***

  “The Alexander Hope?” As in, the Howard Hughes, or the Bill Gates.

  “Dr. Van Cleave,” Alex told the man behind the desk, “I assure you that I don’t expect to be treated any differently than any other applicant.”

  On the wall behind the fellow’s desk there hung an enormous color photograph of the damaged Apollo XIII service module. Alex didn’t know what that flight meant to Van Cleave, but it had always been important to him as the supreme example of courage under fire and the ability to “think on one’s feet”.

  The Chancellor of Albert Gallatin Memorial College, and the head of its philosophy department was a tall, thin man of about Alex’s own age, with snow white hair, a beard, and a moustache that belied his otherwise youthful appearance. Surprisingly, the man wore cargo slacks and a tan bush jacket.

  “But you’re a unique individual, Mr. Hope—“

  “Call me Alex.”

  “Alex, then. You’re a unique individual, Alex. You have to be treated differently—and so does everybody else.” He glanced through Alex’s papers once again, those associated with his three degrees in history, as well as perhaps the briefest resume he’d ever seen. It mentioned Alex’s educational background, the Marines, and the Hope Corporation.

  “Besides,” the Chancellor went on, “we have something that may interest you. It’s an endowed chair in history, but it has to be given to a man with a military background who’s also been successful in business.”

  “Which is defined as ... ?” Alex knew perfectly well.

  “Having made,” Van Cleave grinned at him, and Alex knew that the man understood exactly what was happening here, “more than a billion dollars.”

  Alex grinned back. “Would you care to see my Dun & Bradstreet or my tax returns?”

  ***

  The college catalog referred to it as “The Meaning and Spirit of the American Revolution.” After teaching the course for five years, Alex had been surprised and delighted to learn that it was one of the most popular classes on campus.

  Of course Albert Gallatin Memorial College was no ordinary campus. Still, it pleased him that they’d had to find a larger venue for this section every year, and that the young faces in the first several rows continued to be bright and eager.

  “Today, ladies and gentlemen” he opened a book he wouldn’t look at again for the next hour, leaned over the lectern, and told them—all 250 of them—“is the fifth anniversary of my arrival here at Gallatin Memorial, as well as the fifth anniversary presenting this class, which, in turn, was a major reason for my wanting to teach at Gallatin in the first place.”

  They occupied what used to be a dissection theater, a splendid hall from another era, built of golden oak, with a 60-foot skylighted ceiling, brick floors, and granite tabletops. Before him, the seats rose in a horseshoe shape and stadium-style, for 30 rows. Then there was a balcony with another 10 rows. Students entered there, or through doors on the landing beneath the balcony on either side of the hall. There were doors behind him, as well—for a fast getaway, he always joked—at either end of a wonderful set of enormous blackboards made of genuine slate in several oak-framed layers, sliding up and over one another. The acoustics were absolutely perfect. There was no need for a microphone, or even to raise his voice.

  “A lot of individuals these days,” he said, “both in academia and politics, pretend to have difficulty understanding what the Founding Fathers meant when they wrote the Constitution, and especially the Bill of Rights.”

  He heard a sort of rustle go through the class as they settled down to listen. At that, it was a lot better, he thought, than hearing them snore.

  “It seems to me that you have to be desperate to advance your political agenda—pathetically desperate—if you’re willing to appear so dullwitted and ignorant that you’re unable to comprehend the clearest thinking and the cleanest writing ever, in the history of the English language.”

  He’d once read through the Declaration of Independence, inspired by H.L. Mencken’s silly 1920s street-slang translation of it, with an eye toward rendering it more accessible to the 21st century ear. What a mistake that had been. He hadn’t been able to think of a single substitute for the common—and uncommonly beautiful—words that Thomas Jefferson had chosen, even as tweaked painfully afterward by the Continental Congress.

  “So for the benefit of mental malingerers like that, as well as our own, for just a minute, let’s put ourselves where the Founders found themselves after the Revolution and see if we can’t figure out for ourselves just what they were getting at.”

