told time after time that to do this, that, or the other thing was either illegal, immoral, or bad for your health.
Even the most intelligent of persons will, after a reasonable length of time, begin to believe it if that person is told fifty times a day that they are stupid.
John Adams was not farting the National Anthem when he wrote that fear is the foundation of most governments, or when he wrote that law is as deaf as an adder to the clamors of the populace.
For far too long the government, from the mouths of federal judges, had overruled the wishes of the majority of the population of the United States in so many areas that to list them would be a book in itself.
That was not what our forefathers had in mind.
But that is what happens when the central government assumes too much power… power that rightfully belongs in the hands of its citizens.
It takes Americans awhile to get going. Always has. But once they get going… look out, for any combat veteran will attest that there is no more savage fighting man than the American soldier.
Jake Devine’s tactics had worked to some extent, for a few people, in a few states. Hartline’s brutality had and was working for him in a few states. But the American people have a great will to survive; a great thirst for as much freedom as possible; a need for fair and equitable treatment.
What they needed was a catalyst, but not one that itself would not be affected. One was on his way: Ben Raines.
In a small city in Oklahoma, Mr. Kent Naylor lay wide-awake in his bed, beside his sleeping wife. His four children, ages 13 to 20, were asleep in other parts of the two-story home.
Naylor was the head of a small cell of Rebel sympathizers, fifty strong. He had received word the day before that the federal police, under the direction of Al Cody’s men, were coming to get him, to take him in for questioning.
Naylor knew what that meant: he would never return. He had seen only one man ever return from those camps where Rebel sympathizers were taken, and that man had been turned into a babbling idiot from hours of physical and mental torture.
No, Naylor thought, I’m not going to be taken by the federal police.
Headlights slashed their way through the thin curtains covering the open bedroom window. Stopped. Motors running. Silence. Naylor rose from the bed, quickly slipped into trousers and shoes and shirt. He reached into a closet and took out a twelve-gauge shotgun. It was fully loaded with double-ought buckshot, pushed by magnum powder loads. He clicked the SEND button on a small handy/talkie by his bed and heard the receiver send an answering click.
Everybody was ready. All the members of his cell were ready to make their move toward restoring freedom to their lives.
A hard hammering on the front door. A demanding knocking.
Naylor knew who it was.
“Naylor! Open the door. Police.”
“Fuck you,” Naylor muttered.
“What is it?” his wife sat up in bed, a frightened look in her eyes.
“Stay in this room, Beth,” he told his wife. “Everything is going to be all right. I promise you. Finally it will be all right.”
He pumped a round into the chamber of the shotgun and stepped out of his bedroom, looking down into his den.
The front door was kicked open, wood splintering and cracking.
“…drag the son of a bitch out,” a fragment of a sentence reached the man.
“Drag all of them out,” a voice filled with hard authority said. “His kids are part of it, too. We’ll see how Naylor likes watching his kids take it up the ass.”
His face a hard mask, Naylor lifted the shotgun and emptied it into the three men standing by the ruined front door.
One man’s head flew apart, splattering the wall with blood and fluid and brains. The second man’s feet jerked out from under him as the slugs impacted with his chest, slamming him to the carpet. The third man took the slug in the throat, almost tearing his head from his torso.
All lay dead or dying.
Lights in the houses on both sides of the street clicked on as half a dozen police cars squalled to a halt in front of the Naylor home. Citizens with guns in their hands appeared on the front lawns, men and women and teenagers. A half a hundred of them.
The federal police officers stopped dead still in the Naylor yard.
One officer summed up their predicament as well as anyone could under such conditions. “Oh, shit!”
“Get that crap out of my house,” Naylor jerked his thumb toward the dead men. “And clean up the mess.”
“Yes, sir,” a federal police officer said. “Right away.”
The bodies carried out of the house, the mess cleaned up as best as possible, the gun-carrying citizens went back into their houses, leaving the street empty. But the federalized police knew they were being watched, and the choice of living or dying was solely in their hands.
“I was a cop nine years before the government federalized us,” a man said, his voice low. “I knew it was a mistake. I said when Lowry and Cody started this gun-sweep it was wrong; the people wouldn’t stand still for it.”
Another man removed his badge and dropped it with a clink on the sidewalk. “We’re through!” he yelled to the dark emptiness. “I’m goin’ back to sellin’ furniture. Y’all hear me? I’m no longer a cop.”
Other badges followed the first one. They lay twinkling on the sidewalk and the lawn.
As Hartline had said, speaking for the other side, “It’s just so fucking easy.”
When one has the wherewithal to make it stick.
In West Virginia, a lanky coal miner stood in front of a judge. Sitting beside the local DA were two young men who used to be federal police officers. Their faces were bruised; lips swollen; several teeth missing. There were four federal police officers originally. The other two were dead.
The courtroom was filled to capacity with Levied, booted, work-shirted, hard-eyed men. They sat politely and quietly. They were all armed.
“Your Honor,” the DA rose to his feet. “I protest the presence of armed men in this courtroom. I…” He caught the eye of the man standing in front of the judge. “I… think I’ll sit down.”
He sat down.
The miner looked at the judge. “Can I talk now, Your Honor?”
The judge rubbed his aching temples with his fingertips. He sighed. “Well, I suppose so, Mr. Raymond. I must say, though, in all my years on the bench, I have never seen such a sight in any courtroom. Did you and… your friends come here to fight, or to see justice served?”
“Justice has been served, Your Honor,” Mr. Raymond replied. “My friends just come along to see that it stays served.”
“Incredible,” the judge said. “By all means, Mr. Raymond, do speak.”
“Well… like I tole the sheriff yesterday, me and my friends was gettin’ damn tired of these federal cops a- struttin’ around, actin’ bigger than God; actin’ like they was better than the rest of us. But we figured we’d just look the other way when they come around—long as they left us alone.
“Now, judge, you
“Now there was four of them young smart-mouthed cops come to my house.
