The Liberty Intrigue

by Tom Grace

  “Net traffic went through the roof during your address, yet the site never crashed,” Knopper reported. “NSA has never seen anything like what these guys are doing, and they’ve still had no luck tracing the source.”

  “This latest attack is a major security breach,” the President said. “Whoever is behind these incidents has breached telecommunications and power systems, satellites, and now the US government. This cannot be a group of teenage geeks in their parents’ basement. There must be some serious money behind this effort, and with this stunt they crossed the line. I want a conference call with directors of the FBI, CIA, NSA, and the Attorney General as soon as I’m back in the White House.”

  “The AG?”

  “Federal laws must have been broken in the commission of these attacks. I want these criminals prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Set up the call.”

  “Yes, sir,” Knopper replied, before the President rang off.

  The President pocketed his cell phone and turned on the limousine’s satellite television to watch the opposition response. Senator Emory Winfield appeared on the small LCD screen, speaking from Senate chamber.

  “… honor to address the nation and offer a thoughtful response to the President’s State of the Union address. It is your good fortune that my response will be brief in the extreme,” Winfield said wryly. “In reaction to the disastrous first two years of this administration, in which the President’s party also enjoyed strong majorities in both houses of Congress, the people acted to restore the balance of power between the executive and legislative branches of government.

  “The President outlined his goals for the remainder of his first term, a list of populist and progressive giveaways that smack of election year pandering. The reality is that the President can offer the moon, but has little chance of moving any legislation through Congress. The President’s promises are empty.

  “The President complains that the conservative opposition offers no ideas or programs and is simply the party of ‘No.’ While there is no truth to the President’s first charge, the second we wear as a badge of honor. The only thing that the President’s conservative opposition lacks is the votes to overcome his veto.

  “From now until the next Congress is sworn in, and hopefully a new president, nothing will get passed and, sadly, nothing will get repealed. And anyone who tells you otherwise is not telling you the truth.

  “In closing, for those interested in a thorough and dispassionate analysis of the President’s address, I heartily recommend that you visit the website listed at the bottom the screen. As the Good Book says: know the truth and the truth will set you free. Thank you, and good night.”

  Across the bottom of the screen appeared the address:

  www.who-is-i.com.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  ON AIR

  JANUARY 26

  “From sea to shining sea, it is I, your brilliant beacon of truth in these turbulent times,” Garr Denby said over the waning chords of his opening theme song. “The Pooh-Bah of political punditry, the courageous crusader of conservatism, and the rakish rogue of the republic for which we stand.

  “I thank you all for joining me in what is the largest radio audience in the world each and every busy broadcast day. Today I have a treasure trove of material to dive into and only three hours in which to do it.

  “On a low note, our bumbling Vice President was apparently responsible for the death of a man in a hunting accident. I say apparently because the White House spin machine wound up to full speed to obfuscate this incident. The honest truth would serve the administration far better than their typical CYA effort, but that’s what we’ve come to expect from this bunch.

  “The known facts are fairly straightforward. The Vice President was hunting Canadian geese with a longtime supporter, auto union boss Frank Crusca. The two men were accompanied by the Vice President’s protective detail. They were hunting from a blind in the middle of a cornfield, on a private farm, when Crusca suffered a fatal gunshot wound to the chest and was pronounced dead at the scene. The police investigating the incident have released no specifics on the shooting.

  “The conspiracy theorists are all working themselves up into a lather over this, but if and only if a court of law decides otherwise, I’m chalking this up as nothing more than a tragic accident. The Vice President appeared visibly distracted during the State of the Union address last night, so much so that I think he was the only person in the room who didn’t notice his boss’s erratic performance.

  “I take no pleasure from this tragic incident and will not make light of it. My prayers go out to the Crusca family and to the Vice President.

  “Next topic, the President’s State of the Union address. For years, we have been told of the President’s golden gift of elocution, that he was the greatest orator since Cicero. All I need to say about last night is that the delivery matched the content.

  “What I have learned from my sources in Washington is that the wizards behind Who Is I not only treated the American people to the same real-time fact-checking that they delivered during the Republican debates in Iowa, they were kind enough to let the President see it as well.

  “One of the President’s beloved teleprompters apparently went rogue on him and switched out his speech with the straight feed from Who Is I. If you were wondering why the President seemed to favor the left side of our television screens last night, the teleprompter on the other side was refuting nearly everything he said, as he said it.

  “For those of you who want to see a side-by-side comparison of what the President said and an unbiased, objective analysis of the speech coupled with the in-depth research supporting the facts, I wholeheartedly encourage you to visit Who Is I. We’ve posted the link on our website, and I believe this is the first time in the history of this program that we’ve mentioned a website without crashing it.

  “I’ve said it before many times—if you want to know who the left fears, just look at who they’re demonizing. Not a crumb of complaint out of them after the Iowa debate, in fact the mainstream media’s opinion of Who Is I at that point was largely favorable. But these same news outlets and the left’s kook bloggers are in full-blown apoplexy over the Who Is I veracious dissection of the President’s State of the Union address. Not one of them has disputed the facts, because they can’t. Instead, they are ripping into the anonymity of the people running the site. They are trying to deflect our attention away from the facts by stirring up a controversy about personality.

