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  “We will also need a national paramilitary police force as a coordinated line of defense in case of an American invasion.” said Morehouse. “Don’t worry about it, Frank. People accepted state police under the old régime and they’ll get used to the Civil Guard. Besides, we’re going to have an armed society, remember? That’s the greatest counterbalance to any attempt to impose a tyranny on any level.”

  “Assuming the people have the guts to turn their guns on authority figures,” said John Morgan sourly. “We had the Second Amendment in the U.S., and yet for generations all those guns just sat in the closets of so-called patriots gathering dust.”

  “But there has to be a civilian authority and an independent judiciary,” argued Barrow. “People still cling to this idea that election is somehow better than appointment, despite the entire experience of this continent since Andrew Jackson’s time, which proves that electing government officials is about the worst way to go, since it leads to a class of professional politicians who are just as bad as any British royal governor ever thought of being.”

  “That’s what happens when you give the vote to every retard and syphilitic nigger drug addict, yes,” argued Bresler. “But the purpose of qualified and earned citizenship and franchise within the Northwest Constitution is to make sure that you have as responsible and educated an electorate as possible, so you don’t have fools voting other fools and thieves and snake oil salesmen into office.”

  Morgan spoke up. “Folks will accept a more or less imposed national police force so long as it’s genuinely their police force, there to protect and serve, as the old saying used to go, but they want that feel-good factor of going into the little booth and pulling the lever about something, too. It don’t mean nothing, hell, it ain’t meant nothing in the past hunnert years if the only people on that ballot was thieves and liars and con men and it cost ten million dollars to run a campaign, but folks want it. They’re used to it. It’s like a kid with his security blanket. They gone get twitchy over appointed judges and sheriffs. Or will there be any sheriffs?”

  “What about this?” suggested Morehouse. “The basic unit of administration in the Republic will still be the county, right?”

  “Yes,” agreed Barrow. “We decided to keep those because they’re what people are used to, and there’s existing infrastructure we can step in and take over. We’ll probably have to combine some of the counties out east, because they’re so thinly populated.”

  Morehouse nodded. “Mmm hmm. Suppose we have one elected sheriff for each county, who will be the Republic’s chief representative and administrative officer, as he actually was in medieval England when the office was first created all those centuries ago? The sheriff will handle things like revenue collection and administration of state property, so forth and so on. He will be the top civilian officer in each county, and we have to trust those who have earned the vote through fulfilling their responsibilities to elect good ones. In a non-capitalist system that will almost certainly be subject to severe economic sanctions, there won’t be all that much bribery and corruption money floating around, anyway. It’s not like there will be an Indian casino every twenty miles, like there was under the old order.”

  “Kinda hard to do with no Indians,” agreed Flowers. “What about the judiciary? That will come under my department.”

  “Same deal applies, Art,” said Morehouse. “Let the citizens’ roll elect a senior judge and assistant judges in a population-apportioned number for each county.”

  “Will these judges be paid by the state?” put in Gary Bresler.

  “Doesn’t that violate the Constitutional prohibition against a legal profession, anybody making a living off the law?”

  “The Constitution prohibits attorneys,” said Barrow thoughtfully, rubbing his chin. “Or rather it prohibits anyone accepting payment in money or anything of value for serving as an advocate in a legal case. People charged with crimes can still appoint someone else to defend and speak for them, those advocates just can’t be paid. It will be considered to be a civic duty, like it was in ancient Rome, where some of the most famous statesmen and philosophers started off as advocates in the law courts. We all know what that provision was meant to prevent. Under the old order, lawyers were an unmitigated horror. The entire court system was essentially nothing more than a gigantic fraud to allow millions of parasites in expensive suits and briefcases to live large off the fruits of human misery. It was a machine that pulled people into it as the raw material to be processed and mangled and crushed like grapes in a wine press, drained of every last penny. We cannot and will not allow that here, not ever. But we do need some kind of court system, although the intention of the 2006 drafters was clearly that it should be as bare minimum as possible.”

  Morehouse nodded. “Obviously King County and Multnomah County will need more judges than Adams or Pend Oreille County,” he said. “Or whatever we decide to rename Multnomah County when that committee on getting rid of all these goddamned Indian names reports back. But they will have no actual armed men at their command to strong-arm and intimidate people. A magistrate’s authority needs to be legal and moral, based not just on respect for his office, but for the man. No one can demand or receive respect when the whole state and society that empowers him is oppressive and corrupt from top to bottom. The Republic’s judges and the courts are there to try cases and make determinations of fact, not to make law all off their own bat and according to their own whims, or according to their own liberal politics as was the case under the U.S.A. Law is made by the National Convention, or Parliament or whatever we decide to call the legislative branch. Judges in the Republic can’t just order people to do this and that, like in America. Any and all enforcement requires the concurrence of the state in the form of the Guard. One of the worst aspects of the old system was finding yourself in a courtroom surrounded by enemies and being afraid to speak the truth even when truth was on your side, because the judge had armed men at his beck and call and the power to lock people up for so-called contempt of court, the judge himself of course defining what constituted contempt. It allowed weak and sneaking little men in black robes to exercise power and authority which they neither earned nor deserved. Our judges have to command respect and obedience through wisdom and justice, not institutional terrorism.”

