I just finished reading Travis McGee's "Enemies Foreign and Domestic" over the weekend and I still feel unsettled after finishing it in the wee hours of Saturday. I feel unsettled because this book pulls no punches. It is realistic in terms of its portrayal the cold-blooded murderousness of some of the thugs that the government employs. It's dead bang on in terms of its assessment of the politicians who would cheerfully dance in the blood of innocents in order to advance their agenda. It's a clear-eyed picture of the unholy alliance between those who live to kill and those who seek to rule the living.
And the book is absolutely chilling because of its unflinching take on the price that many of us will pay when civil disobedience turns to armed resistance. Freedom isn't cheap. In fact, it's going to get damned expensive.
Damned expensive. I have no illusions about surviving the coming maelstrom. That's liberating, in a way.
It's going to be interesting to see how it all shakes out, when people put paychecks and pensions against their oath to defend the Constitution.
If my book accomplishes anything, I want people to think about that oath, and what it means.
And of course, I want to send a clear warning to the polidiots. I don't want some future President, in the situation room, saying, "You mean, the real danger all along wasn't the assault rifles? It's the common, ordinary deer rifle?"
If we blunder and miscalculate our way that far, it will be very hard to get off the rapid slide to an out-of-control dirty war.
