I'll Meet You in New Hampshire...

I've been wanting to move up to The Granite State for a while now, and this film just solidifies the feeling. I'm mired here right now, but, to paraphrase Peter Schiff in the film, I can't afford to die in New York (and don't intend to).

The video, "101 Reasons: Liberty Lives in New Hampshire" is a documentary adaptation of the Free State Project's list of 101 Reasons to Move to New Hampshire. It runs a full hour. It features quality, professional production values and can be viewed in 1080p high-def.  If you're a lover of liberty, and dream of escaping from under the thumb of the nanny state in your lifetime, you really need to take a hard look at this.

 

Don't wait for a politician or a political party to set you free; it's not going to happen. Do it yourself. I'll meet you there. I'll be wearing the smoke-colored Rand's Custom cowboy hat... Live Free or Die.

The Third Revolution on the NSA...

Color me shocked that anyone thinks that the NSA scandal is a scandal. I thought that spying on domestic and worldwide electronic communications is what they were paid to do. And that bullying private sector corporations into giving up said data is what governments were paid to do.

Way back in 2004, in The Third Revolution,  I reflected that outlook through the literary lens of Ms. Kim Lange, then special assistant and confidant of Montana Governor Ben Kane:

Joe took a sip of his draft and turned to Kim. “So are you expecting a late night out with the Billings' brass?”

“No, not at all. The mayor is a busy man. Ben just wants me to take his temperature on the federal stuff.”

“Wouldn’t a phone call have been quicker?”

“The National Security Agency monitors all calls made in the country—in the world, for that matter. They have for years. But in the last three years or so they’ve actually installed the computing power they need to be able to process and screen the millions of calls they capture every day. Ben wants people to be able to speak freely to him without risking the chance the conversation is going to show up on some NSA junior analyst’s radar screen.”

 I'm quite sure I wasn't the only one who knew this. At any rate, for a more in-depth look at my visionary grasp of the obvious, please pick up your own copy of The Third Revolution to discover more of my Nostradamus-like insights into the evolution of the U.S. political landscape. 

When everything is a crime, everyone is a suspect.

Sooner or later...

Sooner or later, one of these movements is going to succeed, and then, I believe, all hell will break loose:

Representatives of 10 rural Colorado counties met Monday in the sleepy plains town of Akron, about a half an hour from the Kansas border, to advance a plan that has been both hailed and ridiculed in recent weeks: A bid to split from Colorado and form the country’s 51^st state.

As you might figure, this is yet another urban/rural, liberal/conservative split boiling over, but this time the minority (conservatives) are opting for the more libertarian solution: you live the way you want to live, and we'll live the way we want.

I don't know if this particular movement will work out; it's worth noting that no attempt at state partitioning has been successful since the creation of West Virginia in 1863. But the legislative mechanisms remain, and when a large enough, relatively cohesive group of people feel that their culture, their livelihoods and their liberty are being adversely impacted by a group of perceived "outsiders," a bit of push-back is to be expected. Since they feel (for apparently good reason) that their traditional political/legislative avenues have been cut off, they're moving ahead with the only solution remaining: leaving.

Sooner or later, it's going to work, and then everyone is going to want to get in on it...

 Read the entire article here: Rebellious Colorado counties move forward with plans to secede

A New Look for an Old Friend...

The Third Revolution - New Cover!

Since it was first published in 2004, the trusty buffalo on the cover of my first novel, The Third Revolution, has been confounding fan and foe alike:

"Why is it there?"
"Is it a book about buffalo?"
"Is it some sort of environmental screed?"
"Is it about the politics of bison management?"
"Patriotic buffalo?"

"Why is it there?!!!"

Those of you who've pushed past the issue and actually read the book know that it's a tale about freedom and liberty, a story that cuts to the core of why groups of individuals decide to form governments in the first place. There are bison (lots of 'em!) featured in the plot, but it's not about them. They just live there...

The argument could (easily) be made that they serve a metaphorical presence in the story, but metaphors don't make very compelling visual hooks when you're competing in a crowded book market, where most consumers do indeed judge a book by its cover. Hence the change.

For now you'll see the new cover on the Kindle edition only; changing the cover on the print edition is a big production and hardly seems worth it given the rising primacy of ebooks. As always, thanks for your support, and your feedback is always welcome.  

The original cover - Still gracing the print edition

Time for one on the house...

Okay, I know you've been waiting; here's your buyback. I'm running a three-day (April 3, 4 & 5) giveaway promotion for The Last Bartender (Kindle edition only). In case you're not familiar:

Set in the near future, The Last Bartender follows Justin Gardiner, a highly-decorated Operation Enduring Freedom veteran who returns home to work as a bartender.

Just a few years into his new career, rising healthcare costs and other political factors lead to a new prohibition on alcohol — all bars are closed, retail alcohol sales are halted and criminalized, and Justin finds himself out of work. Soon afterwards, Justin and his barroom cohorts buy a rundown Catskill resort and set up an ambitious bootlegging operation, supplying keg beer to the New York City area.

Events start rapidly spiraling out of control as the Drug Enforcement Agency closes its net and the mob aggressively moves in on the moneymaking operation, leaving Justin and his friends caught in the crossfire of the opposing forces.

