By Claire Wolfe
© 1998 Claire Wolfe

Amid all the media handwringing over global warming, one salient fact has been overlooked. If it warms up that much, folks, the North Pole is toast. Gone. Elves, gingerbread, reindeer and all. You thought the UPS strike was tough? Picture no more sleighloads of Christmas presents.

Santa, however, is quite into preparedness. He has planned for global warming by opening subsidiary headquarters in Hardyville -- a western U.S. town almost as isolated, and often as cold, as his customary polar regions. The midnight deliveries will continue, albeit from slightly further south.

So this year the U.S. E-Mail Service delivered a selection of Santa's Christmas mail -- that portion involving Politically Incorrect Gifts -- to Hardyville.

First of all, as Santa's official Hardyville agent, I must hasten to state that, even though we refer to Christmas, this is not meant to exclude any other cultural/religious/socio-economic and/or ethnic seasonal celebration observed by any people/gender/class/culture/ethnic group and/or indigenous population particularly of any minority/downtrodden/oppressed/overlooked and/or otherwise dis-empowered group, whether known/unknown/as-yet-unaware-of-its-oppressed status or otherwise deprived by the mainstream/white male/rape culture/dominant socio-religious establishment of its vital traditions of identity.

Santa's gift lists are, as always, inclusive. So by all means Gud Yule, Happy Hanukkah, Blessed Be, Io Saturnalia, Have a Nice Kwanzaa, and whatever else may apply. Now, if we may return to the politically incorrect part ... ?

Let's be very incorrect. Guns, guns, guns, guns, guns.

It may have something to do with the fact that the call for unPC Christmas lists accompanied a column about women and firearms, but the largest segment of mail was from men proposing gun gifts for women. (Good for you, guys!)

RM wrote, "I would like to give my wife ... an H&K USP pistol in .45 caliber with three extra magazines (just for those extra large thugs), 500 rounds of .45 ammunition and a holster rig."

SB noted with a touch of sorrow: "I would love to give my wife a Taurus P-111 (Millennium) 9mm semiauto pistol for Christmas. ... But things are so bad this year, I don't think I can come up with the $345.00 price tag. I have just enough for our two boys' Christmas gifts. Well anyway, I will pray for a miracle, and who knows, maybe I'll find a bag of money."

HB, who also said he couldn't afford the firearm of his choice due to his wife's illness, decided to promote a bag of money. He told all those traditional givers of neckties that he wanted, instead, contributions toward a Sig Sauer P239 autoloader. By Thanksgiving he was happy to report that the fund was half full. And we hope Mrs. B is doing well, too.

Some folks said they or their significant sweeties already had all the guns they wanted. (Is that possible?) Instead they requested:

"2,000 rounds of 30.06 ammo, on five-round strippers!" (L.G.)

Krazy Kate Arbuckle -- formerly Mary Kathryn Kunnemann, 1995 Missouri State Women's Service Rifle Champion -- asked Santa for "1,000 rounds of 7.62x51 match-grade ammo for Christmas, to put through my custom-built precision paper-punching equipment! This would save me gobs of time that will otherwise have to be spent reloading the stuff myself before shooting season starts in the Spring!" Hm. Doesn't seem to be anything Krazy about that.

CC, from right here in Hardyville, thought reloading equipment from Dillon Precision would be a nice gesture. Hey, maybe if Santa brings you reloading equipment, you can share some of your product with Ms. Krazy Kate.

Curt Howland, who'd already bought his sweetheart a pistol offered, "I'm building a mini-hydro electric generation system on her property. Does that count?" Come Y2K, we suspect it will.

The next largest gift category was books, videos and magazines.

JP of Minnesota said he probably wouldn't give the following because "some family members think I am some sort of kook," but that he'd like to present:

1. Videotape: Waco: The Rules of Engagement

2. Books: Unintended Consequences by John Ross, Lethal Laws from Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, The Probability Broach by L. Neil Smith, Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and The Art of the Rifle by Jeff Cooper. All available from Amazon.com.

KR, who selected the Bible and Peter Duesberg's Inventing the AIDS Virus as his most politically incorrect books, thought a contribution to World Net Daily was also in order. I suspect Our Esteemed Publisher would agree.

Several readers suggested subscriptions to the gentle journal of freemarket economics, The Freeman, noting that it's especially good for introducing beginners to concepts of liberty.

