Chapter Eighteen - The Other War

"Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it.

Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it.

Hatred darkens life; love illumines it."
                                                                    —Martin Luther King

"The noblest fate that a man can endure is to place his own mortal body between his loved home and the war's desolation."

                                                              Colonel Dubois, quoting someone else in

                                                              Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein

Chapter Eighteen

The Other War

The house where Rachael Cowlings lived was impressive. Cowlings was a professional woman whose regular job was in bookkeeping. Family money had paid for the house and for her vacation place in Martha’s Vineyard. Standing along a tree lined street in one of the best sections of the suburban area east of Boston the place was old but well maintained. Cowling had run for office twice now. She had done better the first time when there had been only one major party candidate but she was certainly credible. 

“Ms. Cowlings? I’m Dave….”

 

“So good of you to drop by!” Ms. Cowlings had obviously been looking for him. “Your secretary said you are interested in doing an article on the Libertarian Party?” Cowling’s voice was smooth and filled with a combination of eagerness and caution. Dolly or Christopher always made Dave’s appointments. It did not hurt to impress on politicians the fact that you could afford to hire people to do what you could perfectly well do for yourself. 

 

Ms. Cowlings lead Dave into the house. The place was very New England, with plank floors decorously covered with Persian carpets as old as some third world governments and furniture that looked like heirlooms. In Cowlings’ case they might actually be the real thing. The portrait that hung on the wall, obviously of an earlier generation of Cowlings, was by a painter Dave recognized. Indicating a well appointed living room, Cowlings asked if he would like some coffee. Pausing for a moment Dave answered in the affirmative. Perhaps he could get a look at the kitchen. No dice. As soon as Rachael left to fetch coffee another man entered to keep him company. Dave recognized Fig as soon as he walked in.

 

“Rachael, I am so sorry not to have been here when our guest arrived. Mr. Elder?” Jasper looked inquiringly at him.

 

“Dave Elder. Nice to meet you.” Dave smiled. “I saw your photo and an article you wrote in the LP News last month.”

 

“Hard to keep track. I sort of run off at the fingers.” Fog wiggled his fingers deprecatingly and smiling broadly. “Who are you doing an article for, by the way?”

 

This was part of the cover story that had gotten Dave in the door. “Some friends of mine are starting an online magazine we are calling Local Liberty. We thought it would be nice to do the first issue on prominent people in the Movement. So I am here to interview you two.” They nodded simultaneously. Dave smiled. “I have an appointment with Mort Casterol next week.” This is entirely true but also beside the point. The President of Cicero Institute is meeting with him not for an interview but because of the generous donation he has made to the organization. 

 

“What do you anticipate your readership as being?” Fog asked.

 

“Small to start but growing rapidly.” Dave smiled again, hoping this looked unforced. It was certainly true that their readership would be growing, but the group of individuals they were targeting with their initial mailings was not those likely to donate to Cowlings or Fog.

 

At that moment Rachel came back with three steaming mugs of coffee and the accoutrements essential to civilized coffee sipping in any meeting. Fog took over asking Dave if he preferred cream, sugar or sweetener while serving Rachael first.

 

“So Dave, why don’t you tell us a little more about your online magazine?” Fog smiled but the expression never quite reached his eyes.

 

At the end of a half hour Dave had most of what he needed but he left the tape recorder on and continued asking questions with the properly obsequious tone in his voice. Fog at least had been suspicious of Dave’s motives. The article would appear and the online project was actually genuine, the product of Christopher’s industry. Local Liberty was soliciting articles on a variety of subjects from individuals from every political perspective. This article would in fact be a survey of individuals in the political arms of various third parties. Cowlings and Fog might be disappointed that the article would be thoroughly researched, footnoted and cover a far broader scope than Dave had indicated but they would have no grounds for complaint that they had been overlooked or minimized. The focus of the article was would be both innovative and interesting to everyone in politics. They would be beginning to trace the money donated, interviewing donors in retrospect of the various campaigns.

 

Creating a base for opinion, they had decided, was essential to whatever action they later decided to take. They were going to be building a movement without knowing exactly what direction that movement was going to take. 

 

This interview had provided valuable insights into what did not work and why.