  “When it comes to facts, personality is irrelevant. As long as the message is true, the personality and even the identity of the messenger is beside the point. Truth is truth.

  “Of course, this is the kind of thing that gets you into trouble with the relativists. These modern thinkers like to tell us that there are many truths, and each truth is equally valid and there are no absolute truths. This nuanced and enlightened approach is absolute, unadulterated hogwash!

  “The declaration that there are no absolute truths is itself a contradiction, the kind of flawed logic a first-year philosophy student should be able to sniff out in a second. That’s assuming, of course, that these first-years aren’t at some elitist university filled with egghead intellectual professors who’ve never worked a day in the real world because it’s beneath them and their utopian socialist ideals.

  “If there are no absolute truths, then the statement that there are no absolute truths must be false; otherwise it would be an absolute truth that, per their premise, cannot exist. Truth is truth, and the facts are the facts. The refreshing thing about Who Is I is that the folks behind it are providing the unvarnished truth. If a politician makes what appears to be a statement of fact, it measures that statement against the truth and lets the chips fall where they may.

  “The conspiracy theorists on the left attempting to assassinate the character of the people behind this incredible expression of the right to free speech have totally missed the point. The clearest analogy I
can think of is in the UK in the 1960s. The state controlled all broadcast media through the BBC, and British rock music, which was everywhere in the US, could hardly be heard in its own homeland. The entrepreneurial, free market answer to this iron-fisted, socialist government restriction was to broadcast rock music from ships just outside England’s territorial waters. Who Is I is the political equivalent of pirate radio in 1960s England.

  “For those of you new to the program, I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of any political party. I am a conservative, and it is my conservative philosophy that forms the foundational bedrock of my political viewpoint. Conservatism is based on the premise that each person is a unique individual and that each, by virtue of his or her existence, possesses certain innate rights.

  “Parties may adopt political philosophies, but the primary purpose of a political party is the acquisition of power for use in forwarding its agenda. I am not interested in acquiring political power, but I have an acute interest in the motivations and intentions of those who seek to govern.

  “Now, I’m running a bit long in this segment, so we have to take a break and do more to stimulate the economy over the next few minutes than our feckless president has done in the past three years. Back before you know it.”

  The bumper music poured from the studio speakers as stations airing the program cut away for commercials. Denby glanced at the digital clock that counted down the seconds remaining in the break, and then pulled together his notes for the next segment.

  “The guest is holding on line one,” Denby’s producer announced from the control room.

  “Thanks,” Denby replied.

  Beside Denby’s notes lay an advanced reading copy of The Dutannuru Miracle. Post-it notes sprouted between the pages, thickening the unbound side. Denby pressed line one and took the call off-air.

  “Ross, how the hell are you?”

  “Beat, but I can’t complain. The book tour is going very well.”

  “I’ll say. Your book is dominating the bestseller lists, but we’ll get into that shortly. Don’t want to waste any good material, and there’s nothing worse than dead air.”

  “I’m of Irish descent,” Egan replied. “Once I get talking, the difficulty is shutting me up.”

  “Then you and I are twin sons of different mothers,” Denby said with a laugh. “Hang on—we’re coming back from commercial.”

  Egan heard a click on the line as his call was linked to the on-air feed. Denby announced his return to his listeners over the sounds of Booker T and the MGs classic “Green Onions.”

  “… unlike most radio talk shows, I rarely have guests on this program. And for good reason—the content of this show is rooted in things that I want to talk about. That said, there are occasions when I invite a guest to join me, and that’s because I think both you, the listening audience, and I will benefit from the exchange. Today is one of those rare occasions.

  “On the line with me today is Ross Egan, a brilliant engineer from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula who ran power plants in Africa and earned the Nobel Peace Prize for having actually done something that stopped what promised to be a horrifically bloody war. Ross, welcome to the program.”

  “Thanks, Garr,” Egan replied. “I’m a longtime listener, first-time guest.”

  Denby laughed. “How’d you listen to me in Dutannuru?”

  “Podcasts. My dad bought me a subscription to your website years ago and he renews it as my annual Christmas present.”

  “So I’m the gift that keeps on giving,” Denby joked. “Ross, I want to start by thanking you for two things. First, you won the Nobel Peace Prize—so I have to thank you for restoring some sanity to a selection process that in recent years has defied logic.”

  “I was as surprised as anyone when they announced that President Mensah and I had won,” Egan admitted.

  “It was shocking. I mean, you two weren’t running a terrorist organization. You weren’t promoting an extreme environmental agenda based on some really bad science and outright lies. And you didn’t win solely on the hope that you might actually do something for peace sometime in the future. What you did actually resulted in, dare I say it—peace.”

  “Those are the exceptions rather than the norm. I’m humbled to be part of a group that includes Mother Teresa and the Dalai Lama. Why else do you want to thank me?”

