Ray Bradbury said, ""

Defend your nuts: a parable on property rights and hippies

Suppose you were a squirrel. You would work hard to find the biggest nuts, and then stash those large nuts in secret places. You'd only do so if you had a high degree of assurance that those nuts would be there, unrotted and ready to eat, when your life depended on them. You'd have to depend on other squirrels to not steal your nuts, and assure them that you would do likewise.

Now suppose that a pack of liberal chinchillas, calling themselves the Friends of the Forest, came along preaching the evils of despoiling the forest by the secretion of nuts. They would climb onto tree stumps and proclaim,  "You have destroyed our natural panoply and ruined the aesthetic balance of nature, man. Your lives are a blight on the harmony of our forest. For the greater good of our nurturing forest, you must change your ways. Or else."

Then they would harass every squirrel out trying to find nuts, calling them fascists incomparably more evil than the infamous squirrel known as "Muffins." They would raid all the nut caches they could find, throwing the hard-sought nuts into the river. They would carry around chunks of sandalwood and tufts of unknown leaves that had been struck by lightning, claiming they "enhanced the psychic atmosphere." Worse yet, they would subject every young squirrel to merciless indoctrination, turning them into anemic grass-eating advocates of Chinchillism ready to denounce their thrifty parents to the nearest Friend of the Forest. Squirrels would wake up uncertain of whether they would be able to collect any nuts at all that day, or whether any nuts they did find would be safe from the chinchillas or their squirrel abettors. Each squirrel would look out only for himself, eager to strike a deal with the Friends of the Forest.

You would be righteously indignant and would express your rage in a barely audible "scrick," by which you mean, "you malodorous chinchilla marauders have destroyed our right to the rightfully acquired fruits of our labor, and in doing so secured our certain death by starvation. We, the squirrels, depend upon the continued existence of immutable property rights for the maintainance of any survival above the savage existence of our early squirrel ancestors.

"You have destroyed our means of providing for our children, whose lives are now destined to be brutish, savage, and short. You have reduced our standard of living to that of a lame ferret. You have destroyed the virtues of justice, foresight, prudence, and thrift. You have turned the less fortunate among us against us, breeding contempt and violence. You have turned those with the strongest squirrel-hands against the weakest. You have turned the present generation of squirrels against their posterity with a confused philosophy. You have lauded the forest above the creatures of the forest.

"In the name of the good, you have sown evil. In the name of the new, you have destroyed the future. In the name of natural behavior, you have destroyed the security that has taken us generations and pints of squirrel blood to accomplish. You speak of natural balances, and destroy our own balance carefully hewn by the laws of nature. And you have the gall to call us the evil and unnatural ones, you damn dirty desert-dwelling rodents!"

You would then be clubbed over the head with a pine-cone. After all, squirrels don't have guns or Constitutions to defend themselves against hippies.

Don't be a squirrel. Defend your nuts.

Our Constitution and your gun can only protect you if you are willing to use them. With hope, you won't have to use the latter while the war may still be fought with words. There is a new pack of hippies trying to undermine our property rights and our laws. In the name of peace and prosperity, they wish to erect a system of civil war where once there was social cooperation. If you value your nuts, join us (Travis Benning, Sean Rife, Isiah Schwartz, and I)in the fight to preserve our Constitution.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at September 28, 2005 00:11 EST | Permalink | comments (9) |
humor, constitutionalism, disguised tyranny, libertarianism, best posts

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Comments:

#1  28 September 2005 - 06:39

 

That's awesome! I'm printing this and posting it in my cube.

Anonymous

#2  28 September 2005 - 09:28

 

Priceless! :-D

Anonymous

#3  28 September 2005 - 11:42

 

What if you don't HAVE nuts, but ARE nuts? What then?

Anonymous

#4  28 September 2005 - 12:59

 

I'm confused. I looked at the ACS web page, and don't see the connection between them and hippies and property rights. Maybe I'm just thickheaded, but could you please explain?

Thanks,

-Jack12

Anonymous

#5  28 September 2005 - 13:00

 

Tom, so great.........just great

Anonymous

#6  28 September 2005 - 20:54

 

My chinchillas could match any squirrel nut for nut, though they would prefer to rip the bark from the tree. And my boys are not malodorous, oops gotta go...they're demanding their dust baths...

Anonymous

#7  29 September 2005 - 07:49

 

Jack12

Here's a hint: whenever you hear the word "progressive," someone's out for your nuts.

Pooklekufr

#8  29 September 2005 - 19:49

 

Gotta link to this.

Rabbit trail re: "There is a new pack of hippies trying to undermine our property rights and our laws..."

That sentence, together with the rest of the post, strongly reminded me of one of the unsung (well, unsung nowadays) verses of the Woody Guthrie Wobbly pep song, "This Land is Your Land" sung at/for 1940s communist rallies:

"Was a high wall there that tried to stop me
A sign was painted said: Private Property*,
But on the back side it didn't say nothing --
That side was made for you and me."

(*some versions say "No Trespassing")

heh. That makes two so-called "patriotic" songs I don't sing. The communist propaganda song, "This Land Is Your Lans" and the Unitarian/Imperialist propaganda song, "Battle Hymn of the Republic".

Anonymous

#9  01 October 2005 - 09:58

 

This land is my land
it is not your land
I got a shotgun
and you don't got one
so you better get off
or I'll blow your head off
This land is private property!

Anonymous

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