 

The strategy followed by Cowlings and Fog was just as reported by the hostile volunteers trying to remove them. Fog has done a magnificent job of optimizing the use of rhetoric totally devoid of any means of installing change that takes law, culture, or business in that direction. Fog had mined every prominent freedom oriented thinker for words and ideas. Everything he has said was obviously drawn from someplace else and artfully reused when you studied the body of work common to the movement. 

 

Cowlings had spent most of her time nodding her head in agreement. 

 

It is depressing, but it is necessary to check out both sides. 

 

As Dave is thanking them for their time and packing his recorder into the briefcase he brought along Fog abruptly asks an unexpected question. Has he seen Lindsey Smithson lately, Fog asked. Dave stared at him, uncomprehendingly. Suddenly Dave remembers that Lindsey knows Fog and how. 

 

“Lindsey stopped coming to the Fabituso Society Meetings last year. Haven’t seen her since then.” Dave looks inquiringly at Fog. “Where do you know Lindsey from?”

 

Fog looked at him for a moment too long, taking in his incomprehension. “Known her since she was in diapers, almost. The question came up the other day with a mutual friend.” This smile was not bland. It was, in fact, just a touch feral. “Just wondering where she is now. Well, thanks for stopping by – and send us a copy of the interview when it is finished.” 

 

As he is getting back in his car Dave noticed that Fog is watching him out the window, he waved breezily to the partially concealed figure and the curtain dropped. 

 

Interesting. How would anyone know he knew Lindsey? And where was Lindsey, anyhow?

Newburyport, Massachusetts

Gladys drove into Logan Airport. Sam offered to rent a car and drive out or take the train, but Gladys insisted. It had been a long time.

 

Time had not stood still for either of them. When they had first met Gladys had been in her early 30s and Sam had still had the dewy youngness of college clinging to his eyes. Eyes age first perhaps because eyes must withstand the impact of disillusionment.

It was not the tiny wrinkles that make eyes older; it is the pain that fills them. Sam’s eyes held pain in its pure form. Unmarried, Sam bore those psychic wounds undiluted by the loving family that had filled Gladys’s life with happy moments and the grandchildren who overflowed her house during the summer.

Two old friends sat in the dying light of a spring afternoon and talked late into the night, barely stopping to eat. It had not taken long for them to begin making notes, searching out address books and agendas long ago filed and nearly forgotten.

Through the muted colors that separate the day from night they began talking about the woman, long dead, who had inspired each of them in different ways.

Gladys remembered Eleanor’s kindnesses in small ways; her small gifts and notes over the years. She recalled the first time it occurred to her that this woman was viewed as someone special by those who did not know her.

Gladys unearthed the personal copy of the Human Rights Declaration that Eleanor Roosevelt had personalized and autographed for her. Gladys had always meant to have it framed. Perhaps now she would. Sam had never met the former First Lady; she had died a few months before he had begun working in New York but she had inspired him, too. The words of the Declaration had provided for Sam and for another generation a vision and direction that was both tangible and essentially spiritual.

That vision became tangible again for them as Gladys softly read the Declaration in its entirely. Most of it was the words of Eleanor herself. As she read the words Gladys felt a rich rush of memories. The indomitable dignity of Eleanor, her astute insights, her kindness to everyone whose life she touched. It had been a vision worth living for.

“Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,

Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,

Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law….”

The preamble had always reminded Gladys of the Declaration of Independence with its stirring phrases marking out a course of honor for all people to follow. Each one of the following articles had been a statement of hope for what the future could bring with time and good will.

At the end Gladys sat back onto the swinging seat in their conservatory that had witnessed so many of the happy moments of her life. The sun, a glowing ball of gold and fire, was disappearing against a backdrop of hills and water, casting a metallic halo on the world.

“Nothing is impossible once you understand who you are fighting.” The words came out and it was Gladys who said them. Both Sam and Gladys now knew the truth. This time it would be a very different kind of battle.

Back in New York at Headquarters for American Revival

Dolly pressed her nose into the dewy fresh pedals of the roses Bernard brought her the next morning. The finely veined sheaths of pink exuded a gentle aroma that clung to her nose even as the edges of the pedals tickled. The tiny wrinkles around her eyes smiled along with the rest of her face. Bernard had not had to go far for the bouquet. Clusters of flowers stood like candles of color and life at the corner down the street, bought and sold along with other necessities and niceties of life.

 

Not every day brought a long walk, but on most days the couple found the time to wander the blocks near the apartment building or go over to the d’Agostino’s Grocery Store on 3^rd Street. A whole lot of romance could take place while mulling over the excellencies of the various varieties of mozzarella, Dave found. 

