But a return of electric power and prosperity would change that. For many people, it would be all too easy to slide back down into the modern age. They’d buy one of those nice, new electric cars that gave 300 miles on a full battery and recharged in 15 minutes. That would free them from their town, their local merchants, and their neighbors. Then, they’d get a big TV and DVD player, so instead of spending their evenings on the front porch with family and friends they could solo in whatever imaginary world promised the most sensual pleasure. Or they could lose themselves on the internet, opening up to utter strangers about matters they wouldn’t feel comfortable sharing with their priest. That would be the natural trend of things, and if the Retro folks wanted to stop it, they’d have to stop it before it got started.
Fortunately, they knew it. Even while the wars were still underway, they had been preparing for it. It was no secret that Fundy would begin producing power early in 2039. And they had an idea about how to kill Faust.
As the roads began to dry out, in that Spring of 2039, they again bore citizens carrying petitions. The return of real democracy meant that when our people wanted to do something, they could. The proposed new law was simple and clear: “Resolved, that it shall be unlawful in the Northern Confederation to use any technology not in common usage in the year 1930.”
That meant radio was legal, but not television. Electric cars and trucks were all right, but only with lead-acid batteries and that made them short range forms of transportation. The price of oil still made gas cars unaffordable. No computers, DVDs, Xerox machines, cell phones, sat phones, none of that witches’ brew of technologies that had so undermined the old ways of living. An exception was made for the armed forces and for medical technologies, but nothing else.
The opposition was considerable. A few folks argued we should let anyone do whatever they wanted: liberty confused with license. Memories of the American republic and its final decadence were too strong for that to go very far. Most opponents put forward a different case: that we had learned our lessons and could now be trusted to use modern technologies in the right ways. We could produce decent, uplifting television, television that would bring high culture to average people. We could own cars, but leave them in the garage when we didn’t really need them, still walking to local stores and taking the train on longer trips. We could use computers, but understand that the connections we made through them were to a virtual reality, inferior to the reality that awaited beyond the front door. The case seemed reasonable, practical, and moderate. At least, it did for those without much understanding of human nature.
I wasn’t sure where I stood. Experience in war leaves a pretty good grasp of human nature, and I could not share the optimism of those who believed we could surround ourselves with temptations and not yield to them. On the other hand, I wasn’t sure I liked government dictating what technologies I could own or use. Here too human nature came into play: I foresaw an enormous black market, an underground of people who defied the law and owned TVs and computers or souped-up their cars with better batteries. And what then? Would we have Northern Confederation police in black ninja suits and body armor breaking down doors in the middle of the night to seize forbidden devices and arrest people for possessing them? That wasn’t the kind of country I fought to create.
There were easily enough Retro people in the N.C. to get the signatures and put the issue on a ballot. That was how our political system was intended to work. It required only a demonstration that a matter was serious, then it put it before the people to decide.
On May 15th, the power began flowing from the Bay of Fundy, just a few thousand kilowatts at first. But more would follow.
On May 18th, the Board of Elections ratified the petitions and set the vote for August 15th. The first political crisis of the Confederation was the oldest a people ever faced, in its most literal form. We had power; what would we choose to do with it?
Through June and July, the campaign grew steadily more intense. Tempers sometimes flared, especially when families were divided over the issue. That happened a lot, because older folks, those who remembered the American past before the final, worst days, tended to favor television and cars. Their children were more radical. They inclined toward Retroculture, especially the Victorian period. It wasn’t uncommon to see families on an outing where the old folks were dressed in jeans and tee-shirts while their kids were all in Victorian clothes, carrying a Victrola with a big horn on it and a wicker picnic basket filled with cold lobster and champagne. Old things were becoming new again.
I was buried in my work to the point where I didn’t pay the business much mind. But when the Retro folks announced a rally and torchlight parade in Augusta on July 22, I noticed that Bill Kraft would be the speaker. Knowing of his earlier doubts, I decided to see how he had resolved them. That might give me a clue about how to resolve mine.
The rally began at 8 PM on the State House lawn. Thousands of people came, some from as far away as Vermont. Most were in Victorian dress, although some were in clothes from almost every period from colonial up through the 1950s. The cut-off point for Retroculture was 1959: anything before that year was acceptable. After that came the ‘60s and cultural Marxism.
