Molon Labe! (11 page)

Graves knows her instantly and hates her instantly. She is the perfect antithesis of everything Graves believes and does.

Matter meets antimatter.

He says in a quiet, low voice, "Listen. I don't care who you are, or what you do, or how you do it. And you sure as hell don't want to know what it is that
I
do. So do us both a huge favor and don't talk to me."

Amber Lee blinks rapidly in recoil. Only out of morbid curiosity does she squeak out the obvious question. "What
do
you do?"

He is no longer looking at her, but glaring at the AirFone in the seat in front of him. "I kill things. And when I'm not killing things I teach others how to kill things."

"
Kill
. . . things?" Amber Lee is beyond shocked.
He admits it!

Graves has an unusually acute olfactory sense and she reeks of lavender and echinacea — mostly.
These people even smell bizarre
, he thinks. "That's right,
kill
things. Good animals. Bad people. I stay busy."

Amber Lee's mouth is working like a freshly-landed trout, though with less to say.

Then Graves casually mentions, "You drive a Saab, don't you?"

It is not a question.

Amber Lee is speared by this.
How does this, this killer know I drive a Saab?
After a couple of seconds, some words manage to spill out. "I've, I've never believed in killing." Amazingly, she manages not to sound pious.

She is too scared. Her horror at having been cosmically provided such a seatmate has utterly overwhelmed her previous moral certitude. What a difference a single minute can make in a life.

Graves turns once more towards her and his eyes shade yet another notch of loathing. He says with nonchalant menace, "That's why you and your kind will perish."

It is a flat statement, not a philosophical proposition.

The anthropological certainty of the remark causes Amber Lee's mouth to drop open, her mind derailed. Somehow, she believes him, and this deeply frightens her. She has never met anybody like this guy. Never wanted to, either. She begins to wonder if she will survive the flight.

Graves has one last thing to say. "And if you have, as I suspect, the in-flight bladder control of a Betsy-Wetsy doll, then don't expect to crawl over me for the next 4½ hours. I advise that we change places
right now
so you can flitter back and forth to the lavatory from the aisle seat."

Amber Lee doesn't move, doesn't speak. She will hold it for the 4½ hours. Her urethra is already tied up in a double clove-hitch. She won't pass urine until Wednesday at the earliest.

"No? Good. Then go back to your magazine and don't say another word to me." With bored disgust he turns away.

Conversation Over.

Amber Lee apprehends that she is sitting an arm's length away from 170lbs of frothing human nitroglycerin. She can already imagine the headline:
Passenger Annoys Volatile Seatmate — Blows Up Aircraft!
She mechanically turns and buries her frozen chalk face in her little
Utne Reader
. She has developed an eye twitch, which will last eight days.

A stewardess three rows back, has heard all this and smoothly steps up to Graves's right. "Sir, can I get you a . . .
drink
?"

With his famous evil clown grin, Graves replies, "Jennifer, a drink is the
last
thing you'd want to give me right now." A mirthless chuckle.

After flying with United for six years, Jennifer has encountered every example of humanity grudgingly allowed on a Boeing 767. She knows he's not kidding. He is a trembling retaining wall, furious with the Iroquois gauntlet of modern airport "security." She is seeing more and more like him since 9/11. Regular people fed up with granny stripsearches, magnetometer silliness, and shoe-sniffing outrage.

Her professional instincts kick in.

Leave this man alone
.

"Yes, sir."

She spreads the word to her colleagues.

Don't bother 21C. For anything.
They don't.

Four hours and 33 minutes later, they touch down at SkyHarbor in Phoenix, jarring Graves awake. He had slept through the entire flight, head-down on his tray table — even during landing.

Nobody said a word about it.

James Wayne Preston makes himself comfortable in the garden with a pen and notepad to write his father a letter.

Dear Poppa,

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately.

The proactive conservatives, meaning those who fully understand the nature of our cultural war, have had too vague a plan for future generations. They are certainly correct in having first seceded with their hearts. Then, by homeschooling their children they correctly avoided offering up their progeny to the altar of the State. But how and where will their philosophically and spiritually healthy children live?

Take an 18 year old young man who has been homeschooled with McGuffey's Readers and Maybury's "Uncle Eric" books. He knows the two basic laws: 1) Do all you have agreed to do, and 2) Do not encroach on other persons or their property. He knows that he was
born
with many fundamental rights, which cannot be taken away from him by decree. He reads five books a week because he loves reading and learning. He can count on his fingers how many hours of cable and broadcast TV he has watched. He grew up believing in heroes and in America. He is respectful of his parents and his elders. He knows that the Government is not his country, and that "law enforcement officers" are different from Peace Officers. He knows that inflation is a political phenomenon, purposely inflicted. He knows that the US dollar is doomed, as is and was all fiat currency. He knows that no law or regulation actually requires him to pay "income" taxes on his private-sector remuneration. He is an excellent woodsman and rifleman. He is more skilled with his handgun (which he wears daily) than most kids are with their skateboards. He knows that the USA is collapsing in the same way and for the same reasons as did ancient Rome — from within by decadence and apathy. He knows this has been the history of democracies.

Let's go even further. Let's add a religious component. Suppose he believes that the physical world was designed and created, versus the cumulation of accidental and beneficial mutation (which he knows to be utterly unscientific). That we are multidimensional spirit beings temporarily inhabiting physical bodies, and that there are supernatural forces acting upon, and supernatural consequences resulting from, our earthly existence. That even though much pain and suffering exists in this world (nearly all of it caused by humans), there is too much joy and beauty to ignore the lovingness behind the creation.

