“Hope! Hope! Hope!” exclaimed the audience, “Hope! Hope! Hope!”, and in the break between each triplet of words, some began shouting, “FOR AMERICA!”

  “No nation with a Sixth Amendment to its Constitution—promising a speedy public trial by an impartial jury—no such nation has a place for the police state process of voir dir, a phrase best translated as ‘jury tampering’ by judges and prosecutors, letting them hand-pick jurors to ensure the conviction of innocent defendants. Nor has it any place for schools and media and judges who refuse to inform juries of their 1000-year-old right and duty to evaluate the law, as well as the facts of the case.”

  More cheers. Jury nullification was popular with this crowd. The chanting started again: “Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA!”

  Alex had to wait it out. “No nation with a Seventh Amendment to its constitution—protecting the right to a jury trial in civil cases, limiting the power of federal trial and appellate court judges, setting a standard of due process, proclaiming our heritage of jury trials, and reminding the world of our culture’s commitment to citizen control of the legal process—no such nation has any place for a vast, proliferating horde of federal welfare state agencies and their administrative law courts that apply their own rules and impose their own penalties, with no jury of the people to evaluate the facts or to ensure that justice is served.”

  “Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA!”

  “No nation with an Eighth Amendment to its Constitution—forbidding excessive bail, excessive fines, and cruel and unusual punishments—no such nation has any place for judges who set bail or levy fines intended to cripple their victims, who let white collar defendants be restrained by manacles, leg-irons, and belly chains to make a Marxist political statement, or who countenance consent decrees that punish targetted individuals without proving their guilt.”

  “Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA!”

  “No nation with a Ninth Amendment to its Constitution—reserving to the people all the rights not mentioned in the Constitution—no such nation has a place for thousands of police state agencies and millions of agents interfering with every aspect of your life, telling you what to eat, what to drink, not to smoke, what car to drive, how to drive it, how to fuel it, how to bring up your children, what crops to raise, what crops not to raise, how tall your lawn can be, even how many gallons of water your toilet tank may contain.”

  “Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA!”

  “No such nation has any place for police state monsters who blow the heads off mothers holding their babies in their arms, or burn and machinegun whole churches full of women and children, and tell low, cowardly lies about it afterward and give each other worthless coward’s medals.

  “Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA!”

  “No such nation has any place for the increasingly prevailing police state philosophy of government under which, as E.B. White warned us, everything not forbidden by the state is compulsory and everything not compulsory is forbidden.”

  “Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA!”

  “No nation with a Tenth Amendment to its Constitution—reserving to the states and the people all powers not given to the government by the Constitution—no such nation has any place for police state agencies like the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, that cruelly trapped, confined, and tortured 80 helpless men, women, and childen in their church near Waco, Texas, for the purpose of improving its public relations problems.

  “Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA!”

  “Nor has it any room for a Combat Assistance Group—popularly known as ‘Delta Force’—that helped the ATF—or a Federal Bureau of Investigation that finished the victims off with flammable chemicals, shoulder-fired missiles to set the chemicals ablaze, and machineguns to make sure they stayed in their church and were poisoned or burned to death.

  “Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA!”

  “Nor has it any room for a Drug Enforcement Administration whose unconstitutional predations have all but destroyed the Constitution, corrupted government at every level, transformed our once-fair cities into combat zones, and turned America into a banana republic.

  “Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA!”

  “Nor has it any room for a Department of Housing and Urban Development that was among the first to ravage the Bill of Rights, obliterating hundreds of thousands of mostly inner urban residential buildings, forcing their occupants into so-called public housing, then lawlessly shaking its captives down whenever it feels the urge.

  “Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA!”

  “Nor has it any room for an Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and an Environmental Protection Agency that, more than any other, have ‘exported’ millions of American jobs by making the manufacturing industry all but impossible here.

  “Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA!”

  “Nor has it any room for a Food and Drug Administration which causes thousand of deaths every a year with unnecessary bureaucratic restrictions on new and badly-needed medicines.

  “Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA!”

  “Nor has it any room for a Federal Emergency Management Administration which capitalizes on human misery in the wake of natural disaster to control the lives of millions and take away their property and their rights.

  “Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA!”