 

Christopher had noticed immediately but it had taken Larry several days to stare intently at Dolly and Bernard making cow eyes at each other and congratulate them on their romance. Larry, they had all come to realize, was cheerfully oblivious but always glad when others were doing well for themselves. The relationship would be news for Dave when he arrived back from Massachusetts. 

 

Along with working on the online journal for what was to become the public presence for American Revival Foundation, Christopher was watching with concern the indicators that a draft was in the offing for after the election. They had all come to that conclusion even before the idea was being floated by the administration. But what to do about it had been added to the research outlines. The usual nattering websites were starting up, some of them Libertarian, talking the subject to death while raising money – but it was silly to expect they would accomplish anything. To them it was a delightful opportunity to get paid and enjoy a rerun of the 60s.

 

Today their walk had taken Bernard and Dolly a little up town, though, and this time it was mostly business. Paging through the New York Times Bernard had exclaimed over an announcement that the fisherpeople would be meeting at the United Nations that afternoon. Going to the website had provided more specifics. Bernard recalled dealing with the website before and how unwieldy and annoying it was. This had surprised him since it did not reflect the underlying reality of the organization itself, especially the interfaces of the non-governmental organizations and their network. He had sent the link on to Dolly with a cute little icon and a flower.

 

The fisherpeople were finally going to start a full fledged petition drive over several affected states to focus attention on the problem of The Magnuson – Stevens Act. Bernard was delighted. He also wanted to discuss the resolution with the new leadership who had taken charge, finally beginning to make a dent in the hideous alignments of bureaucracy and graft that had accounted for the inability of Peace for the Planet to change the direction of marine management before now. Bringing public attention to the issue was not the whole answer but it would have to help. 

 

Before Bernard and Dolly could enter the United Nations proper they needed to line up at security to receive their temporary identification. The line was rather long right now, although Bernard told Dolly that towards the end of the day the place would empty out. As they talked two other people lined up right in back of them, talking about the conference on the environment planned for later in the year and also, glancingly, about the fisherpeople. Bernard looked over at them. The man, who was younger, looked at Bernard.

 

“Sam?” Bernard said, a touch of disbelief tinting his voice.

 

“My goodness! Bernard! What are you doing here, so far from Malaysia? Gladys, allow me the pleasure to introduce a former henchman of the infamous Ronald Delmont, Bernard Hightower. And this lady is?” Sam smiled at Dolly with the open good cheer that had made him such an effective mediator working between the sultanate in Malaysia and his own government in New Zealand. 

 

“Dolly, Darla, this is one of the canniest attorneys in the South Pacific, Samuel Symington, the toughest mediator it was ever my pleasure to work with. Sam, this is Darla Farnsworth. And what brings you here to New York?” The four shook hands, nodding and murmuring. 

 

In a lower voice Bernard added to Sam, “I left Benron in 1992. You were right about….a lot of things.”

 

Sam paused, glancing at Bernard. The last time they had batted heads Bernard was on the other side of the table representing Benron, certainly one of the least ethical corporate presences in the world. Now, obviously, Bernard had done a lot of changing. Well, so had he. If he had listened to Gladys so many years might have been better used. The long conversation he and Gladys had had the night before had clarified the very real and continuous strategies that had been used against them over the years through individuals placed by corporations and other special interests at the United Nations. But at the time he had not listened, either to Gladys or to his own misgivings. Ashamed, he realized that part of that had been the fact that Gladys was a woman. In a moment of self confrontation he accepted his own mistakes, grimacing as he thought about them. Evidently Bernard had also confronted some personal demons. He had liked Bernard back then even though he worked for Benron, liked his calm courtesy, his certainty, and his genuine kindness, so unusual among those associated with Benron. We all make mistakes – Sam’s own had not been less grave. 

 

Smiling Sam said, “We really do need to talk. Let’s not wait.” 

 

The conversation thus begun in line culminated with an invitation to dinner at the headquarters of the American Revival that evening. Bernard explained it was a start up nonprofit looking to make a different by broadening communications between elements in politics and the culture who were not now communicating. Dave would be delighted. He was expected back in town in the late afternoon and they had planned to have dinner together anyway. 

