Chapter Fourteen - Hamiltonian Reflections

"I begin by taking. I shall find scholars later to demonstrate my perfect right."

- Frederick (II) the Great

Hamiltonian Reflections

The Office for Social Truths is a nonprofit located in the heart of Hollywood. It is run by Frank Kravowitz, a former pink diaper baby who has reformatted himself as a conservative after a brief stint as a Libertarian. His organization was high up on the list of Alternative Libertarian groups that Dave and Christopher and Bernard had marked for investigation because of the visibility the organization had achieved in a rather short period of time, and because instead of being a formal think tank it was really a one man show in many ways.

Its founder and President, Kravowitz, had always made a living writing attack books from some point of view. Briefly, Dave wondered if it was strange for him to be selling his work to the ladies at National Forum for Republican Women.

Dave flew into LAX, having planned on the same swing to go to one of the informal evenings hosted by Rationality Foundation and the Friday for Breakfast Club Kravowitz sponsored. That was another meal event, but this time for breakfast.

After he and Christopher had finalized the list of think tanks to be studied, Christopher brought up the issue of the Libertarian Party. All of the indicators showed that the common element for the genesis of the nonprofits was what its members called the LP. Libertarian websites and posting sites rivaled Conservative or Liberal sites in some cases. Also, there was tremendous interfacing with the ideas of one also popping up on others. Christopher had traced the creation and adoption of the ideas as policy with the philosophical reference points, iconic memes, and other factors and determined that all of the ideas had been coming from Libertarians of one species or another since the time the Party was founded. Until about ten years ago, he amended. The LP had enjoyed a tremendous surge of intellectual activity for the first ten years, optimized for the next ten years, and now was on a downward spiral. Christopher thought this correlated with similar factors they had noted in the life cycle of the Socialist Party in the 30s and Peace and Freedom Party and the American Independent Party. He wanted Dave to check it out for him.

Dave told him he would if they could figure out a way to do that. Together, they put a plan together that included determining recidivism, brand loyalty, demographics, and some sneaky polling using an e-mail filter and the existing posting sites populated by Libertarians. Christopher and Bernard had put their heads together on that. Getting anyone to reveal information on its members could be tricky.

Sitting on the balcony of his hotel room at The Ambrose in Santa Monica and tapping away at his computer, Dave considered the fact he was beginning to conceal information from Christopher and Bernard. Lindsey or her mother had been the source of many of the stories that were now being correlated in their work, but he had not named the source. Shifting uncomfortably, he wondered if that would make a difference in the outcomes that using the technology Bernard and Christopher had added would skew the results. He hoped not. He couldn’t talk about Lindsey, not yet. He gazed out into the muted night livened by the clash of lights reflecting in past the garden.

Dave retrieved his most recent report from Diamond, who was still trying to determine what had happened to George Weston. 9/11 had reordered the priorities, but Dave was not one to forget the people he cared about. Dolly e-mailed him about what was happening with her life. It had been from Dolly that he had learned that the services offered to Veterans, a major project issue for the Elks, had again been mercilessly cut by the powers that been in Washington, necessitating more volunteer dollars and hours to keep the guys down at the Veterans Service Center in sundries, magazines and money for bus fare.

Pausing, Dave thought about his recent evening in D.C. with the folks from Cicero Institute. What if things like Social Security were handled by organizations like the Elks? Dave had been impressed with their National Foundation. Each year it returned more money to Lodges than it collected so that Lodges could continue to do good works for veterans, handicapped children and their communities. They were hard working volunteers, not a paid bureaucrat among them.

He made a note and sent it off to Christopher, copying it to Dolly. You never know. Cicero had been talking about privatizing Social Security for years. But people want someone they can trust. He knew that the Elks could be trusted, at least with the money of their own members. Could work.

The evening get together at Rationality had been interesting. Some of the regulars were science fiction writers he had read as a kid. Harold Blandale, who pumped out books like MacDonald’s pumps out burgers was there, holding forth and Dave made a point of saying hello. He and Gramps had read some of his books, retreads of Heinlein’s in some ways, together.

