Glorious Pravda of People's Republic of Bloomington treats gun owners like sex offenders

I think it's time to start contacting advertisers.

They'd be burned down in Texas. The good news is somebody will sue their asses off for this, and win big. Their list will get somebody killed. Hopefully, the editors of the paper.

Just so ya know, I called yesterday and had a nice, seriously, conversation with Bob Zaltsberg,
about twenty minutes worth.

Anyway, he told me flat out they were anti 2nd Amendment and pro 1st, which I found amusing.
There was no highlights as he stated the paper's case and I told him of his paper's future, making certain to point out past cases and a few facts here and there.

Once again, he was a nice guy, just not on my side of the issue. Hope the unemployment benefits are good when the paper folds cause I'd hate to see him suffer too much.

They simply do not get that First Amendment rights are guaranteed from infringment by the Second. The First is nothing without the Second.

"You mean, the people are armed?" Prince Bentrik was incredulous.

"Great Satan, aren't yours?" Prince Trask was equally surprised. "Then your democracy's a farce, and the people are only free on sufferance. If their ballots aren't secured by arms, they're worthless. Who has the arms on your planet?"

"Why, the Government."

"You mean the King?"

Prince Bentrik was shocked. Certainly not; horrid idea. That would be ... why, it would be despotism! Besides, the King wasn't the Government, at all; the Government ruled in the King's name. There was the Assembly; the Chamber of Representatives, and the Chamber of Delegates. The people elected the Representatives, and the Representatives elected the Delegates, and the Delegates elected the Chancellor. Then, there was the Prime Minister; he was appointed by the King, but the King had to appoint him from the party holding the most seats in the Chamber of Representatives, and he appointed the Ministers, who handled the executive work of the Government, only their subordinates in the different Ministries were career-officials who were selected by competitive examination for the bottom jobs and promoted up the bureaucratic ladder from there.

This left Trask wondering if the Mardukan constitution hadn't been devised by Goldberg, the legendary Old Terran inventor who always did everything the hard way. It also left him wondering just how in Gehenna the Government of Marduk ever got anything done.

Maybe it didn't. Maybe that was what saved Marduk from having a real despotism.

"Well, what prevents the Government from enslaving the people? The people can't; you just told me that they aren't armed, and the Government is."

He continued, pausing now and then for breath, to catalogue every tyranny he had ever heard of, from those practiced by the Terran Federation before the Big War to those practiced at Eglonsby on Amaterasu by Pedrosan Pedro. A few of the very mildest were pushing the nobles and people of Gram to revolt against Angus I.

"And in the end," he finished, "the Government would be the only property owner and the only employer on the planet, and everybody else would be slaves, working at assigned tasks, wearing Government-issued clothing and eating Government food, their children educated as the Government prescribes and trained for jobs selected for them by the Government, never reading a book or seeing a play or thinking a thought that the Government had not approved...."

Most of the Mardukans were laughing, now. Some of them were accusing him of being just too utterly ridiculous.

"Why, the people are the Government. The people would not legislate themselves into slavery."

Beam Piper must be rolling in his grave.

Actually, I think I might send Herr Oberführer Zaltzberg a copy of Space Viking. Might be an informative read for him.

He probably wouldn't grok Starship Troopers or The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.