The program began with the hymn the Retroculture movement had adopted as its anthem, “Turn back, O man, forswear thy foolish ways. Old now is earth, and none may count her days. Yet thou, her child, whose head is crowned with flame, Still wilt not hear thine inner God proclaim, Turn back, O man, forswear thy foolish ways.” Then came a succession of speakers, leaders of the Retroculture Movement and organizers of the vote. Most were women, many the same women who had pushed through the decision to go to war in Azania. One of them, Mrs. William P. Hamilton of Gilman's Corner, New Hampshire, told the crowd, “In Azania, we saw the terrible plight into which the modern age led women. It is therefore right and proper that women should lead this nation back, away from that poisonous age to a better time when women and men both knew and did their duties.”
Governor Kraft was the keynote. By the time he mounted the bunting-draped platform, the sun was gone from the sky and the torches were lit. The sea of flames, stretching well on beyond the lawn down into the principal streets of the town might have been an omen. Just how deeply would this law divide us if it passed? And if it didn’t pass, how would the Retro folks react? The speeches suggested they weren't about to return to life splattered across a video screen like a bug on a windshield. The Confederacy had fought its own civil war. Would we?
The governor’s silence in the campaign had surprised many of the Retroculture people, since he had been one of them almost since the movement began. Or perhaps even before; I don’t think Bill Kraft ever belonged to the modern age. Now, they were eager with anticipation, certain he had waited until the last to give his advocacy the greatest possible impact. They knew the public was closely divided, and they doubted not that Bill’s immense prestige would put them over the top.
The governor’s vast bulk towered over the puny podium, and with a final fanfare from the brass band the crowd grew quiet. There was no microphone; Retro politicians were expected to have a voice. Bill never lacked one. He could have shouted down a convention of moose. No one would miss his words that evening, nor forget them.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began. “It is a measure of how far we have come that I can address a gathering of fellow citizens as ladies and gentlemen, and not lie. Thanks to you and to the spirit of Retroculture, of recovering our past, civilization has replaced barbarism faster than barbarism previously displaced civilization.
“I speak this evening as one of you. I have been Retro since long before the term was coined or a movement imagined. From my earliest childhood I loved the old and passing and detested the new and modern things. Before I was ten, I mourned the passing of the steam engine and the trolley car. I loved the town and loathed the suburb. I answered rock and roll with Strauss waltzes played on my wind-up gramophone. In my teens, for a whole year I
gave up electricity, lighting my room with kerosene lamps and washing each morning from a bowl and pitcher.
“The culture of late 20th and early 21st centuries America was a landfill of lies. But the greatest lie of all, the foundational lie, was the lie that said, ‘You can’t go back. You can do anything you can imagine, but not the things you already have done!’ It was nonsense. What we did once we can do again. But it was repeated so often that, like most of the other lies, almost everyone believed it. Those of us who did not were seen first as cranks, then as monsters.
“But the truth will out, and it has. We can go back. Of course, we do not recapture the past exactly, nor do we seek to. But we can recover its essence, its best, its foundation and framework. And much of its charm and grace and beauty also. We cannot be our grandparents. But we can live very much as our grandparents did by honoring them and emulating them and learning from them. That we have done, all of us gathered here tonight.
“This movement, Retroculture, embodies my most daring hopes and boldest dreams. Throughout the hideous final years of the American republic, I prayed such a turning would take place, impossible as it seemed. As we cut our chains to that republic’s corpse, I began to think this day might come. Now it has. In it, in the movement to reconnect with our own past, lies our best chance of recovering civilization and fortifying it so strongly no future savagery dares approach its walls.
“It is from that perspective that I tell you tonight that I am unalterably opposed to this ballot measure.”
The crowd had been getting what it expected and swaying along happily with the speaker. Now, it thought it had misheard something. It was suddenly edgy, focused, intent.
“You have heard me correctly,” Bill continued. “I am as opposed to this measure as to anything I ever fought against in my life. I am opposed to it so strongly that if it passes, I will retire at once from this office and from all public life.”
That brought gasps and shouts of “No!”
“I am opposed not to the end, but to the means. I realize as well as anyone the dangers inherent in video screen technologies and in automobiles. I do not doubt that, if they proliferate in the Northern Confederation, they will set us on a course not unlike that of America in its final decades. They must be stopped. But not this way.
