A Short Story: Border Patrol

I haven't posted any examples of fiction in quite a while, so here it goes.  This is the beginning of a short story entitled interestingly enough ...

Border Patrol

        San Jose's eastern hills glowed dimly as the sun set behind the western mountains. It still made the hills glow even as street lights in the valley began to come on. Aluminum cans clanked from inside a plastic bag as Ezekiel dropped it into the large waste receptacle just outside his garage. He muttered under his breath as he drug it to the curb.

        “Receptacle, strange thing to call a garbage can.”

        A throaty male voice from two driveways down yelled to him.

        “You're not putting aluminum in the big can are you?

        It was Charlie, the old man who seems to spend each day sitting at the edge of his open garage watching everything that happens on the street. Up until seven days ago he was alone in this. Seven days ago was when Ezekiel moved in. Now there were too old men watching everyone else.

        Ezekiel yelled back, “I have so little to throw away. There's no point in using those silly little plastic boxes.”

        Charlie lifted himself out of his lawn chair, took a couple steps and pointed to the receptacle.

        “They could fine you for not sorting. They're strict about things like that around here.”

        Just then a burly white house cat galloped down from Ezekiel's roof. The tom let out an anxious sounding meow.

        “That is one big cat you've got there Zeke.”

        Ezekiel didn't give Charlie permission to call him Zeke. Charlie just took the liberty the first day they met. In previous days a man could have been made to clean horse stalls with his bare hands or worse for taking such a liberty, but that was centuries ago. Ezekiel never quite stopped being a general in his ways, but he could forgive a man for what he didn't know. Forgiving him didn't stop it from irritating him though.

        “Yes Charlie, that is one big cat.”

        Ezekiel looked the cat's way and sighed.

        “Is he telling you he's hungry or something?”

        “No.”

        Ezekiel wasn't happy that he now had to pull the bag with the cans in it out of the 'receptacle'.

        The cat walked up to him and sat down on his haunches. Staring at Ezekiel the tom slowly closed his eyes.

        “Zeke, I'm not much good at bending over or kneeling, otherwise I'd help you.”

        “That's okay Charlie. Thanks for the warning about the fines.”

        “I'll do this much for you. I'll stay here with my door open until you're safely inside.”

        “Thanks Charlie. I appreciate that.”

Ezekiel was telling a half truth. He considered Charlie's observing eyes a much greater threat to him than any street gang. It was a half truth because he couldn't help but like the man's spirit. An old man willing to stay out past dark in a gang-ridden neighborhood to help a neighbor.

        “An old man.” Those words resounded in his head as he knelt down by the bag. Two hundred and ninety five years of service to one cause or another, and he still couldn't get over the idea that the ages of most old men he met were fractions of his.

       Letting the phrase fade in his thoughts, he spoke under his breath to the cat. All the while he placed aluminum cans from the bag onto the driveway.

“You know the inspiration behind these trash control laws is probably somebody on the fringe of the universe?”

        The cat looked Charlie's way and then back at Ezekiel and widened his eyes. His tail thrashed repeatedly into the dust and out again. Ezekiel spoke on undeterred by the cat's concerns about Charlie's nosiness.

        “You guys can keep denying it”, he said looking squarely at the cat, “but my soldier's instincts tell me this isn't just a coincidence. Some children of the stars ..”

        The cat interrupted with a groaning growl like one that would normally move quickly to an angry screech, but he stopped short when Ezekiel didn't finish the sentence. Noting the cat wasn't going to screech at him now, Ezekiel continued his train of thought.

        “You know which one I mean too. Unlike most of the others, she has never given up.”

        The cat hissed at Ezekiel. Ezekiel took another can from the bag and shook it at him, eyebrows raised.

        “Save that intensity for her.”

        The cat seemed to calm himself and then looked up the driveway towards a receptacle labeled “recyclables” and back at Ezekiel. He then closed his eyes slowly.

        Ezekiel let out another sigh and returned the cat's stare.

        “Yes, yes, I'm going to do it just like these stupid rules tell us to.”

        He shook his head.

        “You guys sure love laws.”

        The cat purred, so loudly Ezekiel worried Charlie might hear it.