Dave had written a hefty check in advance of showing up and then requested information on the demographics of their supporters. They had been happy to help him. Their typical supporter was closer to the Libertarian Normal Model, meaning a male in his 40s – 50s who was in a highly technical field, usually computer related, and was more often than not still single. When Dave asked the intern if it had been different ten years ago they had responded that yes, it had. Ten years ago the typical supporter had been ten years younger. Dave then noticed that the names of some corporations that were on their NeoCon list were creeping in, but with donation levels far lower that what the same groups were giving to Cicero.

Slowly but surely Dave was checking off names on the list of prospects they had agreed needed to be met face to face. Most were happily Boxed, as they had started calling it. One or two, from the analysis of their associations and from their writing, were NeoCons. One, a guy around Dave’s age looked like he might be a possibility for recruitment. Dave got his contact information.

The original founder of Rationality had recently retired to Florida where he was now spending his time setting up model trains in the shiny new structure he had had put up for the purpose. The new crew showed a lot of the typical characteristics they had identified in second ‘generation’ occupants of an organizational structure.

None of them could actually create such a structure themselves. There had been a normal amount of shifting for control and reorientation in the wake of the inevitable power shifts occasioned by the exit of the founder. New personalities were assuming the clothing of the establishment. That struck Dave as ironic in an organization dedicated to the devolution of governmental power.

Reading through the archived newsletters and the magazines, Dave had watched the essentially engineer-like nature of the original founder begin to change. That was not all bad, of course, the readability of the original magazine had been pretty deadly.

It interested Dave that Cicero and Rationality had actually been rivals for the first portion of their existence. He had run across that information from the same unmentionable source - Lindsey’s mother. She still had a copy of some of the early newsletters where some of this had played out, and remembered the now forgotten but then infamous April Fool’s newsletter issued by Rationality that had shocked the Movement.

This line of research not only went to their need for possible allies, it also furthered inquiry into the question Gramps had posed regarding what happened to movements that tried to change the status quo. The disheartening answer frequently was that, as in the case with Cicero, they became the status quo, or as Christopher had begun putting it, became yet another layer of lard on the body politic.

That many of them sincerely thought they were working for smaller government went to the issue of Moral Myopia Christopher had identified.

Chris and Bernard had put together a lengthy list of individuals and institutions to be researched. Sitting here on the balcony by the light of his laptop, Dave had finished entering the data, uploading it to the website for Christopher. As he signed off a note from Bernard came through, shining like a small gem on the dimmed screen.

The Hamiltonian Society had finally gotten back to him and he was now invited to attend their posh do here in Los Angeles. Dave sighed. At moments like this when he was alone with his thoughts there was little to keep the memories of Lindsey out of his mind.

Packing for the Bunker

After the first break in attempt Lindsey knew she would have to just disappear. If Dicks couldn’t find her he couldn’t have her killed. Lindsey had been on the phone with her mother when the second break in occurred. If she had not been standing right next to the door who ever it was - Lindsey suspected Dicks’ buddy from the teamsters – she would most likely be dead and spending quality time with Jimmy Hoffa.

Lindsey had stayed on the phone with her mother all night, pretty much. It had helped. The police had been dismissive and never called back. They had also failed to finger print the door or do any of the other things Lindsey would have expected them to do.

So Lindsey and her mother had arranged for this disappearance. Her possessions packed and shipped off to storage bit by bit she would leave with one small case just as if she was headed out for the usual weekend at Sag Harbor with Lance and friends. But this time she would be leading south to Georgia and sanctuary.

An enormous void filled with both anger and despair, glowing red hot and at the same time as cold as ice had taken possession of Lindsey’s mind. Her god father, old friends, family, everyone except her mother had forsaken her.

Locking the door behind her she squared her shoulders. Her godfather had told her when they talked that last time that it was necessary to sacrifice the truth for the wellbeing of Dicks, who was so useful to the Movement. Lindsey had responded saying that no movement that sacrifices truth is worth saving.

That was true – and Lindsey would rather die than let it be otherwise.