  Art Flowers spoke up. “Again, we need to bear in mind that the electorate will be composed only of citizens who have already demonstrated civic responsibility in order to earn their vote, I think that will alleviate a lot of the corruption and cronyism and bribery and general sleaze that flourished under democracy. Hope so, anyway.”

  “That and the fact that we’re not going to have that much money to go around bribing cops and officials,” put in Ray Ridgeway. “When you don’t live in one big fleshpot and shopping mall, with all kinds of artificial desires and commercially created consumer greed, the motivations for corruption are correspondingly diminished.”

  “Less temptation, less corruption,” said Fiona Bonnar.

  “But we need to leave the Civil Guard a separate body, independent of local government,” Flowers continued. “Part of the Guard’s function will be to assist civil authority, i.e. the sheriff and the judiciary, but the Guard can’t actually be under the command of local officials. That’s where your skullduggery starts seeping into the system.”

  “So what else are they debating out there?” asked Morehouse.

  “People are also confused about the very idea of abolishing the states altogether,” said Barrow. “Some of them want to know why we can’t have a state and a federal government just like before. I’ve tried to explain that in a country the size of the Republic it’s not necessary to have any middle level of government, as well as being incredibly expensive and wasteful.”

  Salvatore laughed and shook his head. “Many of these people joined the revolt over the crushing taxes that paid for war after war in the Middle East, not to mention giving every nigger and beaner in America his own mortga
ge which he then defaulted on, not to mention the attempt to create a national health care system that gave blacks and browns free care while whites paid for it, hell, you guys remember how it was. Do they really want to pay taxes now to support an extra tier of bureaucracy that was created in the days of horse and wagon and the steam locomotive? Something we don’t really need anymore in the twenty-first century of instantaneous communication and rapid mass transit?”

  “People are going to want a lot of things just like before,” said Morehouse. “They naturally long for the familiar. There’s still an awful lot of white people out there who honestly believe it’s possible to restore the old American Dream, just without all the niggers and the bullshit. They don’t understand that the Iron Dream is what we have to shoot for, to make sure we have any future at all.”

  “It’s hard for them to internalize new concepts,” agreed Salvatore. “I think decentralization can help reassure them. If we can disperse as much state infrastructure as we can to places like Spokane and Boise and Missoula and Cheyenne, so forth and so on, it will not only serve government and defense policy and spread the jobs and wealth around, but it will keep the population reassured. I think a lot of the people east of the Cascades are afraid their voices and their interests will be drowned out by the big cities along the I-5 corridor, like happened under ZOG. We don’t want to give them the impression that they’ve exchanged one big bureaucratic regime on the east coast for one on the west coast.”

  “Any more serious problems?” asked Morehouse.

  “We’re getting some static on the concept of national service for young people,” said Barrow.

  “Absolutely essential!” said Bresler from Commerce and Industry.

  “What’s the beef?” asked Morehouse.

  “So far the proposed requirement is one year in the Labor Service and two years in the military for boys, two years Labor Service for girls. We have some people who want to put in loopholes for the draft, kind of like what used to exist under the U.S.A., college exemptions and so forth. Not only for military conscription itself, but for the Labor Service. Especially for the Labor Service. I hate to say it, but I think we’ve actually had some damned lobbyists creep in already, people putting certain delegates up to things, including trying to make sure there’s some way little mall rat Richie Rich Junior doesn’t have to spend a year out of high school hauling garbage or swinging a pick and shovel.”

  “That’s a big-ass negatory,” said Morgan flatly. “We allow that, we’re opening the door to a goddamned class system in the Republic with the Party and the rich on the top, like in the Soviet Union. That will be a weakness ZOG will exploit to destroy us someday. One of the biggest problems we had under the old order was all these pale Beavis and Buttheads who got to the age of thirty without ever having to work a single day in their lives.”

  “I’m in full agreement,” said Morehouse. “Hang tough on national service Frank, and let everybody know the government is backing you up on this. Every young person works in the Labor Service and the men serve in the army first. Then they go on to college and the rest of their lives. And every man in this country is going to have to be a soldier, at least part time. Our enemies in the United States and Aztlan will always outnumber us.”

  “Next bone of contention is whether or not girls will be able to choose military service in lieu of the Labor Service, and for how long?” reported Barrow. “A lot of Christians and general Neanderthal male chauvinist types want to go back to an all-male army.”

  “Choose the military as a career? Of course,” said Morehouse. “Our female comrades who fought in the NVA have earned them that right. I’m thinking of Cathy Frost and Melanie Young. I’m thinking of that little Threesec girl of seventeen who climbed up on top of that I-5 bridge and called down our artillery a few days ago. In the face of examples like that, we’re supposed to tell our women they have to stay home and bake cookies and knit sweaters for the boys in uniform? Horse shit.”

