“Please do with your tax savings whatever you wish,” Alex told his audience. “It’s your money, after all, and it always was. Spend it, invest it, stuff it under your mattress. And before either of the other two parties asks about it, any revenues ‘lost’ under this new program will be ‘made up’ through steep reductions in unnecessary—and unconstitutional—government programs, most obviously and immediately by closing down the Social Security Administration itself, and allowing—perhaps even assisting—its tens of thousands of employees to seek new opportunities in the productive sector of the economy.”

  Now Alex took something of a gamble. Although public attitudes toward smoking had significantly softened over the last decade, what he did now was still a risk. From his desk he picked up a plain dark briar pipe that had been prepacked with aromatic tobacco, lit it with a disposable Bic lighter, and puffed on it. Most of his predecessors had smoked—Kennedy, for instance, had preferred cigars—but Franklin Delano Roosevelt, with his long cigarette holder, had been the last to do so in public.

  Alex believed it was time to alter the image of the President of the United States again, to one more like the people he was addressing tonight.

  “Although I anticipate strong emotional and political reactions to this new policy from many different directions, I’d like to warn those individuals and groups inclined, for example, to enjoin or sue to stop it, that, as President, my job description consists of little besides enforcing the letter and the spirit of the Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights.”

  He knew that Alan’s camera would be boring in for a closeup now. “The Social Security system is blatantly unconstitutional, and violates the rights of those it has victimized. Any attempts to continue such a violation are themselves a violation of the law—notably of Title 18, Sections 241 and 242—and they will be promptly and vigorously prosecuted.”

  He could almost hear the gasps of outrage and indignation—and perhaps a little fear, he hoped—from those who considered themselves heirs of the New Deal. He took another puff, then held the briar in his hands. “In closing, allow me to remind you of your 1000-yard-old right and duty as a juror to judge the law, as well as the so-called facts of the case.

  “Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, and happy Fourth of July!”

  ***

  One of the marshals pushed him from behind, urging him forward.

  For the past 15 years, ever since he’d entered the federal Witness Protection Program, he’d been known as “Arthur Middleton”, a somewhat incongrous name for an individual of Japanese extraction. For 15 years he’d believed that he was safe from the neofascists, libertarians, and other right-wing crazies who were anxious to exact bloody revenge for what he’d had a part of at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and later on at Mount Carmel, near Waco, Texas.

  What “Arthur” had never figured on was the election of a President who didn’t belong to either wing of the single party in America that pretended it was two—the party that had sent him to do its dirty work in the first place, and protected him ever since—a President who regarded what “Arthur” had done at Ruby Ridge and Waco not as his solemn duty, not as simply following the orders of his superiors in the hierarchy like a good soldier, but as the coldly-calculated murder of innocent and helpless men, women, and children.

  The first tall chain-link gate opened at the entrance of the El Reno federal penitentiary near Oklahoma City. The air was somehow dusty and humid at the same time. Everything today seemed charged with irony to “Arthur”, from the name of the prison he was entering, with his hands cuffed together in front of him and his feet hobbled with an 18 inch chain, to the city near which the prison had been built. He’d never imagined he’d be wearing the same orange coveralls the surviving Davidians had been given.

  He’d learned in the 80s to shoot a scoped rifle more accurately than any other man alive. He’d employed that skill to advance the interests of his government, including nipping certain rebellious bloodlines in the bud, before they had a chance to breed again (which was why he had no compunction about killing a woman or a child). His employers had called him a hero and showered him with medals and other rewards. But now that Alexander Hope was President, all of that was over. His superiors were in prison, too, or dead by their own hands, or at the hands of arresting officers. And he would probably die here, himself, between these gray, concrete walls.

  The outer gate shut behind him with a horribly final metallic clash, the inner gate slowly opened, and the federal marshals at his elbows guided him into the prison, proper.