  “Nor has it any room for an Interstate Commerce Commission which makes the most of a deliberate misunderstanding of the Constitution to control and oppress the lives of millions every day.

  “Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA!”

  “Nor has it any room for a Law Enforcement Assistance Administration which has militarized police all over the country, endangering the lives of millions.

  “Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA!”

  “Nor has it any room for a National Endowment for the Arts—the Art Nazis—who want to force you to pay for crucifixes exhibited in jars of human excrement, and call it ‘art’.

  “Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA!”

  “Nor has it any room for an Army Corps of Engineers which, with or without the permission of the owners, rearranges whole vistas, in a way that often renders them more dangerous to human life and enterprise.

  “Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA!”

  “Nor has it any room for thousands of other agencies riding roughshod over the duly constituted authority and the sovereignty of state and local governments and the American people themselves.”

  “Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA!”

  There came a hush. All ten Amendments had been mentioned; the ritual seemed complete. No one knew what to expect next—except for Alex.

  “No nation with a Thirteenth Amendment to its Constitution—outlawing slavery after 6000 bloody years of the vile, disgusting practice—no such nation has any place for conscription of any kind, no matter the emergency, no matter the excuse.”

  It began again. “Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA!”

  He raised his voice at last. “Nor for income taxation!”

  “Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA!”

  He shouted over the crowd, at the top of his lungs, “Or for those death-camps for the mind, the public schools, spewing their ceaseless crapaganda all over our precious children, converting them into our political enemies, and enlisting them in the socialist destruction of individual lives!”

  “Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA!”

  The uproar seemed to last for ages. Alex held onto the lectern and let it wash over him. It was like standing three feet from the tracks as a heavy freight-train passed by at 75 miles an hour, exhilirating and frightening at the same time.

  At last he raised both hands again. “It’s time to ask, what does such a nation have a place for?

  “The total obliteration of socialism?”

  “Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA!”

  “Government of the Bill of Rights, by the Bill of Rights, and for the Bill of Rights?”

  “Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA!”

  “And zero tolerance—for tyranny!”

  “Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA! Hope! Hope! Hope! FOR AMERICA!”

  The chanting and cheering lasted 20 minutes.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: JOHN PONDORO

  Look at the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, and Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, which spell out and set limits on what government’s allowed to do. Use a magnifying glass, use Coke-bottle spectacles, a jeweller’s loupe, or a scanning electron microscope, you’ll never find a word in there about public schools.—Alexander Hope, Looking Forward

  Tell me, Nada, are we simply going to let this ... this ... billionaire buy our party’s nomination?” Abe Horrwyrn demanded rhetorically.

  Horrwyrn was a bizarre figure of a man, Forrey Nadalindov thought. To start with, he was ludicrously tall and thin, reminding Nadalindov of the character Jack Skellington in The Nightmare Before Christmas. What was more, he had a very odd, waxy-gray complexion and mechanical mannerisms exactly like those of one of Walt Disney’s audioanimatronic dummies. Slap on a beard and a top hat and you’d have another Abe—Abe Lincoln.

  However strange they may have seemed in person, though, Horrwyrn’s appearance and eccentric behavior—as well as his excruciatingly slow delivery—worked very well on television, and that was all that counted.

  “Buy our party’s nomination? As opposed to stealing it, the way you did the last time?” asked Nadalindov. He’d just arrived in the convention hotel’s Presidential suite, having been curtly summoned here by its present occupant. Horrwyrn sat near a window, in the same position made famous by Rodin’s “The Thinker”, with the city’s lights twinkling behind him in the night. “Anyway, I thought we were in favor of things like money and billionaires and, well generally, acts of capitalism between consenting adults.”

  “Don’t get smart, Nada!” Declan Ghillie Moure entered from an adjoining room. It was the end of a long, hard, discouraging day, but the little man looked as if he’d just been washed and pressed, with his blue blazer, gray slacks, and striped red tie. “You’re not built for it, and it certainly isn’t why we arranged for you to have the Vice Presidential nomination.”