  He stepped out from behind the table where his book lay and began pacing slowly in front of it.

  “Let’s give it a try: following a 20-year cold war, and a shooting war that lasted for nine years, you’ve just completely flabbergasted yourself, and everybody else in the world, by humiliating the regular military and the mercenary forces of the most powerful and ruthless empire the world has ever witnessed, a culture that has pretended for centuries to be the most refined and genteel civilization known to mankind, but which has raped and pillaged and enslaved its way across the face of this poor, suffering planet since Henry Cabot rediscovered Newfoundland in 1497.”

  Alex always enjoyed throwing that in. Newfoundland had been the very first dominion of the British Empire, founded in 1688 by Sir Cavendish Boyle—the funniest name Alex had ever heard. He and Amelia had been to Cabot Tower on one of their sales trips, a big stone chess rook of a building, standing on a coastal hill high above old St. John’s, from which Guiglielmo Marconi had sent his first historic wireless signal in 1901.

  That had been a good trip. His mind returned to Colorado, and the present. “Now, Founding Fathers and Mothers, you you find yourself writing a document—the basic legal foundation for your new country—hoping to make sure that the abuses of power that caused you to fight the Revolution to begin with can never happen again.

  “Let’s start with what’s often regarded as the most outdated and least important of the first 10 amendments to the Constitution, commonly known as the Bill of Rights, the Third Amendment, which forbids the quartering of troops in people’s homes in times of peace, or in times of war ‘but in a manner to be prescribed by law’—which necessarily implies just compensation; considering the nature of the 18th century practice, that pretty much precludes quartering of any kind under any circumstances.

  “If you’re the “beneficiary” of this kind of government attention, you can bet that your livestock will be slaughtered first, to feed the troops you’re quartering, or herded off to grace some officer’s estate, along with any rolling stock—wagons or carriages—you have. At the same time, your crops will be pulled from the ground—even if they’re not ready it will deny them to the enemy—and your orchards cut down for firewood.

  “Of course all of your furniture and personal property will meet similar fates, the smaller items—the gold locket with hand-cut silhouettes of your mother and father—vanishing into the voluminous bulk of the military uniforms of the time, the larger items hauled away to that officer’s estate, on your wagons, pulled by the oxen you’ll never see again.

  “But that’s only the least of it. And you can pretty much expect your daughters, your sisters, your aunts, your wife, and even your mother to be bringing more English babies into the world in a few months—that is, if they aren’t simply beaten to death, or gutted from crotch to sternum by British bayonets, once they’ve been used by the officers and thrown to the troops afterward.”

  He always listened for a reaction at this point, and was usually rewarded with a few gasps or groans, followed by a shocked silence. Over the past two centuries, British redcoats had almost become friendly figures, like Canadian Mounties, or Smokey the Bear, instead of the European-style army of rape and pillage that they were.

  “Remember, we’re not speaking of Nazis, here, or of Cossacks, or even of the Mongol Horde. We’re talking about the “kindest, gentlest” empire in the world. Does the Third Amendment seem so obsolete and insignificant now?”

  Murmuring, of a sort that told him he’d gotten through, filled the room.

  “Okay, then, maybe you’re ready for this one.

  “If you’d just been through all of this—you, your neighbors, and friends—would you write yourself a Second Amendment guaranteeing a right to own and carry weapons to a state-approved militia? Or would you try to safeguard the natural and inherent right of any human being to defend yourself and your family against the state—no matter who disapproved of it or how hard they they tried to twist and distort your words and intentions afterward?”

  Somebody yelled, “You bet your ass I would!” Alex suppressed an unprofessorly grin. He knew who the shouter was and would deal with him appropriately later on. When the laughter had finally died down, he went on.