 

Dave had just arrived and was unpacking his bag when Bernard walked into the apartment. Bernard noticed that he seemed a little edgy and tired, although he tried to smile and was genuinely delighted to hear about the dinner plans. He had already uploaded his initial report to Christopher and Larry along with the raw material for the interview which Christopher would actually write. 

 

Dinner with decent people sounded wonderful. 

 

Over a dinner of braised salmon and asparagus with a range of appetizers and accoutrements six people sat down and talked about issues. Their political background and viewpoints ranged from socialist to anarchist and their life experiences extended their conversation into issues not previously considered. It was a meeting that deepened understanding and also raised issues that needed to be considered carefully. 

 

The draft, the L.O.Y.A.L.T.Y. Act, the War in Iraq, the diminishment of civil liberties, the existence or non-existence of a vast left-right wing conspiracy, the attack on the objectivity of the court system and the placement and success of petroleum companies in extending their corporate activities through American foreign policy and the use of Zionism as a further tool of that strategy, all of these were touched on. 

 

Christopher spoke up on the subject of the support of Evangelical American churches and their support of Israel, revealing some things none of them had known about his background. Christopher’s parents had been Evangelical Christians until Christopher, as part of a home school research project had shown them the source of their belief. 

 

Christopher’s research had been thorough and he enjoyed the surprise on their faces as he related what he had learned. It came to news to everyone there that Zionism had actually started with Napoleon Bonaparte in the last years of the 1700s. It had been a matter of giving Jews, whose rights were violated throughout Europe, a place of their own. Napoleon said about faith, "Faith is beyond the reach of the law. It is the most personal possession of man, and no one has the right to demand and account for it."

 

In 1811 all restrictions were removed and nothing from a political or civil activity distinguished the Jews from non-Jews in France remained while Napoleon remained in power. 

 

After Napoleon was exiled to St. Helena the English government had adopted the idea because of its potential for giving them some possible influence in the Middle East. But then in 1840 a movement for Zionism arose from the English aristocracy from the influence of Lord Shaftsbury and encouraged by the End of the World visions of a generation of English evangelicals who essentially rewrote the Bible. This system of belief, installed by a man named Scofield, was imported to the United States in the late 1800s and began working its way into the more unsophisticated Christian churches, located for the most part in the South and Midwest. 

 

Christopher had pointed this out to his parents who were shocked and chagrined. He went on to research for them the incidents when the End of the World and Advent of the Second Coming had been predicted for the last 2000 years. Their sect was urging them to sell their property and join a retreat to a communal property in the Midwest. It had been the threat of this move that first moved him to formulate the research project for his self created course in history.

 

While Christopher was sure he had not found all of the predictions in many instances believers had sold their property and retired to the hill tops to await the Savior only to return home several days later, hungry and disappointed. Why, Christopher asked, would God work outside laws of nature in the world He had created for us in the first place? 

 

This revelation, Christopher said, had caused some tension in his home for a while. But his parents firmly believed in the truth and after checking his references had changed churches. 

 

The difference was with the present instance of End of the World frenzy that it was being used to promote the two secular political agendas of Zionism and corporatism. Christopher said his own opinions on Israel had been solidified when after his original research he had followed the money. Rhetoric lies but the money has the candor of real truth. Astonished, Larry immediately asked why Christopher had not sent his original research on to him. Shamefacedly, Christopher admitted he did not like to tell the story on his parents. 

 

That had given them all a lot to think about. 

 

The first evening with Gladys and Sam at AR started in acquaintance and ended in newly forged friendships and a working coalition. Assembling the meal had been the work of the whole group. Dolly had planned the menu and done the shopping as soon as they arrived back at the apartment, ordering in the items not available at the local grocery store. But as with all spontaneous projects some glitches had developed. 

 

First Fuzz Ball had nabbed the salmon, dragging the whole package into Dave’s closet. This had not gone unnoticed by Margarine who protested his sole possession of the treat. It was the resulting War of the Salmon that alerted Dolly and sent Christopher out to replace the fish. Fuzz Ball and Margarine were exiled to Dave’s bedroom for the duration without the expropriated fish. 

 

When Gladys and Sam walked in exactly on time it was obvious that there had been some disturbance. Gladys had a cat herself, although Sam had only sheep at his farm in New Zealand; at least there was a cat, he said, but it and he had only a business relationship. The cat kept the mice at bay. 