Military Housing – North Carolina

Karen had not expected to marry. As an engineer working on the Army base here in North Carolina she had plenty of opportunities to meet men, mostly officers, but none of them interested her very much until she met Paul through the local biking group. Karen enjoyed the exhilaration that a long ride through the glorious green countryside of North Carolina provided. It eased her mind and soul.

Paul was an enlisted man, but combined with the fantastic physique that went along with his Ranger training, he was also sweet. They had fallen into a conversation at a party the local biking club had sponsored and a group of them had arranged to show up for a ride the next Saturday.

At 9 a.m., in a steady drizzle, they had looked at each other, the only ones who loved the long smooth high of biking enough to brave the weather, and started laughing. She had found out just how sweet he was that day.

When the rain started coming down too heavily they ducked into a theatre, watching and drying off. Then they had taken off for the next small town on the route. What had been planned as a bike ride one Saturday morning had not ended until around noon the next day, with one thing or another. It had been just a little crazy.

Karen smiled. In some ways it never really had ended.

Karen had gone through school the hard way, working two jobs and studying late into the night. Her family was poor but they valued education and the opportunities that education brought. Always logical and good in math, engineering had been a natural fit for her psychologically.

So they had married. It has been a simple ceremony back in her hometown to please her parents. Only two of their local friends had been able to afford to make the trip to Illinois. It had been strange to be with Paul in the huge old church where she had attended Sunday school when she was little. Her dress had seemed a little awkward. It was the fantasy dress her mother had always hoped to have a daughter wear. It looked good on her slim form. She tried to remember not to scratch.

Her mother had been flustered at the unaccustomed flurry of activity, but she and Paul had hit it off immediately. Paul was never flustered. He had smiled and relaxed his way through the meetings with the relatives who had converged on the house and church for the festivities, thanking goodness that the grand-daughter, niece, cousin they thought would never find a man finally had.

It had taken her dad a little longer to warm up, but by the time they had gotten in the Bronco, heading out for their two day back to work honeymoon, he had warmed up enough to give her new husband a hug. Paul, nearly a foot taller than Karen’s Dad had been touched, emerging from the embrace with a lopsided smile.

The smile had been straight on when he looked at her, heading out down the road. Karen had heard the expression, “love shining out of his eyes’ before. Now she knew just what that meant.

Along with a new husband Karen had gotten four kids. Paul had custody and the kids had not seen their mother since Paul had picked them up from the dilapidated trailer where Loretta, Paul’s former wife, had lived since they broke up six years before. Despite the child support, the eviction notice arrived. Loretta was the first person Karen had ever met who she could identify as white trash. Paul had been a full time Dad for two years when he and Karen met.

Since she had never wanted to have children herself, the existence of this prefabricated family had caused some hesitation on Karen’s part. But she loved Paul. If having him meant being the best mom she could be then she figured, like every other tough thing in her life, she could do it if she studied hard enough.

If Karen’s family had valued education and closely monitored every report card then, from what Paul said, his family had occupied the opposite end of the spectrum.

Born in Macon, Georgia to a family that had yet to send anyone to college, his parents had been entirely satisfied if he was respectful to his elders, made sure he found an after school job, did well at athletics, and brought home nothing lower than a ‘D.’ Appalled, Karen could now understand the lackadaisical attitude the kids showed towards school. On top of that, the younger two had been diagnosed in their former school as having Attention Deficit Syndrome. Karen had immediately gone on the internet to find out just what that meant. A thorough perusal of the research and symptoms persuaded her that the kids had been misdiagnosed.

Always health conscious, they decided to take the kids off the medication, substituting an organic diet and slowly reintroducing specific foods that might be causing allergic reactions.

Then they instituted a family Boot Camp. Instead of straggling out of bed just in time to throw on their clothes and head out to school, the family got up before the sun, made beds, did some exercise and came back in for a full breakfast and exercises in sentence construction and spelling. This regimen had persuaded the eldest that she preferred to go back and live with her Mom, who had now remarried. But for the younger three it had been life changing.