  What he saw there wasn’t good. The inmates crowded along both margins of the sidewalk were wearing black baseball caps with white embroidered letters that said “The F.L.I.R. Project”. FLIR—Forward Looking Infrared—was the system used by his idiotic employers to record everything that had happened at Waco. Unfortunately, the FLIR system had caught “Arthur” and his team firing their automatic weapons into the building to keep the people inside trapped, where they would eventually burn to death.

  And The F.L.I.R. Project itself was the name of a documentary film that had finally exposed this crime to the public—the new President had shown it in its entirely during one of his Saturday evening talks—and landed “Arthur” here in prison for life.

  As long as it lasted ...

  ***

  Uncle Bob said, “Well, good evening, Mr. President! Glad you could join us here again. How’s it going up there, and what can I fix for you?”

  It was well past midnight and the end of an unusually long October day. Alex had made a habit, over the past several months, of coming down to the White House kitchen a couple of times a week to chat with his new friend. It was one of the few ways he had of getting some kind of feel for what people like him—real, productive people—were thinking.

  “Well, today,” he told Uncle Bob, “I ordered the declassification of everything that has anything to do with UFOs, Project Blue Book, swamp gas, the bizarre incident at Roswell in 1947, and so on. Any use of the shredder or the bulldozer will constitute a felony. I’ll be very interested to see the results. I’ve always been curious about them, myself.”

  Uncle Bob wiped his hands on a towel tucked into his waistband and offered Alex a seat at the big stainless steel worktable in the center of the room. “Me, too, sir. That mean you’re gonna put Mulder and Scully out of work?”

  “And the Men in Black,” Alex grinned. “At least I’m going to try. I also signed an executive order rescinding all the stupid regulations about politically incorrect toilets—you know, the regulations that limit the number of gallons in the tank so you have to flush two or three times? The ones that have people smuggling their new toilets in from Europe?”

  Uncle Bob laughed and nodded. “We ran into that situation when we built our new house in Maryland. Took Mr. Gordon Liddy’s advice and had some decent plumbing smuggled in from France—my wife liked that, having toilets from France, and smuggled, too. Can’t I fix you anything at all, sir? I have some excellent stuffed bell peppers left over from lunch.”

  “And they were wonderful. That would be just great, Uncle Bob. I also removed federal support for ‘reformulated’ gasoline, which should eventually lower the national cancer rate, if nothing else. Let the midwestern farmers who want to sell their corn-fed alcohol as fuel, set up their own filling stations and compete on an open market. I’ll cooperate as much as I can with them, in principle, by hamstringing the BATF for them.”

  “Hamstring ‘em for me, too, sir. I’m a cook. I always had a hankering to make my own whiskey.”

  “I’d be happy to,” Alex grinned. “In general, now, Congress has begun to understand what the New Media are calling the ‘BoRT’ or ‘BoRTest’—that a proposed bill has to be justifiable under the Bill of Rights before I’ll even think about signing it, and that I’ll veto anything that doesn’t pass. At the moment, legislative activity is at its lowest volume since sometime around the Spanish-American War, and the socialist media are screaming their nasty heads off about a ‘do-nothing’ Congress.”

  “Always music to my ears, sir.” Uncle Bob had gone to one of the huge stainless steel refrigerators and removed a tray of the meat and rice and cheese-filled delicacies. “Now what color would you care for, sir, I got plenty of red and yellow and orange and purple ones, and of course, green.”

  “Orange, thank you.” Alex found the orange peppers especially sweet. “China’s been rattling its ken again, so I spoke briefly with a private group who’ve raised enough money to air-drop tiny earplug radios all over China and build orbital transmitters to broadcast the works of Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, and other Founding Fathers into a land hungry to have them. Ayn Rand, too, and Robert Heinlein. Now the real trick will be to talk both Congress and the Pentagon into cooperating with them.”

  Uncle Bob put a couple of the big stuffed peppers into a microwave oven. He’d finally—very reluctantly—gotten used to sharing these midnight snacks with the President, although both of them joked about getting fat. “You might think about including some Frederick Douglass, too, sir.”