Rounding out the publications department here at Santa's Southern Workshop, several readers recommended copies -- even multiple copies -- of my own book 101 Things to Do 'Til the Revolution. This, of course, was nothing but shameless pandering to my ego in hopes of getting their Christmas wish lists included in a column in a Famous Worldwide Web Paper. Well, guys, I hate to tell you -- it worked.

Some readers waxed poetic.

From GS: "I'll tell you what two non-PC gifts I'd like to give my wife this year for Yule: A new computer, and the pistol of her choice. What's so non-PC about a PC? First of all, it's not a PC PC when it's not running an operating system from the goons up in Redmond, Washington. This PC will run http://www.redhat.com">Red Hat Linux, the new up-and-coming quasi-freeware OS from the Johnny Rebs over in Raleigh. ... The PC also isn't PC if it's being used to promote non-PC stuff, like the First and Second Amendments. ..."

Several folks actually cast their Christmas lists into literal poetry, including the pseudonymous Wyatt Oil, who, after declaring that he really, honestly has been a good lad this year, asked for:

"But on a more practical side, a gift certificate for the http://www.lehmans.com/">Lehman's Non-electric Catalog [for off-grid living] would be swell!"

Just Plain Jamie had a unique one: "I would like to equipment to set up a portable, powerful, pirate radio station. People who set up community-based pirate radio stations are not only defying the intrusive fedgov, but also helping to (1) organize their community around ideas of freedom and (2) proving that anybody can do this sort of thing."

In putting out a request for Christmas lists, I sternly declared "no fantasy gifts." About half of you ignored me. Well, good for you! Who the heck am I to impose silly rules? As it turned out the fantasies were among my favorites:

Scootertramp in Texas wrote, "I would truly love to have a complete end of, and dispersion to the four winds of, the BATF, the SS troops of America. Disarm the IRS, Federal Wildlife and Parks and BLM people. I feel like I should be as well-armed as the nuts who think they control me."

Wayne Dennis Holt, the talented artist who designed the FreeLife column logo, declared: "Oh Santa, Santa ... I want a box full of small American flags used for waving at parades, but hung inverted on their little wooden staffs. This way even families who think America is going down the tubes can participate in civic festivities without compromising their beliefs."

"For Christmas this year, I would like to be showered with all of the best-tasting, fatty foods the world has to offer. Why? Because I believe that before I die they will be made illegal, and I'd like to enjoy life while I still can." TK

And on the day the egregious and censorious tobacco settlement was announced, JW from Seattle wrote wistfully: "I want a pre-ban Joe Camel t-shirt."

Verlyn C. Westgate asked for, "A free-lance writing job where I can point out that the king is bare butt naked." On the other hand, SD from Texas proposed putting a certain covering on the present usurper king of America: a chastity belt.

Finally, Craig Martin made Santa cry with his request:

Hope. Perhaps the most un P.C. gift there is. True hope. I would like to hope and believe that I will not watch my children forced into "citizen indoctrination" and "parent watch" classes. ... I would like to hope that I will not have to hide my opinions and censor my speech out of fear ... that I will not have to hide ... that saying the wrong thing could get me sentenced to "sensitivity training" or cause me to lose everything that I own or lose custody of my children or all of the above. I would like to hope that gulags and concentration camps won't be built and used by our government in the coming century. ... I would like to erase the dream I have some nights, just as Anne Frank had I am sure, that they will eventually come for ME and my family. I would like to hope that things will get better, that the future will bring more freedom, that even though the U.S. is taking the exact same steps and following the exact same path as most of history's cruelest tyrannies, that somehow it will different, here, this time. ... I want hope because as the story of Pandora teaches us no matter how much evil lurks, hope remains.

P.S. But since I can't have that, I would like a nice, new, complete front-end barrel assembly for my Century L1A1 and a nice Dragonov stock to boot.

With 28 shopping days 'til Christmas, who knows? Maybe we'll even find some hope, somewhere.

-----

Where in the world is Hardyville? Just where is Santa's Southern Workshop? Many have written to ask. Sorry to disappoint, but Hardyville is, above all, a state of mind. Yes, it's based on a real place. And certain friends and neighbors would recognize bits of themselves in characters like Nat the rancher, Bob-the-Nerd and Dora the Refugee from Yale. But the characters are fictional. Real people do enter Hardyville now and then to share their expertise. (When an actual person arrives, I'll give you a clue -- like contact info.)