Foreign Enemies and Traitors

by Matthew Bracken

  “So it was, ah…racially polarized?” asked Carson.

  “Extremely. Everything was black and white when they came marching through Baltimore. Blacks marching, and whites hiding. I never saw anything like it in my life. Well, not until Memphis, but that was after the earthquakes.”

  Carson asked, “How far is it from Washington to Philly? Two hundred miles?”

  “That’s about right. It took two weeks for them to make it all the way, and when they arrived, the constitutional convention was just starting. Perfect timing. What a coincidence, right? It was all planned in advance, that’s obvious now. They held the convention in Philly’s new sports arena, the one that was named for a bank. I think that bank is out of business; I don’t know what they call it now. The delegates were down on the floor, and the rest of the stands were full of twenty thousand ‘spectators.’ Yelling and screaming like maniacs—and outside it was worse. They said there were over a million of the Poor People’s Party in Philly by then, coming from everywhere, not just Washington. Probably another million just from the Philadelphia area. They were banging on buckets and pans, turning over cars, barricading streets and smashing store windows. They kept interviewing the rabble-rousers on TV—it was like pouring gasoline on fire. ‘No Justice, No Peace,’ that’s all you heard. That was one of the big mantras. They called the looting ‘street reparations.’ They said if they didn’t get the economic justice amendment, they’d burn the city down. It looked like they would, too. Every street in downtown Philly looked like Times Square on New Year’s Eve, that’s how crowded it was.”

  “Jeez, that had to be pretty rough, with that many people packed into downtown,” said Carson. “There couldn’t have been enough public bathrooms.”

  “Almost every store and restaurant was broken open. Needing to use the restrooms was always a good excuse to force their way in. That, and needing food and drinking water. And after that, everything was looted.”

  “And the police didn’t stop it?”

  “They couldn’t stop it. How could they?” asked Doug. “The police just stayed back on the edges and tried to herd them. Even that didn’t work. A mob that big makes its own rules.”

  “Like a human tidal wave.”

  “Exactly. A human tsunami. So, with that mega-mob outside the arena, you can guess what kinds of radicals were being let in to fill the twenty thousand seats. The real cream of the crop. It was a total farce. That’s when they started to call it the ‘kangaroo convention’ on talk radio. That was back when we still had AM talk radio.”

  Carson asked, “What happened to talk radio?”

  “Two things. First, a couple of years ago Congress passed the so-called ‘fairness’ laws. That meant that every point of view on a radio station had to be balanced by another radio host or by other callers from the other side. It got incredibly complicated. They literally had to count how many minutes were said for this and for that on every subject. Trying to keep up with the fairness laws made talk radio a money loser, so most stations went to sports or music. Then Congress passed a law against ‘hate speech on the public airwaves.’ Anybody could take a radio station to court for just about anything that they claimed was hate speech. They’d cherry-pick a left-wing judge and jury, and it was a slam-dunk every time. After a few million-dollar judgments, the last talk radio stations threw in the towel. Now radio is practically all music and sports, with happy talk in between government PSAs—public service announcements.”

  “This must really be up your alley, if you were majoring in communications.”

  “Yeah, I picked a great time to choose that career path, huh? Now all we get on television and the radio is government propaganda.”

  “I’ve heard it,” said Carson. “We could get Nashville radio at Zack’s house at night. So, you were up to the start of the convention.”

  “Right. So to start it off, the Aztlan Coalition said they wouldn’t vote for any other amendments unless they got their regional autonomy deal first. That was the Southwestern Justice and Compensation Amendment. That was the first amendment they voted on, and it passed on a voice vote. Next, it was reparations for slavery. Five hundred thousand New Dollars for every African-American man, woman and child. Right after that, it was reparations for ‘survivors of the Native American genocide.’ Another half million for everybody with Indian blood.”

  “How was that paid?” asked Carson in astonishment. “Where did the money for all of that come from?”