  “Obviously, at least one of those among us has learned something from history. Now despite all of the sighs and lies of the so-called news media, despite the blithering of Hollywood “personalities” so empty of mind and spirit they have to be filled with other people’s words and ideas—and even movements from place to place on a set—despite the posturing of a judiciary that’s a national disgrace and desperately in need of scouring out with flamethrower and firehose, despite all of that, anyone who holds to the former interpretation of the Second Amendment, and denies the latter, simply admits to the world that he’s ignorant, stupid, crazy, or every bit as evil as the English atrocities that forced the Bill of Rights to be written in the first place.”

  He closed the book before him.

  “No formal assignment today, ladies and gentlemen. Go home and think about what I’ve said.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN: THE AUSTRIAN MAFIA

  Any politician who won’t trust you with the weapon of your choice clearly cannot be trusted with the power he desires over your life.—Alexander Hope, Looking Forward

  You want to what?”

  Sitting at his desk, Alex peered up over his reading glasses at his four favorite—and brightest—students, who had crowded themselves into his tiny office. In a transparent attempt to flatter him, each of them carried a copy of Looking Forward, the book he’d written his first year here at Gallatin Memorial. He wondered where they’d come by their copies. The book was currently “O.P.”—meaning “out of print”.

  Before him, spread across the blotter, was his lunch: an open tin of difficult-to-get tiny sardines, packed in two layers in soy bean oil (these days, most of the sardines you could buy in grocery stores were big enough to reel in on a hook and line), a box of saltines, and a plastic screw-topped bottle of Coca-Cola.

  Now if only this cubicle had room enough for his four young guests to sit down. As it was, the quarters were so close that they probably couldn’t fall down. At least he had a window, looking out at “garden level” onto the college commons. (In the summertime, a classical Greek play was always performed here, invariably billed as “The Tragedy of the Commons”; it was an economists’ joke.) That window was the only thing that kept him from believing that his office had once been a broom closet.

  Ernie Hanover answered him. “I was just listening to the MP3 recording I made the other day of your lecture on the Third Amendment—I wanted to preserve whatever version of it you delivered on your fifth anniversary here. Professor Hope, nobody else has your unique take on history and the issues of the day. We want to nominate you for President!”

  Ernie was an energetic, perpetually pink-faced young man with short, curly hair that wasn’t quite red. Uncaring of current fashion, he wore bleeding Madras shirts he must have inherited from his grandfather, black rimmed glasses, and hushpuppies, Unlike most people who rattled on at 300 words a minute, he almost always made sense.

  This time, his history professor thought, might prove to be an exception.

  Alex mused out loud. “President? Of Albert Gallatin Memorial College? When we already have a fine Chancellor in the person of Dr. Van Cleave? You know we don’t do things democratically here, Ernie. Is this an armed mutiny? Are you aware of what a good shot Chancellor Van Cleave happens to be? We’ve been antelope hunting together, and believe me, I know.”

  He raised his right hand, made a pistol of it, pointed it at Ernie, and dropped the hammer—his thumb—simulating recoil.

  Ernie clutched his chest and groaned dramatically.

  “No, no, Professor Hope!” Katie Harris shook her head. She was a pretty brunette with fascinating eyes, bouncy ringlets around her face, too sexy a voice for someone of her years, and the highest grades in any of his classes. She was usually quick on the uptake, and would someday be valedictorian, but she didn’t seem to understand that he was joking with them now. “President of the United States!”

  Alex had seen the local news this morning. (He usually turned the sound off and turned the closed captions on; for some reason it was easier to take that way.) He knew exactly what they’d meant. He even had a pretty good idea what they were up to.

  Together, these four and a small handful of others constituted what everybody on campus referred to as the “Austrian Mafia”. On their own time, they all studied and discussed the ideas and works of the famous Austrian-school economists Ludwig von Mises, Friederick Hayek, and Murray Rothbard. Sometimes they would publicly debate the equally ardent followers of “Chicago monetarists” like Milton Friedman, whom the Austrian Mafia infuriated to insanity by loftily dismissing as “Neo-NeoKeynesians.”