  “You can count on it, Uncle Bob. Later this week, I’m planning to deal once and for all with La Reconquista.”

  Uncle Bob turned from watching the oven. “La Reconquista, sir? I don’t believe I’ve heard about that.”

  A wonderful aroma had begun to fill the room, and Alex’s mouth watered. He’d been busy and hadn’t eaten since six this evening. Dana wasn’t here to watch him; she was in California with Faith-Anne, looking at wedding gowns.

  “Not many people have. A lot of them swear it doesn’t exist, and you’ll never hear about it in the socialist mass media, but it was endorsed publicly by the previous President of Mexico, long before I was elected. I became conscious of it because I was running a business in San Diego, and a lot of the people who worked for me were Mexican immigrants.”

  “So what is it?” asked Uncle Bob.

  “It’s a plan, or a plot, or maybe just an idea, that if all of the American states bordering Mexico are flooded with illegal immigrants, and the illegals can somehow demand or be given the vote, then those states—California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas—and all the wealth they contain—can be ‘returned’ to Mexico. The border leaks like a seive and there have been calls in Congress and several state legislatures for years—from politicians way to the left—to give illegal immigrants the vote.”

  The microwave dinged. Uncle Bob opened the oven and removed the hot, aromatic peppers, transferred them to plates, brought them with silverware and linen, and a plate with homemade bread and butter to the table. He brought himself an oversized cup of decaffeinated coffee and the President an ice cold Coke. “So what do you plan to do about it, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  Alex shook his head. “I don’t mind at all, Uncle Bob. In fact, I’d like to know what you think of the idea. You see, I think I understand something that the conservatives don’t—that you can’t build a wall high enough, or dig a moat deep enough, to keep people from voting with their feet for freedom. It didn’t work in Berlin, where they were trying to get out, and it won’t work in Nogales, or a hundred other border towns, where they’re trying to get in.”

  “I see, sir.” Uncle Bob began to eat as Alex talked.

  “I also understand something that the so-called liberals don’t—that you can’t separate economic refugees from political refugees. We’re the most prosperous nation in the world because we’re the freest. People want to come here from countries that are impoverished because they’re oppressive. There’s a correlation there that the left doesn’t want examined. And it’s not only impossible to stop these immigranrs, it’s morally wrong.”

  Uncle Bob buttered a piece of bread. His eyebrows were raised. This President never failed to surprise him. “So what are you going to do about it, sir?”

  “Uncle Bob, I’m going to take the things that people emigrate for, to the places that they immigrate from. I’m going to offer American statehood—or at least my all-out support for it—to any Mexican state that ratifies our Bill of Rights by a two-thirds majority vote.”

  He dug into the steaming pepper and had a bite of its aromatic contents, washing them down with a swig of Coke.

  “You’re the only person I know who ever puts enough cheese in these things! Anyway, I’m thinking of making the same offer to the Canadian provinces.”

  Uncle Bob shook his head and whistled. Then he took a big gulp of his black coffee. “That oughta help out diplomatic relations,” he observed.

  “Congresswoman Alvarez,” Alex said around a bite of bread and butter, “has had an excellent Spanish translation made of the Bill of Rights, as part of a pamphlet explaining what it means for freedom and prosperity. She’ll have volunteers distributing it at every Mexican border crossing the minute I finish making my speech this Saturday. We’re planning a big radio campaign, as well, 150,000 watts, right into the heart of Mexico. I figure that ought to start a a few hundred brushfires that the Mexican government will be so busy putting out they won’t have time or energy or money left for any La Reconquista.”

  Uncle Bob laughed heartily. “Say you know, Mr. President, you ought to try the same thing here in the District—maybe in L.A. and Detroit, too!”

  “Good idea,” Alex replied, “do we translate the Bill of Rights into Ebonics?”