 

Everyone pitched in. Gladys had set the table; Christopher had braised the newly acquired salmon. Bernard prepared the asparagus, crisping them in a thick pan layered with garlic and oil. Sam had poured the wine while Dave warmed the bread and Larry produced, to the astonishment of those who knew his nerdly ways, an appetizer of astonishing delicacy. Dolly, bereft of other chores, arranged the flowers. Gladys tossed a salad with frozen peas and thinly sliced red onions and corn. 

It was not the evening any of them had planned, making it an interesting allegory for the lives each of them was living. 

 

The group had more in common than they could have imagined and over the next several days forged a working relationship that was to become the basis for a dialogue on issues that opened minds and hearts that had been closed for a generation.

 

The honest and honorable on both the right and the left had experienced similar problems. Now, with straight talk, those breaches could begin to heal.

 

Dessert was a chocolate torte from the store. Fuzz Ball and Margarine were released from their captivity to enjoy the company when it was placed on the table.

North Carolina

Coop’s master plan depended on changes in the court system carried out by the people themselves, trained and going into court as informed pro se litigators able to force the court to stop abusing ‘discretion’ and start administrating law as it was written. Coop had long since recognized that to accomplish that he needed to train individuals like himself and so many others to understand the law and accept that the courts belonged not to the judges but to America’s citizens. This work had become not the work he had chosen but the work life had given him as a sacred trust. Doing that work would cost him in many ways. Instead of living in a good neighborhood in a conventional home he lived in a trailer park in an old structure that leaked like a sieve during the worst of winter. He worried about Bead but tried to keep her occupied out of school hours with his large extended family. 

 

The other residents of the trailer park had come to view Coop as their advocate, and he began gathering the documentation necessary to see that they, too, would be able to defend their rights from the rapacious landlord who he soon discovered had unusual ways of making the very marginal trailer park profitable. 

 

Bead was living with her daddy now, but she still woke up at night in fear. Coop made sure that Trudi could always see Bead but after the last attempt to kidnap her insisted that he be present during all visits, which took place in his home. None of Trudi’s boyfriends would again physically abuse the little girl. Bead was recovering from the trauma, but the years of not having enough to eat because her mother ignored her most basic needs and spent her time stoned on liquor or drugs had resulted in a tendency to overeat that worried Coop. Bead no longer hoarded food in her closet, now persuaded she could have whatever she wanted.

 

Trudi had continued to use drugs and begun turning tricks to pay for the drugs her body then craved. It was the ordinary deterioration of conscience that was all too often present when the choices life presents are abused. Those were the choices Trudi had made and no one could change that except her. 

 

Coop’s work became an endless round of jobs that supplied the money to support himself and Bead and off work hours filled with rebuilding the computers that would make it possible for ordinary people to access the resources they desperately needed to learn to litigate for themselves. These were the weapons in a war for justice that Coop saw would only end when the courts were forced to adhere to the law of the land. What they had become were markets where the lives of ordinary people were carved up for the benefit of those possessing the money, power, and influence to own judges and use them for their own purposes.

 

Coop knew he could not accomplish this alone. He needed help. Those he trained must reach out and train others. But it must remain local, grass roots, and volunteer. 

 

Slowly the powers that be became aware that Coop was not just managing his own case but going after them through the increasingly well educated actions of others who were coming into court with a lessening of fear and insisting on their rights. They could point out the specific laws and demand that the letter of the law be applied to their cases. 

 

This had happened in Karen’s case, in Reba’s case, and in a growing body of cases, almost all local and most of them involving the further abuse of government bureaucracies like the Department of Social Services. 

 

Karen was reaching out to the families of other military like herself and her husband. All too many military families were being targeted by DSS now. 

 

Coop saw that the courts were being converted into a system that allowed American children to be cycled through ‘services’ that converted them to payments extracted by agencies from federal and state funds. That this amounted to millions and millions of dollars every year even in Charlotte was something of a shock. But it explained so much. 

 

Coop traced the beginnings of this abuse to canny con artists like the head of the DSS recruited from San Diego who showed the local folks how to create quotas, ensuring that enough kids were taken from homes to keep their numbers up. It was a cookie cutter operation that brought in money in more ways than Coop could even count. Graft and the trading of favors with attorneys became increasingly common and lowered the standards for law. Decent attorneys were quitting the practice of law altogether or limited their practices to avoid confronting the problems.  