  “You arranged—?” Nadalindov was outraged and bewildered. “But I spent hours down there, wheeling and dealing, pulling in every favor I ever—“

  “While we spent hours undoing the damage you’d done, cajoling, threatening, blackmailing, and twisting arms—not to mention all the two-penny bribes we shelled out in the hotel bar and on the floor.” Moure made a snorting noise. “It’s gratifying—and disgusting—how little these simps will sell themselves for. Do you really imagine you could have done it without us? Imagine again—you’re our man, Nada, bought and paid for!”

  Horrwyrn said, “Now, Ghillie ... “

  Moure’s face was suddenly scarlet. “Shut up, Abe! Just sit there and try to look all statesmanlike and telegenic while I give Nada, here, his marching orders.”

  “Give me one good reason,” said Nadalindov, a ball of red-hot fury growing in his stomach, “why I should take orders from you, Ghillie Moure.”

  “Because after this is all over, we’ll see that you’re appointed executive director of the FLPA with a six figure salary—low six figures, mind you.”

  Nadalindov gulped. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Simple. Run as hard as you can for Vice President—we’ll help with the logistics—but run as if you want to be President. Wage an independent campaign as the self-declared libertarian moderate that the voters can rely on to be ‘realistic’. Whenever Hope goes overboard with his publicly-stated policies and positions, tell the media things like, ‘He doesn’t really mean it—and if he does, trust me to talk him out of it.’”

  Nadalindov shook himself like a wet spaniel. “Let me get this straight. You want me to continually undermine our own Presidential candidate?”

  “Nada, Abe and I want your unspoken campaign slogan to be, ‘Elect us—then impeach him.’ Hope will be noble and try to ignore you as best he can, but the media vultures, who are always on the lookout for conflict of any kind, can be counted on to give you considerable play.”

  “Elect us, then impeach him.” Nadlindov rolled it around in his mouth. “Sounds good to me.”

  ***

  “Crapaganda?”

  Alex laughed out loud, glancing briefly to his right, where his old friend John Pondoro was taking up a lot of room in the front passenger’s seat of the peacock blue Durango. All around them, the open prairie countryside, the fields and trees, had long since turned to gold and amber.

  They were leaving the Jefferson County Airport where the sleek little Hope Corporation LearJet had arrived on time. Now they were headed back to the Alex’s modest little house in Morrison, bearing his old war buddy, his buddy’s grown son, and a lot of rather heavy, lumpy baggage—exactly as Alex had predicted to his daughter. It was September 4th, the day following Alex’s FLPA nomination and acceptance speech.

  The day following the vicious attack on Dana Li.

  “I was speaking without notes,” Alex explained, “and the word just came out of my mouth. I didn’t realize you made a practice of watching C-Span.”

  Pondoro was an exceptionally large man, six feet three or four, Alex estimated, and built like an old-growth oak. Just one of the man’s hands was the size of both of Alex’s, and he recalled the way, during the war, that it had swallowed up a Colt 1911A1 .45 and made it look like James Bond’s tiny Walther PPK. They used to make a joke about John not needing a gun at all—he could just push the bullets in with his thumb.

  John wore his silvery hair in a crewcut, and like Alex, preferred bluejeans and cowboy boots to any other kind of clothing—although his pet brand of boots was Lucchese. While Alex liked western shirts and sportscoats, at the moment, John chose a khaki bush jacket like Chancellor Van Cleave’s.

  “Well it’s a good word,” John said. “Let’s keep using it. I don’t watch C-Span, I started with FoxNews, like I told you on the phone, but I was also logged onto NetPlanetNews.com and I actually watched your acceptance speech that way. Very preferable to having a couple of talking heads doing voiceovers and telling me what they want me to think you’re saying.

  “Say, isn’t that the same outfit your cute little girlfriend works for, Uncle Alex?” John’s son Cap, sitting immediately behind them, was as tall as his father, but only about half as wide, wiry, quick, and strong, with a perpetual sardonic grin. Life seldom got the better of Cap Pondoro; if he’d been tortured by the Spanish Inquisition, he’d have found some way to enjoy it—probably by making jokes at the Inquisitor’s expense.

  “You know perfectly well it is,” Alex replied, feeling a sudden heat rising along the sides of his neck. “And she isn’t my girlfriend, Cap. She’s probably younger than my daughter, and I’m certain that she’s younger than you are. The truth is,” he admitted sadly, “I hardly know her.”