  “Are you involved in this conspiracy, Mr. Thomas, Mr. Douglas?

  Rick Thomas and Mick Douglas—commonly known as “Rick and Mick”—nodded their heads enthusiastically. “Guilty as charged!” Mick told him, grinning from ear to ear. He was a broad-shouldered kid with a crewcut and would likely have been on the football team, if Gallatin had had one. Instead, he played tennis and golf, games Alex didn’t care for or understand the appeal of.

  “With oak leaf clusters!” Rick agreed. He was the oldest, having served in the Air Force before starting school. Rick was a fifth year undergraduate creating his own course in “praxeology”, a formal study of “human action” of which Austrian economics was a part. With long, prematurely white hair, he was the usual ringleader when these four were up to no good. “And with a Republican candidate apparently up to his neck in some kind of internet nastiness, and a Democrat candidate who happens to be the most thoroughly hated woman in America, you might even stand a chance, if we can get you the nomination.”

  “And how do you propose to accomplish that?” Alex asked, although he knew perfectly well. These were good kids, he thought. There was more character in this room than in the entire state legislature.

  “At the Free Libertarian Party of America’s National Convention,” Rick said.

  “This coming Labor Day weekend,” Mick added.

  “Right here in Denver!” Ernie shouted.

  “Be there,” said Katie, “or be—“

  “Somewhere else,” Alex finished for her, forked a sardine onto a cracker, salted it, and took an icy swig of Coke to wash it down.

  ***

  Alex had only been to one political party convention before, in 1964, when he was 12 years old. He’d spent part of that summer with an aunt and uncle. Among other adventures he’d had with them, they’d taken him to the Alabama state Republican Party convention that had helped place Senator Barry Goldwater’s name in nomination as the GOP candidate for president.

  He could still recall Goldwater’s stirring words (which he learned later were written by Karl Hess) spoken at the GOP national convention that year: “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” He also recalled the squeals of outrage those words had elicited from network commentators and Goldwater’s most bitter enemies—liberal Republicans. Alex even had some campaign buttons from that year—one said “Goldwater-Miller”, another, “AuH2O”—and an unopened can of “Gold Water”, a lemon-lime drink of some kind, he’d always assumed.

  The candidate himself hadn’t been in Alabama (Alex had almost seen him the following September in Denver; his parents, both Democrats, had forbidden it). His Republican uncle joked for years afterward that Alex’s father had warned him if he voted for “that insane warmonger” Goldwater, America would end up in a land war in Asia. Sure enough, his uncle had voted for Goldwater (Lyndon Johnson had been elected in a 60-40 landslide), and that’s exactly what had happened in Asia. So much for conventional wisdom.

  Alex could still remember the giant concrete indoor arena, most of it underground, in which that state party convention had been held. He recalled the noise and the music, the bright lights and the bunting, the balloons and the bumper stickers—and thousands of individuals gathered together for the first time, every one of them hot, sweaty, and exhausted (in a building which wasn’t air-conditioned), but filled to bursting with enthusiasm and good cheer, looking forward to a future they believed would restore ownership and control of their own lives to them.

  Now, to Alex’s disappointment, this convention wasn’t anything like that. It was being put on in a hotel ballroom in downtown Denver. Most of the attendees were over 50, graying, bored, and tired of life by appearances, still going through the motions for reasons they probably couldn’t have articulated. Now that he thought about it, he knew dozens of individuals who’d been active in the FLPA and dropped out, including his own daughter and the Chancellor of Albert Gallatin Memorial College.

  Looking around, he began to understand why, and wondered, all of a sudden, if he was doing the right thing. The Free Libertarian Party of America had been around since 1971 and had never won more than 900,000 votes for its presidential candidate—most of the time it was less than half of that. Everybody he saw looked as if they understood that nothing revolutionary was happening here today, nothing revolutionary had ever happened here, and nothing revolutionary was ever going to happen.