 

Coop doubled down. He would continue training. Where there was a need he would answer it. Slowly, over the years, hundreds of people had contacted him either on line or from referral. The case law and examples were mounting. He always told them he would use their case in every way he could to change law; that they were not doing this just for themselves but for others they might never know of or meet. Some of them kept in touch afterwards, going on to help others gladly. Others just disappeared. Coop did not let that bother him. He had a plan. It was working.

 

Someday there would be a case that gave him national visibility. When that happened he would be able to make his techniques for teaching available to thousands. He would send the message that America had declared a war on its people, converting its courts into cash registers and by the trust of its people. It was a systematic fraud that destroyed all that had formerly given America the greatness that had been the beacon on a hill for generations fleeing oppression.

 

There was a revolution to fight and Coop was recruiting foot soldiers to restore the honor of a nation.

In the Bunker, Georgia

For Lindsey, the screen of her computer was the portal to the real world. It looked different to her now, since that moment when the fires of hell had been called down on to the computer she was pinging in Baghdad, but she was drawn back to it and was again working.

 

So much about the Movement seemed to be different, especially when contrasted with the words of its founders. She had grown up there and so it had seemed like it was built on firm foundations. It had been like the earth shifted under her feet when her friends turned on her, supporting Dicks.

 

Then, when she was small, you never heard exhortations to put your conscience aside for reasons of political expedience. Now that happened all the time, even with Libertarians. Of course they had their own terms for political expedience, as she well knew.

 

The thing that first focused her on just how deeply the Movement had shifted came from reading the words of the speech William Wallace wrote for Goldwater and spoke to the tumultuous cheers of assembled Republicans during the Convention that had launched the ill fated Goldwater candidacy for President in 1964.

 

Lindsey had grown up knowing William Wallace as a friend of her grandfather’s. But she had never before read the words that moved him to a place of prominence in American politics. Stunned, she read the words that had moved a generation, her mother’s generation, to trust and believe that someone had the strength and courage to stand up against the forces of collectivism that had at that point in time come to control the political dialogue and shape the future of America. Although Libertarians had had their own candidate in 1980, many of them had gone to Washington in the Wallace Administration to install the ideas of privatization and deregulation in the lexicon of American politics.

 

She had heard it called the Goldwater Revolution. Now she understood what it had meant. Goldwater and Wallace were both men who represented honor, honesty and doing the right thing. It was not their policies that persuaded but their essential decency.

 

So much had changed. Lindsey thought about the attitudes she had encountered, the hideous ideas that seemed to be taking front and center in both the Republican and Libertarian Parties. What would Conservatives and Libertarians say if they were confronted by these words today if they did not know who had spoken them? She decided to find out.

 

Over the next several months Lindsey posted excerpts from Wallace’s speech to websites and to a person Conservatives and Libertarians attacked him as a fanatic and a leftist. Somehow, someplace, the revolution in individualism had become a symposium for utilitarianism that counted its virtues in the efficiencies of government. Where there had been direction and passionate, reasoned commitment to the rights of the individuals, now remained only the trackings of 401Ks and mutual funds. Comfort had trumped principle. The new generation of freedom fighters, nurtured on the words of such thinkers as Goldwater, Rand, Heinlein, Rose Wilder Lane, and the foundational text of Thomas Jefferson and John Locke had forgotten their origins and thus lost their own souls.

Reading the words of William Wallace, Lindsey cried for the movement that had been her home and for the friends who had sold out. She missed them – but in this case it was not their physical presence she missed but their courage to see what was so obvious and so wrong with their present course.

“You and I are told increasingly that we have to choose between a left or right, but I would like to suggest that there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down--up to a man's age-old dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order--or down to the ant heap totalitarianism, and regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course.

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.

We will keep in mind and remember that Barry Goldwater has faith in us. He has faith that you and I have the ability and the dignity and the right to make our own decisions and determine our own destiny.”

It was while she was surfing the web one long and lonely night that Lindsey first read about a man who stopped the naming of the courthouse in North Carolina for William Wallace because, “William Wallace would despise the use for which this building is being used. The court system is a cesspool of corruption that is destroying families and eating the faith of Americans in the institutions that sustain and protect our freedoms. Name anything else for President Wallace, name something clean and good and decent for a man who was all of those things and more for the people here in Charlotte who loved him.” Intrigued, she first encountered the name of Coop Steigler.