  “People who push that garbage,” the older man replied, suddenly serious, “got some sad, sick reason they want their own folks to fail. I gotta warn you, sir, that some of them won’t be able to handle all this freedom you’re shoving at them with both hands. Some of them are just plain too stupid—I hate to say it—after generations of the welfare state and public education. Some have forgotten (assuming that they ever knew) what it is to be free. Some truly fear freedom. They believe it’s too dangerous. They think it means a return to some kind of ‘survival of the fittest’ civilization and that they’re going to be wiped out.”

  Alex nodded. “I know, Uncle Bob, and it doesn’t help that the individuals who could help them, Walter Williams, Thomas Sowell, Ken Hamblin, have never been ‘annointed’ as black leaders by the white mass media.”

  “The white mass media!” Uncle Bob repeated. “You know I put the Washington Post in the bottom of my parrot’s cage, and my parrot died!”

  Alex laughed, “In the end it doesn’t have anything to do with color, Uncle Bob. America was built by people of all kinds who intuitively understood the enormous difference between ‘survival of the fittest’ and ‘survival of the fit’. People who were willing to work hard for what they wanted and then take a risk with it. The only question in my mind is how do we get more Americans back to that way of thinking.”

  Uncle Bob sighed. “Well, sir, I wouldn’t ever claim to speak for everyone, but for black people, you might start by reminding them that they once had heroes—not the whiny socialists we got today—who stood straight and tall for what the American Revolution promised, although in most cases they were a litle bit late getting their own piece of it.”

  Alex said, “You’re talking about people like Crispus Attucks, the first person to die in the Revolution ... “

  “I am not, sir.” Uncle Bob shook his head. “Poor Crispus, through no fault of his own, he’s sort of gotten to be the token Negro of the Revolution. No, sir, I had somebody a little more controversial in mind, a little more radical, who also died for freedom. You ever hear of Denmark Vesey?”

  Alex scowled in concentration. “The name sure sounds familiar. Something about a slave rebellion ... ?”

  “South Carolina, sir, Charleston in 1822. I guess the thing that’s most important—and impressive—about Vesey is that he already had his, if you know what I mean. He’d been born into slavery in the West Indies and bought his freedom—he won the money in a lottery! He’d built a carpentry business and gotten rich. He had a wife and family and a great big house. He was a respectable member of the community. And he even preached in his own Methodist church, which had about 3000 members.”

  Uncle Bob began gathering up the plates and silver and glasses, and then paused. “But what Vesey preached about in his church, mostly, was slavery. He hated it, and he wasn’t content just to have his own freedom, he wanted slavery ended forever for everybody. As a boy, he’d gotten all fired up about the Haitians overthrowing their masters and taking over their country and he had visions of doing that in South Carolina.”

  “I remember now,” said Alex. “Vesey wanted to kill every white person in the state. Kind of a public relations problem for him as a hero for today, wouldn’t you say?”

  Uncle Bob laughed. “Mr. President, Thomas Jefferson was an amateur scientist who didn’t believe in meteorites. As governor of Virginia, he wanted to bore a half inch hole sideways through the noses of all convicted female adulterers. But being wrong about that didn’t stop him from being right when he was right, did it? Anyway, the whites eventually shut Vesey’s church down, and that’s when the revolt began. Vesey convinced somewhere between 6000 and 9000 blacks to join him. The planning took four years. They even imported weapons from their supporters in Haiti.”

  “But the revolt was betrayed from the inside, by a house-slave who was comfortable with his servitude,” Alex said. “Vesey and his lieutenants were caught and tried and hanged—and ‘Remember Denmark Vesey!’ became a battle-cry for the first black regiment in the War between the States.”

  “That’s right.’ Uncle Bob nodded enthusiastically. “You see, sir? It’s like I said. People need real heroes. You know what shocked them in South Carolina? That black people could plan and organize a huge longterm operation like that. They were accustomed to thinking of blacks as some kind of animal—it made the institution of slavery so much more palatable for them, morally speaking. But Vesey spoiled that for them, and they never forgave him for it. In fact they almost wiped him right out of history.”

  “And you want to bring him back. Are you willing to see it done warts and all?”