CATCHING UP WITH L. NEIL SMITH May 6, 2012
Dear Readers and Friends,
I regret that I haven’t sent out an update like this since February. I’ve
been too busy actually writing the stuff: two novels, parts of a screenplay,
and at least an article a week for _L. Neil Smith’s THE LIBERTARIAN
ENTERPRISE_. There will be those, of course, who don’t regret it at all.
I’ll also take the time to say that, if you like anything you see
here, as the old saying goes, “Don’t applaud, throw money.” There are
buttons for you to accomplish that at the bottom of each article, and it will
help …
AN OPEN LETTER TO RUSH LIMBAUGH April 5, 2012
Dear Mr. Limbaugh,
I began listening to you early in the Clinton Administration. For
years you’ve said you’re playing with half your brain tied behind your
back “just to make it fair”. For the same number of years, I’ve been
saying (admittedly to a much smaller audience), that if you ever
untied and started using the other half of your brain, you’d be a
libertarian.
That was all in fun (although I do believe it). But what I have to
tell you now is intended quite seriously. I’ve been involved in the
libertarian movement …
TESTING SOME AD COPY April 2, 2012
HOW TO FIX AMERICA
The “land of the free” is in deep trouble — the deepest trouble since the War Between the States — not just economically, but politically and in every other way. Her greatest institutions are crumbling all around us.
In _DOWN …
DOWN WITH POWER and the LP Platform February 29, 2012
An acquaintance of mine sent me, among others, an appeal to help him keep the powers that be within the Libertarian Party from cutting the national platform into even tinier shreds than it’s in now.
I grew sick to death a long time ago of trying to preserve an LP platform worthy of the name from constant attacks on it by would-be Republicans within the LP ranks who are afraid to take what libertarians really believe to the public. Since 1979, the last year I served on the committee, it has gotten progressively worse.
…
HOW I SPEND MY WEEKENDS February 25, 2012
My lovely and talented wife Cathy, as you may know, is an undergraduate in the archaeology program at Colorado State University, but it’s a very small department and she’s being treated more like a grad student, which in this case is a good thing.
She’s taken on a project to catalog some of the bewildering myriad of objects found in the privies of the “Vanoli block” in downtown Ouray, Colorado (the same town Ayn Rand used for Galt’s Gulch). This block is where the bars, dancehalls, and whorehouses were, all from about 1890 to 1910. The excrement is dry and no …
FIGHTING BACK — A LETTER TO A FRIEND February 11, 2012
Tom, I’m very sorry I didn’t get back to you before this.
I am neither a Jell-O shooter nor a statistician, although I believe that both have their place in discussions of stopping power. Just not first place. A very _small_ place.
I believe in physics. My “Efficacy” formula combines energy, the ability to do work, with the area across which that energy is distributed. Both have their place. You can have lots of energy — .22-250 or .220 Swift as examples — and lack stopping power. You can have area — old-fashioned factory-loaded .44 Special — and lack stopping power. What …
Dear Family and Fiends February 10, 2012
You know who you are.
A friend of mine just wrote to me that Judge Andrew Napolitano’s show on the Fox News Network has been canceled without any explanation (from Fox News) that makes sense.
I wrote back to him offering a relatively simple plan, if not to get the program back, then at least cost Fox News a great deal of money. What I propose is to identify Fox’s half dozen (or dozen) biggest advertisers, the addresses _not_ for their public relations flunkies, but for their advertising departments, and to send them all letters modeled on the following:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Dear Acme Widgets (or …
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN
Not that it probably matters to them, but I have stopped listening to Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and that entire lot, because of the vile disrespect they have shown Ron Paul, the only man in the Presidential competition who is honest, decent, and actually has a clue to fixing what’s wrong with this country.
I have heard I’m not the only one giving Limbaugh the bum’s rush; it’s said that his listenership has dropped by at least a third in the past few weeks. A lot of people have figured out who the “Doctor of Democracy” (or “Physician of Freedom”) really …
MUSINGS ON TEN MILLIMETER January 30, 2012
I first became interested in the 10mm pistol cartridge when it didn’t exist. All of my ballistics calculations told me that that was “where the lines crossed” in terms of optimal ballistic performance with current metallurgy and propellants. I even “invented” the 10mm with a friend, making up dummies from .30 Remington cases and cast .38/40 bullets. When the factory cartridge came out, it was identical to mine, but 1/16″ shorter.
Naturally, I signed up to be the first kid on the block to have a Bren Ten — two of ‘em, …
BEND OVER, BEN & JERRY! January 12, 2012
You may be old enough to recall a period before _Star Trek_ when Men
in Space (this was before we bumped our heads on the word “astronaut”
– or on gender correctness, for that matter) had to check for things
like temperature, pressure, and atmospheric composition before going
outside.
The gauges were often on the arms of their bulky spacesuits.
The acronym “EVA” hadn’t been invented yet, either.
Times have changed since then in many ways. One of the most noticable
is that whenever you “go outside” these days, it’s prudent to test the
political environment, if you can. I can never do …