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Weekly Newspaper and Travel Guide
for Pecos Country of West Texas

Opinion

Friday, December 9, 2005

Smokey Briggs

Sage Views

By Smokey Briggs

Sieg Heil! to Ft.
Stockton’s new Fuhrers

“Sieg Heil,” Councilmen Falcon, Villarreal, and Alex Gonzalez.

Why would I greet these elected councilmen of Ft. Stockton with the outstretched arm and traditional “Sieg Heil” of Hitler’s Third Reich?

Because they have proven themselves disciples of Hitler and his National Socialist Party, pure and simple.

The only thing missing is little Auschwitz-in-the-desert. I have no doubt they have a plan, and soon will set about a final solution for ridding their town of “Undesirables” - another of Hitler and companies’ favorite terms.

This week’s undesirables in Ft. Stockton are those misbegotten souls, like me, who dare partake in the evil weed known as tobacco.

Not long back, the Junior League Nazi’s, also known as the Ft. Stockton City Council, voted to enact a “tobacco” ban throughout most “public” places in Ft. Stockton, which I suggest should be renamed Ft. Berlin, or perhaps Ft. Hitlerton.

For the record, Councilmen Albert Gonzalez and Juan Rodriguez voted against the ban, and I salute them for standing for freedom in the midst of tyranny.

The goose-steppers-in-drag who voted for the ban wrapped themselves in the usual garments adopted by those who would make us slaves - public health.

The argument is as old as I am - and probably dates from the first time a group of “leaders” wanted to impose their will on a minority under color of law.

Hitler justified numerous of his “social” programs on claims of public health.

And it is just as bogus in Ft. Hitlerton as it was in Germany. “For the public good,” is the rallying cry of all elected officials who would be slavemasters.

The issue here is not public health, but private property.

Here is how it works:

Private property is the source of all freedom. First, we all accept that we are the masters of our bodies, right? Our God-given body is our own, not to be touched without consent or forced to labor for another.

Second, it logically follows that the fruit of my labor that my body performs is also mine, and mine alone. Jack has no right to drop by Juan’s house and take the chair Juan spent the weekend building, right? It is Juan’s (and the IRS’).

Property is that which we produce with our body, or trade what we have produced for.

Free men own their bodies and the fruits of their bodies’ labor.

If you do not own your body and its labor, if someone can touch you without consent or take the fruits of your labor without your consent, then you are a slave.

Yeah, I know, we are all slaves to the governments we have created.

The only question is, “How tight are the chains?”

Ft. Hitlerton is locking them down pretty tight.

Ownership of a building, of a business, is perhaps one of the foremost examples of private property.

Alas, not according to the new councilfurhers of Ft. Hitlerton.

Apparently, they feel no compunction about walking onto another man’s property and demanding he use it in a certain way.

Today they feel they can demand that tobacco use be banned in another person’s business.

It logically follows that tomorrow they will feel just as justified walking into a man’s house and demanding use of his home, or body, or the body of his wife or daughter. There is no difference.

To back up their theft of another man’s property, they snivel about public health and enforce their demand with gun-toting officers who are, “just doing their job,” just like the guards at Auschwitz “just did theirs.”

Your Fuhrer would be proud boys.

But what about the public health?

What about it?

The businesses we are talking about are just that - businesses. The last time I checked it was illegal for me to put a gun to a fellow’s head and demand he walk into my newspaper and buy a copy. If not, I would sell quite a bit more used newsprint.

I think this rule still holds true.

Nobody was being forced into Ft. Hitlerton restaurants or auto parts stores or beauty shops that allowed smoking. And no businessman was forced to allow smoking in his place of business.

It was his choice. If he wanted to allow it, fine. If not, fine.

His potential customers could either patronize his business, or not.

No person was forced into a smoke filled room - they walked in on their own two feet without a gun to their head.

Thomas Jefferson would have called this situation, “Freedom.”

But now, one group has organized the power of the state to make slaves of their fellow men, so they can have their cake and eat it as well.

For these fools, it was not enough to be free. It was not enough to be free to choose to use or not to use a business based on their own needs and desires.

No, for these mini-tyrants to be happy they must enslave their fellow men and steal their neighbor’s property to suit their own needs and desires.

They are violent thieves no better than those that rob and murder and rape at gun point.

In fact, they are worse. At least the murdering rapist who breaks into your home has the guts to come and do his own dirty work.

These evil little mouse-men are too timid to do their own evil deeds and so must harness the police power of the state to do their stealing for them.

Private property is the root of all freedom. Without the right to private property of both body and possessions, we are slaves.

If the good people of Germany had risen up and put the heads of the National Socialist Party’s leaders on pikes when they first began to steal other men’s property and bodies and lives, Germany and the world might have been spared untold suffering and death.

Unfortunately they lacked the courage or insight to do so.

Alas, I imagine the now more-tightly-shackled-slaves of Ft. Hitlerton do not possess the foresight or courage to put the heads of CouncilFurhers Falcon, Villarreal, and Alex Gonzalez on pikes either.

It is a shame because most tyrants, petty or great, never understand any argument but that of violent force. I would bet my eyes that the petty tyrants of the Ft. Stockton are no different.

Until freedom’s steel is pressed against their throats they will continue to enslave their brothers to enforce their vision of a better world.

I wonder what piece or use of your property they will decide to take next week?

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