        Six moved cans and a kicked recycling receptacle later, Ezekiel waived Charlie a good night.

        Charlie got out of his lawn chair and waved back with a smile. Ezekiel hit a light switch and waited in his now dark garage. The cat waited with him. A few seconds later they heard the sound of Charlie's garage closing.

        Ezekiel looked at the cat and pointed to two sets of headlights just turning onto their street from the main road. He spoke to the cat.

        “Satisfying your love of laws almost cost us. See?”

        The cat turned his head and looked the way Ezekiel was pointing. A boyish sounding man's voice was suddenly heard coming from the cat's general direction.

        “So those are the marks?”

        Ezekiel answered the cat, “yes Ofier, those are the marks, all three of them.”

Ofier spoke without moving his mouth. Some how his words just came across the air.

        “I'll make sure they don't run off before you can get there.”

        He then seemed to vanish. A brief after image like lines in the direction of the approaching cars hinted at what actually happened, what the cat did, where he went, and how fast.

        Ezekiel reached over to the hooks where his garden tools hung and found his favorite gun there, a large revolver with a shiny long barrel, an Anaconda. With a tightening inside his chest, he started up the street. His walk was brisk.

        The lead car was a small white hybrid. It moved very slowly, almost stopping at times. The second car, a dirty older car of indistinct color was almost on the hybrid's bumper.

        “Animals”, Ezekiel muttered, thinking about what they had planned for the driver they were following.

        Ezekiel was one house away when the hybrid driver reached her driveway and pulled into it. The other car stopped in the street right at the end of the driveway, blocking it. He could see the woman in the car now. Well enough to tell she had let her brown hair grow some since the taking of the photo he had of her. It had been quite short before. He also could see that she was aware something was wrong and was double-checking her door locks.

        “Smart girl. Too bad your windows aren't bulletproof.”

        A third car pulled off the main road. It was still too far to tell much about it, but Ezekiel was pretty certain he knew who was driving.

        “How nice of everyone to be on time”, Ezekiel muttered to himself as he approached the dirty car.

        Two bandana adorned young men got out of each side. Both were armed with handguns. They knew he was there and probably could not have missed noticing the shiny cannon he had in his hand. The one furthest from the curb took an immediate bead on him. The other was going to shoot the woman. Ezekiel muttered at them, hoping it might torture them to not know what he was saying.

        “You're not getting her.”

        He punctuated his sentence by pulling the trigger. Three guns seemed to go off at the exact same time. His was the loudest by far. Off the end of his barrel, he could see the young man trying to shoot the woman. Then a reddish flashing aura just beyond his sight blocked his view for a split second and his gun kicked up a tad. When he was able to re-steady it the young man wasn't standing.

        Car alarms started a discordant and loud chorus all down the street. The other youth stood empty handed and startled. Ofier had knocked his gun away. Unfortunately for him, he panicked and pulled another pistol from behind his back. He was quick, much quicker than Ezekiel. The youth got off two shots before Ezekiel could aim and shoot, but the old general's shot didn't miss.

Ofier glanced at the bloody mess across the ground and glared at Ezekiel.

        “Sorry”, Ezekiel apologized, “but I didn't want to give him another shot at me.”

        Gun still in hand, he approached the hybrid. The woman inside had turned pale and tears were on her face. He yelled at her, knowing fool well that she was not going to trust him.

        “It's okay mam. Those punks can't hurt you now.”

The third car approached. Ezekiel was right about its driver. The blue Mustang screeched to a stop right behind the dirty car, and its driver's side door flew open.

A tall man with a medium build ran out. Strait brown hair, hazel eyes, strong jaw line, just like the description Ezekiel had received at the start of this operation. The man's eyes widened as he saw the bloody masses that used to be the gunmen's heads. They only held his glance for a second though before he ran to the woman in the hybrid.

        “Kirsten, what happened?! Are you okay?”

… who wants the rest of this?

Viva Libertad!

Is it right for a majority to oppress a minority?  That word 'oppress' kind of makes the answer obvious.  Thus a democracy can be wrong, but can we always agree on what that word means, or more to the point what is or isn't oppression?  I think if we're honest with ourselves we can find at least a few examples of what some people would call oppression others wouldn't.  So how do we know when a majority is oppressing a minority, and how can we set up a government so that it is least likely to oppress?