  “Didn’t matter,” Doug replied. “It was just instant money from the Treasury…or the Federal Reserve. What’s the difference? Ten trillion brand new blue bucks, right out of thin air. The checks came in the mail, or the money was just direct-deposited straight into their bank accounts. It was all just electronic digits, but it was real money just the same. It was just as spendable as any other money.”

  “And that brought on the hyperinflation?”

  “Among other things, like fraud on a scale never seen before in human history. People were collecting reparation payments right and left under false identities. I think there were about a million double-dippers who claimed they were black and Indian…but it didn’t matter. Congress said that the reparations money would stimulate the economy. It would ‘prime the pump and even the playing field’ at the same time. It was ‘the mother of all stimulus packages.’ That was another of those clichés you heard all the time. The convention was already way out of control by the time they passed reparations for slavery and the Indians.

  “Next came the Freedom from Gun Violence Amendment, and that’s when the Second Amendment was annulled. So you see, we didn’t want any of it. Not regular Americans. We didn’t ever vote for it; it was all done at the con-con by mob rule. It was a complete circus by then—the kangaroo convention. But it didn’t matter what average Americans thought, the amendments all became law. They became the new constitution. When the Second Amendment was repealed, the delegates in the arena had a mass orgasm. We watched it all on TV. It was surreal, like a bad dream you get after food poisoning.”

  Carson asked, “What did the gun amendment ban?”

  “Just about every legal firearm that was left. After the Washington Stadium Massacre, the semi-auto rifles were already outlawed. The ones they called assault weapons.”

  “I remember that,” said Carson. “I was here for that one.”

  “Well under the Freedom from Gun Violence Amendment, there are no more privately owned handguns, none. Um, except for the police. The police and the military. And no pump or semi-auto shotguns. Only single shot and double-barreled shotguns—and you need to get a federal license to keep one in your house. Oh, and you have to take a federal firearms safety course and pass a background check to get your license. And if they don’t like your background—meaning your politics—no license.”

  “Gun control was never about safety: it was just about taking power away from ordinary Americans,” said Carson. “It’s to make it safe for the police, in a police state.”

  “Exactly. And that wasn’t all,” continued Doug. “No rifle scopes, only assassins need them, right? No rifles bigger than thirty caliber, period. And all of the bolt- and lever-action rifles have to be licensed and registered, just like the shotguns. Everything that’s registered has to be kept in officially approved gun safes, and they’re subject to inspection at any time. They even have to be kept disassembled, with the bolts stored separately in another room. And God help you if they come in to inspect and they’re not ‘properly stored’ according to the law. That was another part of the amendment: if you manage to get a gun license, you agree to random ‘safety inspections’.”

  “What about ammunition?”

  “You have to fill out about a yard of paperwork and get police approval to buy a box of hunting ammunition, and then it’s taxed at around 500 percent. And you have to turn in your fired brass before you can buy more ammo. Oh, and forget about reloading—that’s illegal. You can’t even own gunpowder—that’s ‘bomb-m
aking material’ now.”

  “And this was all in the gun amendment?” asked Carson.

  “Hell, yes. I think the FFGVA is something like thirty pages long.”

  “Damn—the whole Bill of Rights was only a couple hundred words.”

  “I hear you. It took the Founding Fathers four months to write the original constitution. That was in the summer in 1787. Some of the greatest minds in history. The new constitution is about fifty times longer, and they cranked it out in a week. Of course, they shortened it here and there. Like by cutting out most of the Bill of Rights.”

  “And American shooters just went along with it?” Carson asked with a look of incredulity.

  “No, not most of them. I mean…oh hell, I don’t know. I didn’t believe any of the polls I read on it. But you’d be amazed by the number of so-called hunters and sportsmen they found to say it was all actually quite reasonable. They were on TV all the time, telling shooters to be reason-able and comply with the new laws. They could still go hunting, and a bit of inconvenience was a small price to pay for public safety.”

  “They can always find sellouts and traitors.”

