The 28th Amendment granted blanket immunity from prosecution for any crimes committed before or during the Second Civil War to anyone who actively fought for the Resistance.
The 29th Amendment repealed the 14th and 26th amendments. It also made full state Citizenship a right of birth, applicable only to native-born Citizens who were the children of Citizens. It allowed immigrants to buy state citizenship. It clarified “United States citizenship” as having effect only when state Citizens traveled outside the nation’s borders, and outlawed titles of nobility such as “esquire.”
The 30th Amendment banned welfare and foreign aid, removed the United States from the UN and most foreign treaties, capped federal spending at 2 percent of GDP, capped the combined number of foreign troops in the fifty states and on federal territory at 1,000 men, and limited the active duty federal military to 100,000 men, except in time of declared war.
The 31st Amendment amplified the 2nd Amendment, confirming it as both an unalienable individual right and as a state right, repealed the existing federal gun control laws, preempted any present or future state gun control laws, and reinstituted a decentralized militia system.
The 32nd Amendment repealed the 16th Amendment, and severely limited the ability of the federal government to collect any taxes within the fifty states. Henceforth, only tariffs, import duties, and bonds could fund the federal government’s budget.
The 33rd Amendment outlawed deficit spending, put the new United States currency back on a bimetallic gold and silver standard, and made all currency “redeemable on demand.”
The 34th Amendment froze salaries at $6,000 a year for House members and $10,000 for senators, limited campaign spending for any federal office to $5,000 per term, and repealed the 17th Amendment, returning senators to election by their state legislatures.
The 35th Amendment restored Common Law and invalidated most federal court decisions since 1932, and clarified the inapplicability of most federal statutes on state Citizens in several states.
The 36th Amendment reinstated the allodial land title system. Under a renewed federal land patent system the amendment mandated the return of 92 percent of the federal lands to private ownership through public sales at one dollar in silver coin per acre.
The nation’s economy was slowly restored. But with the nine new amendments, the scope of government —both state and federal—was greatly reduced from its pre-Crunch proportions. Small government was almost universally seen as good government. For the first time since before the First Civil War, it became the norm to again refer to the nation plurally as “these United States,” rather than singularly as the United States. The change was subtle, but profound.
29. To Dust
“The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If ‘Thou shalt not covet’ and ‘Thou shalt not steal’ were not commandments from Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free.”
Fife, Montana
August, the Fourth Year
As the ProvGov capitulated, there were a few UN army units and “contractors” who went renegade and refused to lay down their arms. Without support from the crumbling Fort Knox government, the holdout units were increasingly demoralized, depleted logistically, and hemmed in by steadily growing resistance forces.
The remnants of Garcia’s Force Two Associates gang was by then down to just twenty-three men and fourteen camp followers. The Resistance killed his friend Tony, who had been with him since the beginning. This was when they were looting the town of Lame Deer, Montana. The F2 gang had moved into Montana two weeks earlier, hoping that the lower population density would mean they’d meet less organized opposition. But instead the Resistance seemed only stronger and better organized. The F2 gang was reduced to making a few nighttime raids for food and fuel, and laying up each day in parklands or at abandoned ranches. No longer able to bluff their way into towns under color of law, they avoided being seen in all but the smallest towns.
An abandoned ranch on Enger Cutoff Road, a few miles east of Great Falls, seemed like a good place for F2 to spend a day. They pulled in an hour before dawn. A windmill kept a stock tank full so they’d have drinking water. And they were able to conceal their vehicles in a large hay barn—now empty except for a few bales that had turned black with mold. But what they didn’t realize was that a neighbor a half mile away who owned a small dairy farm had seen their headlights. The dairyman was up early for his morning milking. He knew that the adjoining ranch had been abandoned for more than two years. Curious, the dairyman stealthily approached the house and ascertained that the vehicles belonged to F2. He got back to his own farmhouse just as dawn was breaking, and immediately reported seeing the looters by telephone.
As the security coordinator for that end of the county, Joshua got the word just a few minutes later. He hung up the phone and began jotting down notes.
Kelly, who had overheard his end of the conversation, asked, “What’s your plan?”
“Just MSU.”
Kelly laughed. The standing joke answer to all difficult questions in Kelly’s business classes at Montana State University had been “MSU,” which referred to an alternate use of the acronym for the school’s name: “Make Stuff Up.”
“Really?” she asked.
“I won’t be able to say what the plan is until I see the lay of the land,” Joshua said. “I’ll make up a plan on the fly. We’ll just gather at the Fife junction, and then we’ll probably cram ourselves into a smaller number of vehicles. We’ll stop about a half mile short of the farm, and walk in from there. Sometimes MSU beats elaborate planning and multilevel interagency coordination. And it certainly does when time is of the essence.”
“Air support?”
“None available. The Hueys and most of the 341st Security Forces Squadron are way back beyond the east end of the missile fields. They got called in to support the handover of command of an artillery unit that capitulated a few days ago. Then they got tasked with mopping up a bunch of looters even farther east. With refueling and all, it would take them a minimum of fifteen hours to get here, and by then the bad guys will probably be gone.”
Joshua got to Fife twenty minutes later driving the Rust Bucket. The Fife junction was close to his old rental house, which now sat empty.
The ranchers soon began to arrive. They were armed mostly with scoped deer rifles. One of them had a scoped M1A semiauto, which Joshua thought was perfect for what he had planned. The majority of them wore jeans and camouflage hunting jackets. A few of them wore complete camouflage ensembles. Three airmen from the 341st—two E-3s and one E-4—arrived, all armed with M4 carbines. Joshua considered their carbines inadequate “pop guns” for what he had envisioned. He recognized two of the airmen from his security forces cross training, where in the past year he had learned the rudiments of small unit tactics.
Joshua began his briefing. “Gentlemen, I’m Lieutenant Watanabe. What we have planned today is to reconnoiter and possibly engage a group of looters that just rolled into an unoccupied farm over on Enger Cutoff Road. I’m in command, and I’ll lead the main group. You three from the 341st will cover the rear of the farm from the south, act as our backup, and likely provide a diversion. I haven’t yet scoped it out, but I anticipate that the rest of us will set up an ambush position on the north side of the road. We’ll coordinate on the Guard frequency.”
One of the ranchers raised his hand and asked, “So are we going to assault the farmhouse?”
“No. That would put us at risk of taking too many casualties. Frontal assaults are the ProvGov’s style, not mine. My plan is different: We make them come to us, and we just shoot them.”
Noticing smoke grenade canister pouches strapped on the MOLLE vests worn by the three airmen, Joshua said, “I see you guys have some pyro with you. Those will probably come in handy. More on that later.”