The founders of the United States government were well aware of this dilemma.  It was never their intent for the nation to be ruled by the whims of a majority.  The constitution was written to ensure that no potential source of power in this country would be able to rule over the rest.  Governance would be a matter of doing the least possible to get the job done.

More to my point, the role of democratic processes in our country was meant not to empower government but to restrain it.  Likewise the constitution was meant to prevent democratic processes from being used to impose the will of some majority over some innocent minority.

Anyone who wishes to argue the contrary, that our government was designed to get a lot done and not just the minimal amount necessary for us to be a stable nation, they have a huge burden of proof to satisfy.  It is intuitively obvious both from the design of our government and from reading the founders notes on the subject, that our government was intended to be minimal so as to maximize individual liberty and best preserve individual dignity.

And, and that's a big 'and', it was the belief of our founders that there is no virtue in a government empowered by and fully obedient to the majority of its people.

James Madison wrote, "Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression. In our Governments the real power lies in the majority of the community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from acts of Government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the Government is the mere instrument of the major number of the Constituents."

Translated into today's terms, democracy is illegitimate if it is used to redistribute wealth or in any other way deny individuals of their private rights such as life and property.

Does this justify the overthrow of democratically elected governments through military or other force?  No it doesn't, but it can put such actions on a moral par with the democratic processes they may circumvent.

Democracies that attempt to redistribute wealth, or in any other way confiscate private property without just compensation, from a human rights perspective, have no more legitimacy than a military coup.  And if that coup sets out to and succeeds in restoring a democratically and constitutionally limited government, that coup gains the legitimacy it and the democracy it overthrew both lacked.

Viva libertad

The Perception Of A Nation

        The following is not a call to arms or any sort of battle cry.  It is not a threat to my government but rather it is a sincerely concerned warning.  My education cannot help but lead me to be distressed by what I saw happen in Nevada last week.  I am not offended by anything I saw but rather I am disappointed and concerned about how such a bad position could have been found.  The cause of governance of any kind, good or bad was very ill-served last week. 

        How important is perception to the republic?  How meaningless can the general public come to see the exercise of voting before the benefits of democracy cease to be significant?  Can a population lose its respect for a government to such a degree that the rule of law becomes tenuous?  Is a tipping point possible where the government essentially ceases to be effective at its assigned task because of perception?  Is there a reachable point beyond that where the government in question ceases to be legitimate?  Unfortunately that's a reality today's United States federal government must be wary of.

Benefits of democracy?

        When I was studying political science these sorts of questions seemed very hypothetical.  Some even scratched their heads at the reasoning behind Richard Nixon not challenging the 1960 election results in spite of strong evidence of voter fraud in Chicago.  He said he didn't want to risk a constitutional crisis.  Such a thing seemed so very unlikely it was hard to believe that the ambitious Nixon was really worried about such a thing.

        Then came the 2000 election and Al Gore dared to go where Nixon had not.  And Nixon's wisdom in 1960 became painfully apparent.  The challenge caused many Americans to stop believing in the election process.  To this day respected commentators say the 2000 election was decided by the Supreme Court.  This is highly inaccurate but it's close enough to popular perception that they get away with it, and it serves their purposes.

        And the problem with it isn't so much that people begin to believe their votes don't count as it is something in the other direction.  It is that they believe if they support the right politicians and win they will, or at least they should get whatever they want.  They believe that the only reason government doesn't deliver everything they want is because the democratic process is broken.  Not that it may be wisely constrained by the constitution from doing so.

        So challenges like the one that took place in 2000 and the continued mantra about that election not reflecting the will of the people cuts dangerously in two directions.  People either no longer believe their will is reflected in elections or they believe if it ever is, the government should do things it never should.  A catch 22 where government must either oppress whatever minority of the day is currently in the majority's way or be seen as oppressive through voter suppression and other means of thwarting the majority's will.

 Rule of law?

        That brings me to the population's respect for its government and what happened in Nevada last week..  With the pressure on government to deliver more and more to the winners of elections the government pushes more and more against its constitutional restraints.  The result of this is heavy handed impositions on private citizens which was the subject of what the nation witnessed in Nevada.