  “Yessir they can,” Doug agreed. “Jamal Tambor was all about reasonable gun laws, until the guns were all gone. But any way you cut it, the Second Amendment was finished, dead and buried after the constitutional convention.”

  Carson sighed, and slowly shook his head. “The end of two centuries of American gun rights.”

  “Yep, the end.” Doug smiled, and patted the lower receiver of the AR-15 carbine lying across the table. “Legally, anyway. That is, if you consider anything that came out of that abortion that was born in Philadelphia to be legal.”

  “I take it you don’t.”

  “Nope, I don’t, not at all. But the con-con didn’t end with the gun amendment. The economic amendment was the last one. That was on the final day of the convention. It was a rubber stamp, another voice vote. By then the con-con was like a religious revival meeting, so of course the EJDA passed. That’s what they call the Economic Justice and Democracy Amendment, the EJDA. It was another mass orgasm in the Philly sports arena. We were in shock by then, watching it on television at home. It all happened so fast! Only a few months before the con-con, everybody thought the Poor People’s Party was a joke. We thought the constitutional convention would never happen, and even if it did, it wouldn’t really count somehow. But it did, and nobody’s laughing now.”

  “What’s this economic amendment do?” asked Carson.

  “The EJDA guarantees jobs for everybody; it guarantees a living wage, it guarantees affordable housing, free health care, free college and free child care. I’m sure I left out a few things it guarantees, but you get the idea. Almost any freebie or handout you can think of, it’s in the EJDA. Basically, it’s communism, written into the constitution. And believe it or not, they sold it as the best way to fix the economy! The new constitution was going to get us out of the depression, and make life fair for everybody at the same time. With the new constitution, the president could enact the ‘New New Deal’ and get us out of the depression. Fat chance! That’s like taking arsenic to cure a stomach ache.”

  “Back up a minute,” said Carson. “How did they ratify these amendments? What does the old constitution say? Don’t they need something like three-quarters of the state legislatures to ratify an amendment?”

  “That’s what we thought,” replied Doug, “but they used the backdoor clause. In Article Five, it says new amendments have to be approved by three-fourths of the state legislatures, ‘or by conventions in three fourths thereof.’ That was the fuzzy part, the part nobody could really explain. That became just about the most famous sentence in the old constitution. But what the hell does it mean? Who makes up these state conventions? Who nominates the delegates, what are the rules, and where do they hold them? There’s nothing in Article Five that spells it out. You’d see ten socalled constitutional experts on television, and you’d get ten different explanations. It was all up to the Congress to determine what conventions in three fourths thereof meant. At least according to the Congress it was, and Congress is three-quarters Democrat now.”

  “It sounds crazy,” said Carson disgustedly. “It sounds like something that would happen in Venezuela or Zimbabwe. Making up the rules as they go along.”

  “It was crazy, especially because the whole thing started with eight Western states that wanted a states’ rights amendment. It was mostly over coal and gas revenues, and water rights. They wanted to cut back on federal control of their resources, and then they were joined by seven Southern states. That was the original group of fifteen states. But pretty soon lots of blue states jumped on the bandwagon, when they thought they might be able to turn a convention in their direction. Nobody really thought it would actually happen, it seemed so far-fetched—but in less than a year there were thirty-four states calling for a constitutional convention. For six or seven totally different amendments, mind you.

  “Nobody saw the train wreck coming. Well, almost nobody—the radical Democrats in Congress saw it. They wanted it…they saw the potential. It was a setup, a scam from day one. A big scam to turn the country hard-core socialist in one big jump. We all know that now. But by the time we figured out what they were up to, it was too late to stop it. Congress had complete control of how to run the convention, and that meant the Democrats. The train had left the station, and it couldn’t be stopped. Then the Poor People’s Party was organized, and the next thing you know, we had Philadelphia. They held these so-called ‘state ratifying conventions’ right there in the big sports arena in Philadelphia, right after the constitutional convention. It was such a joke! That’s why we called it the kangaroo convention.”