 You can grab your free copy here: The Last Bartender. And thanks again for your support.

Holy Crap, The Third Revolution is coming true...

I've been saying for a while now that my first novel, The Third Revolution (first published in 2004), was starting to read more like political history than political fiction. Check this out:

Will Montana Voters Nullify the Mandate?

HELENA, Mont. – On Nov. 6, Montana residents will exercise their sovereign right and decide on health care freedom.
LR-122 would prohibit the state and federal governments from requiring any Montana citizen to purchase health insurance, or from “imposing any penalty, tax, fee or fine on those who do not purchase health insurance.”

 Same state, same methodology (legislative action to nullify offensive legislation) as my book envisioned. All we need is libertarian Governor Ben Kane to show up to sign the bill into law. At this rate, it just might happen...

Also freaky ... The Third Revolution was set in the "near future," in the year 2013, right after a Presidential election.

Read the entire article here: Will Montana Voters Nullify the Mandate? 
And of course, The Third Revolution is still available in both softcover and Kindle editions. Excerpts and reviews here.

Update: It's spreading:  Legislators in 3 States Set to Introduce ObamaCare Nullification Bills

Update (Nov. 8, 2012): Some post-election nullification victories--> Nullification Victories!

Michael Crichton on the impulse toward totalitarianism...

Michael Crichton died a year ago yesterday, November 4, 2008, leaving the world of the imagination that much poorer for the loss. Not only were his works entertaining, but his was a powerful voice against groupthink, both social and scientific. Here he is talking to a high-school class, discussing his curiosity about people who cannot and will not mind their own business:

that

More bison return home...

After 140 years, bison are returning to the Kansas prairie:

"From a biologic perspective, the bison add a critical variable to restoring the land to a more natural state. The brawny beasts work as sort of natural prairie tenderizers, trampling taller grasses to allow shorter varieties to bloom, bruising the ground in summer dust baths that turn to insect breeding grounds when the rains turn those depressions to puddles, and scattering their own special fertilizer. ...

There was, of course, a time when the ground shook under the bison thundering across the continent. Estimates of their numbers in North America run from 30 million to 70 million in the late 1500s. By the start of the 20th century, perhaps fewer than 1,000 survived, hunted by whites for tongues and humps, hides and sport — and to break the Plains Indians of their way of life."

I covered most of this territory in The Third Revolution and Middle America, along with more human aspects of freedom and self-determination. The article even gives a passing nod to the Bronx Zoo, whose involvement in the restoration of the buffalo I covered in a bit more detail below, in last Friday's post.
Read the entire article here: After 140 years, bison are back on Kansas’ Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve.

No guns here...

Here's how to protect your home without firing a shot:

Snicker. Thanks to Jim Duffy...

Poultry in suburbia...

I think I posted on this subject a while ago, but it seems to be a growing trend, so let's go with it...

In cities across the United States, raising backyard poultry has suddenly become as chic as growing your own vegetables. It's all part of the back-to-the-land movement whose proponents want to save on grocery bills, take control of their food supply and reduce the carbon footprint of industrial agriculture.

"Chickens are America's cool new pet," said Dave Belanger, publisher of the magazine Backyard Poultry. When he launched it three years ago, "we were thinking 15 to 20 thousand" subscriptions, he said. The print run for the bimonthly is now 100,000.

Belanger's magazine is published in Wisconsin, where five years ago chicken activists in Madison succeeded in getting the city council to reverse a ban on chicken coops. Madison's ordinance is typical of other cities'. You can raise chickens for eggs, not meat; they must be enclosed in a coop or run; and it's strictly a hen party: Roosters who crow day and night are prohibited.

Read the whole article here: Hot chicks - Legal or not, chickens are the chic new backyard addition.

Brilliant! Liberty AND a little birdie...

Bill Whittle is the best. Here is his latest video over at PJTV, a monologue touching on liberty, the nanny state, and metaphysics, all through the eyes of a little birdie. Well worth watching...

http://www.pjtv.com/video/Afterburner_with_Bill_Whittle/__HowieBurner%3A_Whittle_and_Howie_Do_Some_Retro-Tweeting_About_The_Nanny_State/2093/

More secession talk from Beck...

You know, I sent Glenn Beck a copy of The Third Revolution a couple of months ago. Not that I'm taking credit for his interest in the subject; the guy works about twenty hours a day, so I'm quite sure he hasn't gotten around to it yet. Hope it does, though ... it would be right up his alley.

So here's another group that's had enough. Interesting that 12% of registered Vermont voters support secession. I think the number in Texas (after Gov. Rick Perry's statement on the subject) is about 35% in support of secession. Support for our Revolutionary War ran about 40 - 45%, so there's a ways to go before any serious momentum gets build up, though I suspect that government-run health care and cap-and-trade will go a long way towards pushing the movement along.





Here's the transcript if you'd rather read than watch.

Montana Gun Sovereignty Law...

This all went down about a month ago, but I thought it worth revisiting as it's virtually a page out of The Third Revolution. The book was written over six years ago, but is starting to read more like a history text than the political fiction it was intended to be.



And, yeah, I know it's Glenn Beck, but who else is covering this stuff?