  “For your book, The Dutannuru Miracle. Being an influential member of the media, I received an advance copy months before it was published and I wore the book out. For those of you watching on the webcam, I’m going to show you what’s left of this book.”

  Denby held up the softcover copy of Egan’s book and the cover slipped off.

  “I devoured this book like nothing I’ve read since the Federalist Papers. I wore out a Hi-Liter and burned through two pads of Post-it notes tagging important statements and ideas. I could go on and on about the nuggets of pure truth I found in these pages, but what you and President Mensah did in Dutannuru proved something that I have always believed.”

  “And what’s that?” Egan asked.

  “There is nothing special about the United States that made it the greatest nation on Earth. And what I mean by that is, there is nothing unique about our geography or natural resources that allowed this nation to prosper like no other in the history of human civilization. A version of American exceptionalism is reproducible anywhere, and the success Dutannuru has enjoyed since its birth just affirms my belief that the human spirit, unfettered by tyranny, will flourish.”

  “Dutannuru more than proves the point, Garr,” Egan agreed. “When the United States emerged as a new nation, it was rich in natural resources, had ample open land, vast oceans to protect it from attack, and the populated areas of the thirteen states were relatively undamaged by the Revolutionary War. Conditions were ideal for the sort of experiment in republican democracy proposed by the Founders. Dutannuru, by comparison, had more in common with Germany or Japan following the Second World War. Infrastructure in the cities was largely destroyed. Thousands of people were homeless, and we had a flood of refugees from Safo before the border closed. The economy was nonexistent, and much of the equipment in the power plants and factories was either looted or wrecked. Dutannuru’s military was a ragtag group of citizen-soldiers with little in the way of equipment or munitions. Couple that with the fact that this tiny new nation shared a long border with a dangerous enemy and the prospects for Dutannuru’s immediate survival were far worse than those of the newly formed United States. On its first day as a nation, Dutannuru ranked well below Haiti in GDP, and even Zimbabwe’s pathetic economy was enviable in comparison.”

  Denby interjected, “There’s a line you use in the book: ‘Dutannuru was a Stone Age nation that came into existence at the start of the new millennium in a technologically advanced world.’”

  “The only thing Dutannuru had going for it was the fact that our country was so devastated that even Safo thought the effort to conquer it was more trouble than it was worth,” Egan asserted.

  “But that changed last January,” Denby offered.

  “Yes. Dutannuru’s progress since it sprang from the rubble has been, as the title of our book implies, miraculous. It was the classic tale of the grasshopper and the ants writ large, with Cudjoe in the role of the grasshopper.”

  “And the people of Dutannuru were the ants.”

  “Right. The people of Dutannuru under President Mensah’s leadership established a nation governed by the rule of law and served by a government with constitutionally limited powers. Entrepreneurship flourished in this environment, driving up demand for foreign goods and services to support the growing domestic economy. Unlike many of our neighbors, contracts mean something in Dutannuru. Payment of one’s obligations is a matter of honor.”

  “So while the people of Dutannuru are making lemonade out of the lemons left to them after the civil war, Cudjoe and his band of thugs are running Safo like a criminal enterprise for their personal benefit,”
observed Denby.

  “Despot is too kind a description for Kwame Cudjoe,” Egan said bitterly. “He brought utter ruin on Safo, bankrupting a nation blessed with incredible geography and abundant natural resources. His government didn’t spend a dime on infrastructure, and the loss of a critical hydroelectric plant meant they couldn’t even keep the lights on.”

  “So with the chill of an economic winter in the air,” Denby said, “Cudjoe the grasshopper looked across the river and saw the ants of Dutannuru rich with the abundant fruits of their labor. Like a good socialist, he decided a little wealth redistribution was in order.”

  “As Thatcher said, ‘The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money,’” replied Egan. “And from ancient times right up to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the pages of history are filled with stories of tyrants waging war to replenish an empty treasury. It’s nothing more than armed robbery on a national scale.”

  “You touched on this point a moment ago,” Denby continued, “but you don’t consider what happened that night at the Umoja Power Plant a miracle. It seems to me like the stuff of a great Hollywood movie.”

  “I can’t wait to see who they cast as me,” Egan laughed. “Honestly, no one in Dutannuru considers the events of that night miraculous, any more than people here consider the peaceful end of the Cuban Missile Crisis a miracle. I’ll admit it was certainly a relief and the answer to many fervent prayers, but Cudjoe’s death was simply the end of a national nightmare. The real miracle is liberty.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA

  FEBRUARY 7

  Daniel Page stood in the center of a windowless room on the upper floor of a ten-story office tower. The new glass and steel building was one of many dotting the Rosslyn-Ballston business corridor. Its sole tenant was the Committee to Re-elect the President.

  Page intently studied a cluster of nine LCD screens that formed a single large display. Feeds from the major twenty-four-hour cable news networks appeared in windows located in the upper corners of the wall screen, floating above a graphic map of the continental United States. Hawaii and a detached, out-of-scale Alaska floated off the California coast.