The two oldest, a boy and a girl, were on the honor roll for the first time in their lives. They were reading and enjoying it and the family was talking about books and school and the news in the paper at meals.

No longer medicated out of their minds they were bright, alert and lively.

Karen, looking around the table at her family, felt good. She had rescued these kids from educational failure and she and Paul had given them the potential of a fuller, richer and more rewarding life. It made her proud.

The Hamiltonian Society

Dave had really meant to go to one of the larger official conferences for the Hamiltonian Society first. But all of those events were either just past or too far in the future to be immediately useful. So instead he had settled for an invitation here in Los Angeles from a group of attorneys who ran the local chapter. The group met at some local restaurant, evidently depending on the culinary impulses of its leadership and spent the evening eating, drinking and talking. Some of them had probably figured out a way to turn this mostly social occasion into billable hours.

As it turned out the leadership was someone Dave had heard quite a bit about.

Vlad VorMortag was the former boy friend Lindsey had told him about. And the event was not posh, but it provided a lot for Dave to think about.

Dave arrived at the restaurant just a touch early to find a milling group that looked like attorneys who had come on over from their offices and court, standing round the waiting area. It was tiny. The place was certainly not lavish. It in fact was located next to a Safeway Grocery Store on National Blvd. opposite the office building where Rationality had its several floors of offices.

It looked cheap, but the smell was fantastic.

Dave found himself greeted by a smiling guy who had obviously been on the look out for him.

“You must be Dave. Vlad told me to be looking for you. My name is Kim Tanner. So you’re a member from New York?”

Dave explained he had just joined and was in law school at Columbia in New York while handling the investments left to him by his grandfather. After debating the pros and cons he, Bernard, and Christopher had decided that it made far more sense to treat the money casually. It provided so many advantages in getting inside the envelope of knowledge. Dave found the cloyingly friendly way he was treated when people realized the rough area of his net worth off putting.

Introducing him around the circle, Kim left him in the hands of Felicia Morgantheu, a dark haired young woman who immediately began chatting about the various cases she was encountering in law school. Dave smiled and let her talk. Before she could entirely run down, Vlad finally walked into the restaurant. He immediately noticed Dave and came over, grinning and extending his hand.

“So good of you to join us tonight!” Vlad exuded an accent that revealed his birth in the motherland of Russia, although his family had emigrated when he was only six. Lindsey had told Dave that they had hit the ground running, living for a while in a run down apartment in Hollywood and then moving up with the speed of greased sausage to a lavish home in Beverly Hills. They had brought with them their aged parents who they had immediately put on welfare and every other program they could tap.

Dave had been surprised at first over the heat this had generated in Lindsey. But she had explained that she was opposed to subsidies for immigration. Root, work or starve was her attitude. And she had found out over the years she had known them that although they became billionaires on the work Vlad had done in software development, they had never returned a nickel of the money to the bureaus that had issued the checks.

Looking at the soft attractive smile on Vlad’s face, Dave found it difficult to connect the very unattractive picture Lindsey had painted with the charm that was enveloping him right now. But he had learned that Lindsey was not a good source of information.

The dinner was hardy and delicious. The group had this down to a science. Dishes were shared so that everyone could appreciate many nibbles of everything on the menu and they ate and talked their way through the evening with nary a nanoseconds break in the conversation.

Dave sat back and listened, parrying questions with other questions. The focus of attention for the entire table was undoubtedly Vlad. And Vlad was never at a loss for something to say.

The subject under discussion tonight, Dave realized early on, was a main focus of interest. That was the sub rosa agenda of the Hamiltonian Society to place politically reliable attorneys in judgeships so they would be available for Federal appointments.

While they were always positioning for placement on the Supreme Court, they had been placing judges in the lower courts for at least fifteen years now, from what Dave was hearing.

Dave ventured a question on the issue of political reliability and this elicited a rather pedantic and oppressive response from Vlad.

“Right thinking people - that is what we need!” Vlad was not the kind of guy who expressed his enthusiasms in halftones. Dave had initially wondered if someone with an IQ of 220 would seem very different, but Vlad was actually rather bumptious, exuding some of the charm of a half trained pup. That was rather strange in combination with the run away intelligence, but by the end of the evening Dave was getting used to it.