         The rancher Cliven Bundy is clearly on the wrong side of the rule of law but much of the nation is still on his side.  Is it because much of the nation has no appreciation for the rule of law?  I don't think so, and much of the analysis I've seen doesn't get anywhere near that conclusion either.

       Because of federal actions in 1934 pushed past a Supreme Court that was cowed by a president determined to deliver on the will of a people suffering through the great depression, 80% of the land in Nevada become federal property.  Now a family's livelihood is being threatened in the name of protecting a few turtles from their cattle and the Bundys are resisting.  Throw in the politics of the last two and half decades where anyone who thinks there are limits on federal authority written into the constitution is portrayed by the most recent majority as anti-democracy or worse and there we have it.

        We now live in a nation divided between those who must either get their way or believe themselves to be disenfranchised on one side, and those who are rapidly losing respect for a federal government that regularly pushes against and through its constitutional restraints.

        There can only be more of these kind of showdowns between citizens who respect the constitution more than the government officials sworn to obey it, and those same officials being given directives to enforce bad laws.  Some believe, and with good reason, that the feds aren't done with the Bundys but I don't think the government has any good options under its current philosophical framework.

        If they do nothing, more people will defy them.  If they persist in getting their way more people will defy them.  They cannot make an example of the Bundys without making them into martyrs.  Their best option is to try and win quietly and with as little notice as possible, but that will only allow them to say they enforced the court order.  It will win them nothing in public perception and they just lost much.

        The feds lost the moment the thousands advanced on their position and demanded they release the cattle and leave.  At that point right and the rule of law came into conflict and right won.  This wasn't the Little Big Horn.  It wasn't a people on the wrong side of cruel history getting a rare victory.  It was a people growing in number who are not going away.  And yes, federal authorities were foolish enough to set the stage for this unnecessary showdown that left them looking inadequate to the task of governance.

        The federal government is clearly perceived as having overstepped the bounds of the constitution and no amount of establishment thinking within the Supreme Court is going to deter the citizenry from acting as though that's the case.

Tipping point?

        I don't actually think we're at any of the tipping points I mentioned above, yet.  But that is only because the democratic elements of our Republic still exist.  The people who believe the government needs a major restraining can still primarily win their fight at the ballot box and/or through a constitutional convention of the states.  At the very least they have some brave state governments to support them.

        But if these means fail them then the tipping point for them will be reached and I dread that day.  Nevada proves there is a will to do what is necessary to put the federal government back in its place by whatever means is required. 

        As for the people who believe the government must either serve their perceived righteous goals or be guilty of disenfranchising , I don't think they have it in them to do what was done by their counterparts in Nevada last week.  We've already seen the left's worst.  They've destroyed this republic in the minds and hearts of way too many people, but the damage is mostly done.  In the mind-set they teach it can never be the great place it really is.  Even if they get their way, and especially if they get their way, it must always be a place of oppression.

        Most Americans will either come to the realization that their choice is between liberty and a constant oppressive state of commiseration, or the tipping points will come.  

        And one historical note.  It is likely that a plebiscite in the American colonies would have voted to remain British colonies just before and even part way into the Revolutionary War.  Most historians believe that only a third of the colonists wanted independence.  Because of that (and other reasons of course) I believe if liberty has a fighting chance it will usually prevail.

        To reconsider, that is my advice to anyone who may choose to work against it.

A Week To Remember Dignity And Honor

The week with April 7th in it is a solemn one for me.  It has been so ever since I sat down and researched the battleship Yamato and how it came to its end.  Don't get me wrong, there's the battleship Arizona and the fallen heroes of the Alamo and many other examples of men dying for their country whether it be Japan, the United States, Texas, or what ever country they may love.  But I strongly suspect that there has never been so many who knowingly went to their deaths at one time for honor's sake as the crew of the Yamato and those of the other ships in its task force.

Such acts of nobility should remind us all of something universal to the human condition, something bigger than all of us and yet part of all of us.

In the month of April in 1968 a tower was erected in memorial to the Japanese battleship Yamato, the light cruiser Yahagi and the destroyers Asashimo, Hamakaze, Isokaze, and Kasumi which all sank on April 7, 1945.  Over 400 U.S. war planes dropped bombs and struck the Yamato with torpedoes over a period of almost two hours before it sank.

