======================================================================

The Atlanta Declaration: Every man, woman, and responsible child has a 
natural,  fundamental,  and inalienable human,  individual, civil, and 
Constitutional right to obtain,  own, and carry,  openly or concealed, 
any weapon -- handgun,  shotgun, rifle,  machinegun, \anything\ -- any 
time, anywhere, without asking anyone's permission.

======================================================================

L. NEIL SMITH'S \LEVER ACTION\ LETTER                        NUMBER 15

               " ... AND TO PROVIDE NEW GUARDS ... "

     In \Lever Action\ Letter Number 3, I asked some not-so-rhetorical 
questions which all boiled down to the same thing: how much do you want to 
keep your guns? Would you agree to leave others alone to live any way they 
please if they agreed to let you keep your guns?
     I gave some examples -- pornography, chemical substances, religion, race, 
abortion, sexual preference -- which may have made answering that question 
fairly hard, pointing out that no sane being sacrifices those personal 
rights he considers most precious merely for the sake of imposing his values 
on others. Yet it often seems that each of us disapproves of, and wants to 
outlaw, some one little thing someone else cares about. With millions of us 
all working for one kind of Prohibition or another, it's no wonder the 
controls seem to ratchet tighter around our lives every day.
     We can work together to reverse the process by making a commitment to 
respect each other's rights no matter how much we may disapprove of any 
particular exercise of them. I don't know about you, but I don't care what 
my allies do with their own lives -- the one limit being an obligation 
never to \initiate\ force against others, since that's how we began losing 
our rights to start with -- as long as they want to be free and can help me 
stay that way.
     So how do we get started?
     The Covenant of Unanimous Consent was originally written to change the 
way we're used to thinking about personal freedom, make it more consistent, 
put some teeth into the Bill of Rights, and limit \forever\ the power of 
politicians, bureaucrats, lawyers, and Prohibitionists to control the way 
we live. Some of its Signatories feel that it may turn out to be as 
important as the Declaration of Independence.
     I wrote the Covenant of Unanimous Consent because I intend to keep my 
guns, and the rest of my rights, as well. The other side's counting on us 
to remain divided and intolerant. That's how they got us where they want 
us in the first place. Nobody is ever \asked\ to sign it, but if you have 
the courage and intelligence to renew your personal commitment to the 
American tradition of individual liberty, I've made it easy for you by 
reproducing the Covenant of Unanimous Consent here, on the other side.
     Let me hear from you before it's too late.

======================================================================

L. NEIL SMITH'S \LEVER ACTION\ LETTER                        NUMBER 15
111 EAST DRAKE ROAD        SUITE 7032
FORT COLLINS, COLORADO  U.S.A.  80525

L. Neil Smith is the award-winning author of 16 novels including 
\Henry Martyn, The Crystal Empire, BrightSuit MacBear, Taflak Lysandra, 
The Probability Broach,\ and the forthcoming FORGE OF THE ELDERS 
trilogy, beginning with CONTACT AND COMMUNE.

Your contributions to this effort, while extremely welcome, are not 
tax-deductible.

======================================================================


========================== A NEW COVENANT ============================
                       [Of Unanimous Consent]

WE, THE UNDERSIGNED Witnesses to the Lesson of History -- that no Form of 
political Governance may be relied upon to secure the individual Rights of 
Life, Liberty, or Property -- now therefore establish and provide certain 
fundamental Precepts measuring our Conduct toward one another, and toward 
others:

                      [Individual Sovereignty] 
FIRST, that we shall henceforward recognize each Individual to be the 
exclusive Proprietor of his or her own Existence and of all Products of 
that Existence, holding no Obligation binding among Individuals excepting 
those to which they voluntarily and explicitly consent;

                      [Freedom from Coercion] 
SECOND, that under no Circumstances shall we acknowledge any Liberty to 
initiate Force against another Person, and shall instead defend the 
inalienable Right of Individuals to resist Coercion employing whatever 
Means prove necessary in their Judgment;

                    [Association and Secession] 
THIRD, that we shall hold inviolable those Relationships among Individuals 
which are totally voluntary, but conversely, any Relationship not thus 
mutually agreeable shall be considered empty and invalid;

                     [Individuality of Rights] 
FOURTH, that we shall regard Rights to be neither collective nor additive in 
Character -- two Individuals shall have no more Rights than one, nor shall 
two million nor two thousand million -- nor shall any Group possess Rights 
in Excess of those belonging to its individual Members;

                      [Equality of Liberty] 
FIFTH, that we shall maintain these Principles without Respect to any 
person's Race, Nationality, Gender, sexual Preference, Age, or System of 
Beliefs, and hold that any Entity or Association, however constituted, 
acting to contravene them by Initiation of Force -- or Threat of same -- 
shall have forfeited its Right to exist;

                         [Supersedure] 
UPON UNANIMOUS CONSENT of the Members or Inhabitants of any Association or 
Territory, we further stipulate that this Agreement shall supersede all 
existing governmental Documents or Usages then pertinent, that such 
Constitutions, Charters, Acts, Laws, Statutes, Regulations, or Ordinances 
contradictory or destructive to the Ends which it expresses shall be null 
and void, and that this Covenant, being the Property of its Author and 
Signatories, shall not be Subject to Interpretation excepting insofar as 
it shall please them.

______________________________         ___________________________________
Signatory                 date         Witness                        date

______________________________         ___________________________________
Name (please print)                    Name (please print)

  * From \The Gallatin Divergence\ by L. Neil Smith, Del Rey Books, 1985, 
             as amended by unanimous consent October, 1986. 
        Send to: 111 E. Drake, Ste. 7032, Ft. Collins, CO 80525. 
  ENCLOSE $2 TO COVER ARCHIVING. Include SASE for confirmation of receipt.



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