As it turned out, Vlad had read some of the analyses Dave had written on the function of markets in law drawn from his reading of Postinger, the man who had created that contextual interface now making its way through academia and into broad acceptance. Dave had added several dimensions to the Postinger analysis. Dave could not deny that it had been nice to find he was referenced, especially by someone like Vlad who had done some definitive work in the area of the 2nd Amendment.

Of the twenty people around the table most were male but there were three women. These gave Dave something to think about.

As the party was breaking up, Vlad shook Dave’s hand and asked if he would be around on Friday evening. Pausing, Dave answered yes. He had actually planned to be leaving that afternoon, but getting to know someone as deeply involved with the Hamiltonian Society as was Vlad, was a not to be overlooked opportunity.

Vlad then asked him to come out to his place for what he called a Russian Tea at 7 Friday evening. Dave thanked him profusely, got his home address and watched as Vlad walked out with an entirely different woman than Dave had thought he would be attracted to. He had thought that Vlad would go to type. Lindsey being his type, he thought that Vlad would have shown some interest in Felicia Morgantheu, a very intelligent woman who was also attractive, or in Debs Manning, another attorney from a downtown firm. Her tall, blond good looks were arresting and it was clear from the conversation she was shaping for partner in the near future. But instead, he walked out with the puffy and none too attractive woman who dressed like a whore. Shaking his head, Dave again was left to wonder about his own gender.

That Friday night Dave rang the doorbell at what Vlad called “his pad”, located at the highest crest of the Hollywood Hills. In back of the houses the ground fell away to canyons that seemed to go on forever. In the other direction the huge windows looked out on the distant lights of Los Angeles.

“Dave! Good of you to come.” Vlad was dressed casually. Before you would have placed him as an attorney; now he looked like a computer nerd.

Vlad led Dave past a small reception room towards the back of the house where floor to ceiling windows opened over the canyons, providing a sharp contrast with the city that spread as far as the eyes could see from the front of the house.

The Russian Tea had been set up in the massive dining room. A glorious selection of desserts had been set up across the middle of the table, along with a burnished silver tea service and perfect napery set at each place.

“Russian tea is to be taken like afternoon tea – but with more appetite; and here we dispense with the savories and get on to the main course – dessert!” This elicited a chuckle from several of those attending. The graceful china waited at each place and a heavy silver candelabrum graced the smooth surface of the elegant linen cloth.

The real menu was served up verbally. Dave understood. This was a talent search of a kind. Some of these people were the kind that would be useful, and over the chocolate torte a winnowing would take place. Dave listened. He had a lot he needed to know.

The Briefing Room – Washington

Twenty-seven months out from the Election That Mattered, and Humstead already knew that timing was going to be something that would need careful consideration. As always, he had worked exhaustively, fine tuning his seven layered contingencies and checking them against previous successful models for victory. He was ready for this meeting.

The attendees of this small and rather exclusive strategy session were trickling in to seats set with pads of paper imprinted with the Presidential Seal. Usually there would be someone present to take notes, but not for this session. The eight pads matched the number of attendees.

Humstead smiled, shifting in his seat. Thoughts of the evening before flashed through his mind. Not for him the public divorce and recriminations. He and his wife had come to an agreement early on when he found someone who could really appreciate him sexually. He would stay; she would act as his hostess and not notice. It suited them. Hot sex and children did not mix. Glancing down the table at Pork Glibheart, he couldn’t help smirking just a bit. Pork should have listened to him. The reality doesn’t matter; public perception is everything. Men in power could have exactly what they wanted if they were clear-eyed and ruthless about getting it. That really was the underlying text of Straussianism. Humstead had noticed that immediately. And that was a law of nature, no matter how the little people whined about the way things really were.

The door swung closed with a firm click behind the last departing underling. It was time to talk turkey.

The Vice President was present. He looked at Humstead and nodded.