  “As a substitute for the Labor Service, no,” said Stanhope emphatically. “Red nailed it. The main thing about the Labor Service has to be that everybody’s kid serves, rich and poor, male and female alike. Their years of national service through work and the military have to become simply a part of a young man or woman’s coming of age in the Northwest Republic, something everybody does without question. Nobody phones it in, nobody gets a pass, like they got a pass on responsibility in America. I’m with John on this. You start giving certain kids exemptions or diddling around with their conditions, especially if they are the children of Party people, and you have the beginnings of a privileged élite, which is the slippery slope that eventually created ZOG. I myself grew up in that kind of élite, fancy prep school, Skull and Bones, where none of us rich punks would have been caught dead with a shovel in our hand or wearing a uniform, and I can tell you first-hand what kind of person it produces. Not the kind we want in our Republic. That’s one of the reasons Marxist Communism never worked well in practice. The Communist Party bureaucracy, the nomenklatura, became the Soviet Union’s new nobility, and we can’t allow that to happen here.”

  Bresler spoke up. “Not only is it vitally important that all young men and women go through that experience with one another, but frankly, the Republic is going to need their labor. We don’t have Mexicans any more to dig our ditches and haul our garbage. There’s a lot of work to be done out there. Rebuilding Portland alone is going to be a nightmare.”

  “Tell me about it,” agreed Ray Ridgeway glumly. “I have to find the money to pay for it.”

  Barrow said, “Some of the delegates are proposing a maternity exemption from national service for girls in the name of eugenics, but some others, mostly the more strait-laced Christian types, are complaining that this will encourage teenaged pregnancy.”

  “Good!” said Morehouse. “We want to encourage teenaged marriage and pregnancy, since the overriding national imperative has to be that there must be more of us. Right now white people under the age of sixty are only eight per cent of the planet’s population, and white women of childbearing age are less than three percent. We have to get those numbers up!”

  “But won’t that lead to a situation where girls are encouraged to get pregnant to get out of Labor Service?” asked Fiona Bonnar.

  “If bringing new white lives into the world isn’t one of the highest forms of national service, I don’t know what is,” commented Jennings.

  “Pregnant girls can still do office work or assemble widgets on an assembly line or something,” said Flowers.

  “Again, let’s wait and see what the relevant committee of the Convention comes up with,” said Morehouse.

  Jennings spoke again. “By the way, before I forget, at some point soon I need to get with all of you about your use of computers and internet connection in your departments. As incredible as it may sound to someone raised on the information highway, I think we’re going to need to learn to do without the internet for a while. The government will have to, anyway. It’s essential that the NAR take precautions against virus attacks originating in the United States and Israel, some of which have already been reported. With or without official sanction, someone is already trying to shut us down. A lot of private sector networks have already been infected and in some cases crashed. Yes, I know, we have some real hotshot computer geeks from the NVA who can work up all kinds of firewalls and whatnot, but right now if we rely on computer networks for vital functions, in our present shaky state of newborn existence, a major system crash in Defense or Security or Commerce and Industry could be very serious. My personal recommendation is that we don’t rely on any kind of computer system with any connection to the internet, and we probably need to be leery of using local area networks in our offices as well, even without an internet connection. Some damned spy might sneak in with a thumb drive in his pocket containing a virus, and load it onto one of our government machines and infect and destroy vital data. This probably means going back to filing cab
inets and typewriters for most of our government offices, or at least stand-alone word processors and PCs. I’m sure if we dig around in the basements and back rooms in a former state capitol, the home of bureaucracy, we can find some of that stuff gathering dust.”

  “To be honest, I wouldn’t be sorry to see that happen in any case,” said Morehouse. “All of you know that I have always considered the internet to be a mixed blessing at best. Right, Ray, you’re up next. What have we got in our national wallet?”

  “A fair amount, or we will have,” said Ridgeway. “When the top nine American megabanks froze their Northwest customers’ assets, they not only pissed off their millions of depositors, they opened the door for us to nationalize the banks. Which we would have done anyway, but now we have an excellent fig leaf to cover that decision. I’ve taken the liberty of declaring the assets of all private financial institutions to be state property, which we will hold in trusteeship for the depositors to prevent any attempts to move the cash out of the country. Acting on my authority, guards are being posted on most of the branches to make sure there’s no funny stuff, no attempt to remove cash reserves and make off with them, so forth and so on. By the way, thanks for the manpower on that, Art.”

  “Technically speaking, as of yesterday all police officers in the Northwest who have remained at their posts are now members of the Civil Guard, but it’s been an interesting exercise for me to see how many of them will obey orders coming from the Ministry of Justice,” said Flowers. “About eighty percent seem to be complying, especially since it involves preventing bank robbery, which is in fact what cops are supposed to do, aren’t they?”