The Japanese Navy planned to have the giant battleship run aground at Okinawa and then fight off American sea and ground forces with its artillery for as long as possible. The Navy designated the mission as "special attack" (tokko in Japanese), which meant the men on Yamato were expected to die in the attack.

Some reports suggest the Japanese navy knew the battleship was unlikely to reach Okinawa.  It had originally planned to use the Yamato to defend Japan itself but concluded maintaining it until the Americans attacked would be impossible considering their limited supplies.  Thus it was apparently decided the Yamato and its brave crew would best serve Japan by showing the Americans Japan's courage and resolve even in the face of imminent defeat.

Whether it made such an impression on many Americans is uncertain but that these brave Japanese sailors and patriots made an impression on history as a whole, I think is unquestionable.  No war ship's name is closer to the edge of peoples' tongues than that of the mighty battleship Yamato, though most don't even know why that is.

I, an American who is glad my country won that war, am writing this in hopes of letting others know why the name Yamato deserves to hold the place in our minds that it does.

Over 3,700 men sailed out in the defense of a crumbling nation knowing they would likely die that day.  Mistakes had been made that led to that moment and less wise people might think the thing they should have done was to abandon their lost cause.  But their cause wasn't lost and never has been lost.  Their cause wasn't that battle, that war.  Their cause was Japan, but not just Japan but one that matters to all human beings.  Their cause was human dignity.

Dignity is a strange cause because it can never be taken from any of us unless we give it away, but none the less it still requires our lives from time to time.  Times like 2:22 PM on April 7th 1945.  You can find the following words on the academic web site linked to.

"One cruiser and eight destroyers accompanied Yamato, but no air cover was provided. Yamato sunk at 2:22 p.m. after almost two hours of fighting off American planes dropping bombs and torpedoes. In addition to Yamato, the light cruiser Yahagi and the destroyers Asashimo, Hamakaze, Isokaze, and Kasumi sank. According to a sign next to the tower, 3,721 men from this Japanese task force lost their lives that day [1]."

One of the few survivors of the Yamato, Yoshida Mitsuru wrote on the occasion of his rescue, "Make of this moment a turning point toward a life of constancy and dedication".

Yes, let's make the week of April 7th of each year be a time for all human beings across the Earth to think upon the importance of human dignity and that on that day in 1945 thousands died for that truth.  And as long as people fail to see the importance of the individual and all that makes people free enough to express that, there may be future Yamato tokko's needed to remind us that nations are concrete realities and the individual is bigger than all of us.  No mere human can reshape those truths.

2:22 PM April 7th 1945, remember.

Why We Should Vote Libertarian

Never in the history of this nation has there been a better time to start voting libertarian no matter what.  After this Obamacare fiasco if there are still enough people willing to vote Democrat for them to get a plurality in a race against a Republican and a Libertarian, well then the rest of us deserve to go to Hades in a hand-basket.

This is not the time to vote for the lesser of evils like a libertarian leaning Republican.  Since when do we as libertarians believe that government is the lesser of evils.  We believe it should be a good thing right?

Why should we waste our time voting for the lesser of two evils?  We could help the lesser evil win any time, but how often do we get a chance so prime as this coming November to vote for a candidate that has no chance of winning, and by so doing make a statement and prime the pump for a future victory?

The two major parties just keep saying with each election, "this is the most important election of your life time".  What nonsense!  There's plenty of time to save this country from a slide into a Venezuela-like state where a permanent under-class majority keeps giving their votes to politicians that promise them stuff that has nothing to do with the realities of how stuff is produced.

We've got decades to fix this and the only way to do that is to vote pure-libertarian; no compromising, no trying to take over one of the two major parties.  Those are sell-out strategies.

Now is the time.  Now is the place.  No more attempts to be clever or use the system our founders designed to help us.  No, from now on we will just vote libertarian and by golly in a few decades we will actually make this country what we want it to be.

In the mean time we can all go hunker down in the hills and if worse comes to worse we can separate ourselves from the United States and become the United States Of Appalachia.


APRIL FOOLS!