The National Crisis Maintenance Agency had been assembled over twenty years before to help local areas in the aftermath of emergencies. Fires, earthquakes, tornados, floods, all of these had been among the emergencies the NCMA had managed. Those who had put together the guidelines and authorities for the NCMA had given it broad powers. This administration, in the wake of the Terrorist attack the year before, had now begun the process to append the powers granted to NCMA to those now being granted to Our Land Safe, the internal branch that would take over and direct martial law and the local troops when that became necessary. No one in the room commented that the word ‘if’ was not used.

By its own rules NCMA was able to suspend elections nationally in some instances and at their discretion. This meant that if California, Texas, Florida, New York and Illinois were in what NCMA defined as active mode, NCMA could suspend such public activities as elections. Even if the actual crisis that had brought the agency in was long since over, National Elections could be suspended if such states existed in enough states to make up 50% of the Electoral College.

No one had noticed this except Humstead. This had become part of his layers of contingencies, although he hoped it would not become necessary to activate it in this round. He was a rules kind of guy, everyone knew that.

Charlotte, North Carolina

Coop usually got four hours sleep a night. He didn’t actually need more than that. Over the years he had learned to use the deep meditation techniques he had learned from his spiritual inquiries and his reading to discipline his body and mind. It was after the world had been muted in dark and the sounds of life dimmed that he could best hear the inner voice that drove him. The futon bed he had traded for the bedroom set he had shared with Trudi was simple and functional. With relentless focus he had pared off inessentials, leaving only those things that made the work he had set for himself possible. He still had dreams for himself. Someday, after he had solved the problem at hand, there would be time again for the intoxicating speed of a well-tuned motorcycle, something he had savored when he was still working as a master mechanic. Then there would be time for rappelling down the cliffs, falling through air and light in a world without the sounds of people; just him and the wind, hawks, trees and sky. Then, there might also be time for a woman. If he could ever find one he could trust.

His body, rising back to consciousness from the trancelike state of meditation, changed. Small movement was restored to the near death appearance of a moment before. Stretching, his chest swelled with breath and he turned over, stretching into the warmth for his hours of plain sleep.

Those who knew him, worked with him day to day, rarely got to know more than some small part of him. Many thought him odd, abrupt, and different. He was different, but not in any way they could imagine.

His briefs were already changing law, creating the first layering of argumentation that would eventually be carried into the Appellate level and beyond. Eventually, those briefs would be heard in the Supreme Court. They were on their way. Others presented the arguments, but they remained the product of his mind, his tools turned and honed to change the course of American jurisprudence.

His training as a master mechanic had worked to help him see systems as congruent and mutually interactive; drawing their power and reliability from each other. That is how the law should work, with fail-safes to account for the fallibility of the people who it serves and protects.

Four hours later the sun had begun to lighten the absolutes of night. It was time to get on with it. There was work to be done and no time to waste.

Summer Conference, Hamiltonian Society, Washington D.C.

The Hamiltonian Society had fallen into the habit of meeting at the Daughter’s Hotel. It was centrally located; close to the core of Congress and the Supreme Court while still possessing the amenities so essential to discerning patrons. The Summer Conference for 2002 included workshops and lectures on a variety of subjects, but as always the central focus was on those subjects that remained intentionally informal. These dialogues took place in closed meetings. Tables were drawn up in a rectangle and attendees, carefully vetted in advance, sat around the outside looking across at each other.

The accoutrements of coffee, tea, and pastries waited along with carafes of tinkling ice water on the tables lining the wall at the back of the room.

It was here that the real business took place. Here the policies of the Hamiltonian Society, delineated elsewhere, were discussed and turned into action items. Initiatives being considered in California were on the agenda even as placement of Federal judges had been for some time now.

The young attorneys who were winnowed through association with men like Vlad were fast-tracked to partner and from there on to Federal judgeships. This was the long list from which a far more select list was being assembled. That list, which included Vlad himself, was being groomed for placement on the highest court in the land. The Hamiltonians had already placed one of their own. What had been done with pressure, lies and intimidation in the case of Orville Johns, an undistinguished black attorney with little experience in law over ten years ago, would now be accomplished with far more finesse the next time around.