  “And the Supreme Court didn’t stop it?”

  Doug said, “Oh, the Supreme Court—I forgot that one. There are twelve justices on the Supreme Court now. That was another amendment: twelve justices instead of nine. President Tambor nominated the three new justices as soon as the convention was over, after the amendments were passed. Congress confirmed them the same day Tambor nominated them. The old Supreme Court with nine justices was our last hope: that they’d throw the whole thing out. Just invalidate the whole thing. But they didn’t stop it. They voted five to four that the Supreme Court had no standing to overrule the convention results. The majority said that Article Five conventions are up to Congress. That was the last ruling by the nine-judge Supreme Court. Most people think the five liberals on the old court liked the new constitution better. They agreed with the new amendments, so that’s why they voted to stay out of it. Now that there are twelve justices, the liberals win everything. Three of the conservative justices resigned in protest, but that just gave Tambor three more seats to fill. Since the convention, it’s like living in Venezuela, or Russia. It’s Alice in Wonderland.”

  “What about Congress?”

  “What about Congress?” Doug asked back. “The Democrats had unbreakable majorities. The whole convention was their idea. Oh my God, the Democrats were all in heaven—and the Republicans were just as gutless as ever. The RINOs rolled over for the new constitution, most of them anyway. They never had the numbers to stop it. You know, as long as they can keep their snouts in the hog trough, that’s all they really care about. A few Republicans challenged the basic legality of the con-con, but they were shouted down and called fascists and racists, all the usual stuff. They took an unholy beating in the media. So most of them caved in, and shut up.”

  “Typical,” agreed Carson.

  “Very. It works every time with RINOs. Growl at them, call them racists or homophobes, and they’ll run for cover with their tails between their legs. They just want to stay in Congress—it’s like being royalty. I think most of the RINOs in Congress like being in the permanent minority—it’s easier. Just keep your head down, shuffle along, make your votes, and get invited to millionaire parties every night of the week.” Doug spat on the floor of the cave. “Bunch of patheti
c losers.”

  “But I take it that not all of the states accepted the amendments.”

  “You can say that again,” said Doug, laughing. “Most of the Northwest, some of the South, half of Texas…but not enough to kill the new constitution. The president, the Congress and the Supreme Court accepted the new amendments, and that’s who counts. They control most of the military, and all of the federal law enforcement agencies. And they’re in charge in Washington, D.C., so they make the rules for everybody.”

  “Only they can’t enforce it out West.”

  “Well, that’s right,” agreed Doug, “They can’t enforce it out there in the free states. Their state legislatures rejected the new constitution out-right. They said that everything that happened in Philadelphia was illegal and invalid because their so-called state delegates were stooges and imposters. So now the Northwest is using the old original constitution. They even got rid of the federal income tax, because they said it was uncon-stitutional. They say that the Sixteenth Amendment was bogus because it was passed by some kind of a fraud back in 1913. They use a 12 percent sales tax instead, and it’s the same tax for everybody. Rich, poor—everybody pays 12 percent. And they keep it in their own states—they don’t send any money to Washington.”

  “I’ll bet Washington can’t stand that,” said Carson. “Washington, D.C., I mean.”

  “Can’t stand it is right. Especially with the federal states still stuck in the depression. Yeah, the feds opened up a real can of worms with this new constitution. The states that rejected the new constitution didn’t just stop there; they started what they call the ‘rollback.’ That’s how they got rid of the federal income tax. They even got rid of New Dollars out there. Now they use gold and silver instead. They’re hard-core on the original constitution.”

  Carson was intrigued. So the Northwest was going back to the gold standard. That was how he had been doing business in the Caribbean, and he still had a few ounces hidden in his belt, and more stashed in the derelict tugboat near his wrecked catamaran. He said, “Politicians can’t just create more gold and silver out of thin air, like they do with paper and electronic money. Taking away their printing press is like cutting off their balls and putting a ring through their nose.”