principle_, what are they gonna do? If they eliminate the Non-Aggression pledge, leaving _someone else_ to issue conspicuous enameled pins which will create two classes of Libertarian -- those who can be trusted by the public and those who cannot, what are they gonna do? If they dilute the platform, leaving _someone else_ to distribute an even more radical model platform which will attract more real individualists than they can ever equal by trying to fool tree-hugging ecofascists into believing that their ideas are in any way compatible with ours, what the hell are they gonna do? I'll tell you: they're gonna slink back to the so-called major party where they belong and where they feel more comfortable. Don't worry, they'll be back on our bandwagon next year, or in five years, telling everyone who'll listen that this "radical integrity thing" was their idea all along. In the meantime, we can use all the freedom-loving almost- Libertarians we can get among the Republicans. They may, in fact, prove crucial in our overall long-term strategy. ***** In summary, then (and I'm sure we're all greatly relieved to hear those words): my 32 years' experience inform me that the best way, probably the only way, for our tiny, insignificant party ever to see its principles applied in the real world within our lifetime, is to _differentiate_ ourselves from all others by taking up the _unpopular_ cause of a _persecuted_ people, promising not just to _end_ the persecution, but to _punish_ and _humiliate_ the persecutors promptly and energetically -- in the process, forcing an established party to adopt _our_ goals, or levering _ourselves_ to power. As our snowball begins to grow, even the media, those craven poltroons, will shift, with the help of a growing number of young Libertarians among them, and the era of Libertarianism will have finally begun. That's what I mean by "Lever Action" -- starting with nothing but our ideas, to become the dominant institution of the 21st century. As a lever must be rigid and a fulcrum solid, so the integrity of our ideas -- which is the lever -- and our pledge -- which is the fulcrum -- must be unbending and immovable. It took me decades of self-defense consulting to realize that it isn't the power of a weapon that counts so much as the will to use it. A .22 in the hands of a grimly determined 98- pound woman is more effective than a .44 in the hands of an irresolute man. The same is true of a political party. Republican George had the most powerful political party in the world and look where it got him. We have the least powerful, but it can be anything we have the will to make it. The 21st century can be anything we have the will to make it. And so can we, Comrade Libertarians, be anything we have the will to become. Thank you. ***** [Please note that since I made this speech last September, the Brady Bill passed both houses of Congress -- with considerable REPUBLICAN help -- along with restrictions on "assault weapons", and that REPUBLICAN Richard M. Nixon has stated that the Brady Bill doesn't go far enough because "Guns are an abomination". Last September I failed to mention that many observers blame all recent victim disarmament laws on Nixon, since Edwin O. Welles and William Colby -- of the Nixon- era CIA -- founded both national anti-gun lobbies.]