Now, let's tour the world in which this fine young man must live. A world in which man is his own god, and rights come from government. Where 51 voters may tyrannize 49. Where history is untaught and morals are unknown. Where heroes are mocked and decency is scoffed at. Where a young bride (assuming she chooses to marry young, much less marry at all) on her wedding night already has the sexual experience of a prostitute. Where surrogate entertainment tramples individual imagination. Where people work 45 years in jobs they hate to buy crap they don't need. Where over half their paycheck goes to interest and taxes and regulation. Where people are herded like cattle and danced like puppets by a phalanx of purposeful masters. Where their food is mixed by corporations, their public school indoctrination conducted by bureaucrats, their entertainment served by devils.

So, where does this pure young man
live
? Where is his natural habitat? He has none. He is so sane, he is
insane
.

We are, in effect, building 200mph racecars in a world without asphalt roads. We're making airplanes without their landing strips. It's one thing to rear such fine children from the laboratory of the loving home, but we need to be creating a place where they can actually
live
. Otherwise, they will die. Either they will wither up and die, or they will crash headlong into the hard world and die. Raising quality children is only the first step. Creating their habitat is the next.

Raising self-sufficient, libertarian, and Christian children in America is like raising Jewish children in 1938 Germany. What did the Jewish
Diaspora
do? What was their only choice in a world which despised them? To create their own world. Israel.

That
is why we need to create a free state. Not so much for ourselves, but for our children. For James, Jr. and Hanna. Can we abandon the future entirely, calling it "our genes' problem"? Theoretically, but I am very glad that the founders of our country did not. Liberty is not a debt one pays back; it is a debt one pays
forward
. Even if liberty requires a payback, our benefactors are all dead, which leaves nobody but our posterity to receive the check.

That free state should be Wyoming. Attached is a report
¹
I've had prepared which explains the details.

Love from your son,

James

Dear James,

Your letters are always a pleasure for me. I am very blessed to have a son who is passionate about our nation's heritage of liberty. I wish that my generation did more to not leave you with this mess, but after we returned from WW2 and Korea I guess most of us just couldn't be bothered with domestic vigilance, so we wallowed in the rampant materialism of the day. I'm sorry that you and your children are paying for that now.

I've carefully read your report. Please know that I am completely behind you and your Wyoming plan.

It's the least I can do after having fallen asleep in 1953.

Your loving father

__________

1
      The "Wyoming Report" is in the Appendix, beginning at page 373. It thoroughly describes Preston's plan for libertarian migration which began in the Prologue during the summer of 2006. When to read it (
i.e.,
be-fore, during, or after the wave of Wyoming newcomers) is up to you. For those unwilling to risk spoiling any suspense, pages 373-384 (down to the subchapter heading) are "safe" to read now. The rest should probably be saved until you've finished the story.

2003

I think that if you do even a cursory reading of 20th century history, you can't help but come away with a somewhat skeptical attitude towards government power. But it really doesn't have to grow out of any fundamental philosophical or political belief system. Really it's very simple — if there's a big beast that keeps running around eating people, then you can see that it ought to be caged or done away with. You don't need to base that opinion on any kind of belief system.

— Neal Stephenson, interview,
SFX
magazine #8, Jan 1996

I pitched the Wyoming plan to a renowned libertarian novelist. He did not find much with which to agree, countering that we should continue to "retake America." I replied that such simply could not be accomplished with our present numbers, nor with our likely future numbers. He opined such talk as "defeatist."

Let's say that a small child wants a cookie, but the cookie jar is on the top shelf and too high for him to reach. That cookie jar is America. We cannot reach it, but we
can
use a chair to climb onto the counter.

Wyoming is the chair.

It's time we simultaneously realize our limitations
and
our abilities. We cannot reach the cookie jar, or even the kitchen counter — but we
are
tall enough to climb onto that chair.

Even if we never make it to the cookie jar, there are some gummibears on the counter. So, not only will the effort prove at least somewhat worthwhile, we really have no other choice . . .

— James Wayne Preston,
Journals

April 2003 Speech

Colorado Libertarian convention

"Look, here's the straight scoop, like it or not. The Libertarian Party has about 50,000 paid members. Even as the largest third party — or, if you prefer, the third largest party — the LP commands no more than a million votes in presidential elections, and usually less than half that. It has one US Congressman out of 435 — Ron Paul of Texas — and he has to run as a Republican. It has one sheriff out of 3,100 counties, and no Senators or governors. Only billionaires like Perot or DuPont have ever hurdled the obstacles put in the way of third parties, and the LP has no billionaires on the ticket, and likely never will. The LP has never met the 15% electorate requirement to enter the presidential debates, and national media understandably carry on as if the LP isn't even a blip on the political radar screen, so the vast percentage of the electorate will never
hear
of a Libertarian candidate, and even if they ever
did
, the LP's platform of ending welfare and Social Security would end their brief interest.

"The graying Baby Boomers — who will not
begin
to die off until the year 2024, and half of them will live until 2035 — will do
anything
necessary to ensure their monthly Social Security checks, including the increased wage slavery of their children and grandchildren. That means Social Security will not only remain a politically-untouchable issue for at least the next thirty years, it will also, at minimum,
double
in size during that period. And you believe that some political party will be able to reduce, privatize, or eliminate Social Security and MediCare in our lifetimes? Hah! They don't call SS a "third-rail" issue for nothing. Touch it, and you're fried.

"Point being, it is a political and social impossibility to convert the United States of America into a Libertarian nation. It'd be like trying to Christianize Iran. America simply does not want to
go
there, and since we do not believe in using force as a political instrument we cannot drag the country there kicking and screaming. Neither will we ever win by education and argument because we have no access to media and academia, and we likely never will. Perhaps after the Social Security collapse and the demise of the elderly Baby Boomers a third party may have a chance to lead from the chaos, but for the next generation or two the USA will continue to be run by some variant of the DemoPublicans. Them's the facts.