The Zombieslayer

Living in America, Act IV

Character list:
Rusty Lederhosen
Col. ‘Bat’ Guano
Spotti Lederhosen

(knock on the door)

Rusty - Who is it?

Col. Guano - Colonel Bat Guano, 23rd Division and his troops.

Rusty - (opens the door) What do you want at his late hour?

Col. Guano - We hear you have an extra room and I’m going to have to use it to quarter my soldiers.

Rusty - We have some personal stuff in that room and I’m afraid I’m going to have to decline.

Col. Guano - This is not a request, but an order.

Rusty - Read this. (whips out his copy of the U.S. Constitution and points to Amendment III).

Col. Guano - (reads out loud) No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

Rusty - Well?

Col. Guano - (red in the face). I’ll be damned. Well, Sir, you have my deepest apologies.

Rusty - (smiles and shakes his hand) No problem. Hey Colonel, you see that pink house?

Col. Guano - Yeah?

Rusty - Well, that’s Larry Schmuckmeister’s house. He has two extra rooms and a big screen TV and no knowledge of the Constitution.

Col. Guano - Sir, a sincere thanks from me and my troops. (Turns to his soldiers). Let’s go to the pink house!

(exit Col. Guano and his troops)

Spotti - (enters in a nightgown and night cap). Rusty? Who was that?

Rusty - (gives his wife a peck on the cheek). Oh, just some soldiers who wanted to use our spare room.

Spotti - You mentioned the Third Amendment, right?

Rusty - Of course, babe!

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.

I don’t get it. This Amendment for some strange reason is offensive. When I talk about the First Amendment, I get a lot of positive feedback. When I talk about the Second, people get all butt hurt.

Guns are a good thing. They’re a good thing for three reasons - they help us fight crime, they help us defend our borders from foreign invasion, and they’re the final check and balance against tyranny when our courts have failed us. I’ll address each of these one by one.

Crime - Call an ambulance, a pizza deliverer, and the police at the same time.  Guess who will arrive last? Exactly.

No thanks.  I’ll trust Mr. Shotgun and my dogs to defend my house instead.  Enough said.

Foreign invasion

The Japanese Generals knew they couldn’t beat America in the 1940s. Unfortunately for them, none of them had the balls to tell Hirohito that behind every blade of grass, they’d be an American with a rifle. So, invade they did, and got their asses kicked. Anyone else want to try?

A funny little story. Ronald Reagan made the mistake of telling a bunch of Texans how we need to support the Contras or else the Sandanistas will invade America. The Texans’ response? “Bring them on!”

Tyranny - This is a quote from Justice Alex Kozinski, a Judge who gets it.

The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.

-Justice Alex Kozinski, US 9th

Mr. Kozinski gets it. He understands when the government has become a police state, when they start silencing people they don’t like, it needs to be overthrown, and overthrown violently. I’ve heard people on the Left say there’s no way to oppose an evil dictatorship with force if it ever happened in the U.S. of A. That’s not only fatalistic, it’s downright stupid.

Let’s do a little math. In America, eighty million people own guns. Of those eighty million with guns, we own around three hundred million guns. That’s more than one gun per person. Now, I don’t think I need to say how bad guerilla warfare is. Imagine a guerilla war against eighty million people with three hundred million guns. Even China would get slaughtered.

The last thing to keep in mind is that every genocide in the 20th century was preceeded by gun confiscation. If you wanted to round up a bunch of people and liquidate them, good luck if they’re all armed. Of course, the day the government starts rounding up my neighbors because they’re a certain race, ethnicity, or religion, I’m passing out my extras.

“If every Jewish and anti-Nazi family in Germany had owned a Mauser rifle and twenty rounds of ammunition and the will to use it, Adolf Hitler would be a little-known footnote to the history of the Weimar Republic.” - Aaron Zelman, JPFO

Mr. Zelman gets it. I hope you do too. Because I know, when the economy crashes, there’s always a scapegoat. Having long-hair and being multi-racial, there’s a good chance that scapegoat will be me. However, I shoot back. And I make head shots at 200 meters without a scope.

I talk a lot about the Second Amendment on this blog, but not enough about the First. It’s because I feel the Second is in more danger than the First. And trust me, if the Second goes, there’s nothing to keep the First from going too.

First off, this is utterly important. You must understand the difference between a Right and a Privilege. If you do not understand this, then this is all for naught.

A Right is something you are born with. Government does not give you Rights. They are something that cannot be taken away from you. A privilege is just that, a privilege. When Government starts taking away Rights, it needs to be overthrown. It’s that simple.

The first Amendment is simply this:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

So let’s break this down piece by piece.

Freedom of Religion. This is a Right, and this one gets the most controversy. Keep in mind, people fled their countries to come here so they could worship as they want to worship. People died for this Right, so you can worship as you want to worship. Don’t ever take that for granted.

Freedom of Speech. This Right is almost an absolute. You can say things that will offend, despite what politically correct people think. You can say “I hate all Narnians and Narnians are stupid, they’re ugly, and the world would be better off if they were all dead.” You cannot say, “Aslan, you are a Narnian and I’m going to your house and I’m going to shoot you.” If you say that, Aslan has the Right to shoot you the moment you step foot on his property.

You cannot slander. If Aslan is not an alcoholic, you cannot go around telling everyone that Aslan is an alcoholic. That is slander. If he is one, then it’s all good.

You cannot give out copyrighted materials freely. I don’t think I need to go into details here.

You cannot give out private info. If you get a hold of Aslan’s credit card, you can’t go around giving that info to your friends and neighbors.

Despite what you’ve heard, you can yell “fire!” in a crowded theatre. Keep in mind though that no judge or jury is going to be sympathetic to you when some father busts your knees with a baseball bat after the resulting panic crippled his kid.

You can say “President Bush (my President) or Dianne Feinstein/Barbara Boxer (my Senators), or Ellen Tauscher (my Congresswoman) are !@#$%^& idiots and I hate them and wish they’d get an STD.” Other people may not like it, but that’s just tough.

There are no “free speech zones.” Anyone who tries to enforce a free speech zone needs to be tar and feathered. The whole country is a free speech zone.

Freedom of the Press. As annoying as reporters are, I’m glad I live in a country where the media can publish anything they want to publish (save for libel, copyright infringement, etc.)

Freedom of Assembly. This gives you the Right to Assembly peacefully. If you don’t like the way something is, by all means, hold up a sign in a public place and tell the world. You may not like what someone’s protesting, but it’s their Right to do it.

This does not mean throw a brick through a Starbucks window. And if there are any Anarchists reading this, do us all a favor, don’t destroy their windows, destroy their stereo system. Geez, Anarchists, at least make yourself useful.

The Right to Petition Your Government. This means you don’t need to be scared to send a letter to your Congressman or woman, your Senator, or your President. They’re supposed to send you a letter back. So far, of the dozens of letters I’ve sent, everyone has, although I wonder if they really read them. I bet what they do is simply tally up a for and against.

So this is your First Amendment. It’s over two hundred years old, and is set in stone. Your Founding Fathers knew what they were doing when they wrote it. Don’t take it for granted. Remember, you were born with these Rights. Government does not give these Rights to you.