“Cultural degradation and decay are not the only diseases once rampant in America that still could sicken us. Another is loss of freedom to an intrusive, meddling, evil-stepmother state. Have we so quickly forgotten that by the 1990s, the federal government in Washington told you what kind of toilet and shower head you had to have in your own house? If this measure were to pass, it would mandate that the government of the Northern Confederation become that kind of government: overweening, ever-present, a daily, oppressive force in the life of the citizen. I won’t stand for it.
“There is another way, and a far better one. It is a way taken by our forefathers, the people we seek to learn from and emulate. In their hands, it had great power without coercion by the state. I am speaking of the pledge.
“The Victorians battled with success against some of the most powerful demons lodged in human nature, including the demon of habitual drunkenness, with the pledge. We can fight these technological demons with the same weapon, and defeat them. Instead of passing a law and setting the state on your neighbor like a dog, I am asking you tonight to go to your neighbor yourself. Ask him to pledge that he will join you in refusing to own or use a computer, a cell phone, a television, or an automobile capable of traveling more than 25 miles. Ask him to join you in making life real and local.
“You have a strong base from which to build. You have us, every practitioner of Retroculture in the land. You have everyone who signed your petitions.
“And you have me. While I must oppose to the utmost of my strength this misconceived attempt to inflate the power of the state, I will eagerly serve a drive to convince our fellow citizens to take the pledge. I will begin now, by taking that pledge myself.”
With that, Bill pulled a pledge card from his coat pocket, drew his fountain pen from another and signed.
“As we among all people know, words precede action, they do not substitute for it. So I will sign something else this night as well.”
At these words, Bill’s immaculate 1948 Buick Roadmaster, long his proudest possession, drove slowly across the lawn from somewhere behind the speakers’ platform.
It stopped, and the driver mounted the stage.
“Let me introduce Mr. Josef Licht, of Portland. As some of you undoubtedly know, Mr. Licht is in the import/export business. I will now sign over to him the title to my Buick. It will be exported to the Confederacy for sale, where I have no doubt it will secure a good price.”
Mr. Licht did a little dance and said, “You should see what price a car like this will get down south. It would make me a rich man, if I weren’t a rich man already.”
“I have instructed Mr. Licht to put all my profit from the sale into a fund to promote the pledge,” the governor continued.
“I know many of you are disappointed. You will still have the opportunity to vote for the ban, of course. I could not remove it from the ballot if I wanted to, and I do not want to. That is also part of the meaning of liberty. But I urge you to vote against it, as I will vote against it, remembering that where moral choice is impossible, there can be no virtue. Then, let us join our efforts to convince our fellow citizens to do by choice what I would not have the state compel them to do: renounce these infernal devices.”
The audience was too much in shock to react as Bill left the stage. Some understood that, in the face of the governor’s opposition, their initiative was now unlikely to pass. Others saw a yawning fissure in the Retroculture movement and wondered if it would survive. Only a few grasped the real picture: Bill Kraft had saved them from making an immense strategic mistake, a blunder which would have forced every citizen to choose between Retroculture and liberty, between our past and our future.
He had also set two precedents that have since become sacred in this country. The first was that our lives would not be politicized. Because government touches us seldom, and then lightly, beyond demands war may temporarily impose, politics doesn’t matter much. We elect our officials, and more importantly, we vote directly on any major matter of state in referenda. But custom now limits what even a referendum may impose. Any proposed law that goes beyond those limits, that threatens government interference in average people’s daily lives, is seen as illegitimate and has no chance of passage.
Indeed, human nature being what it is, cranks still come up with such proposals from time to time, but usually fail to gather even the few signatures needed to put them on a ballot. They are rightly seen as the fruit of diseased brains.
The second nation-shaping precedent Governor Kraft set that dramatic evening was the pledge. At first, it did not seem like much, merely a clever device to sidestep a political problem. But it turned out to be much more. The pledge revived and made part of our culture the very essence of liberty: voluntary self-discipline.
As the American republic spun into the ground toward the end of the 20th century, “freedom” came to mean simply doing whatever you want. “If it feels good, do it,” was what the vanguard of the cultural proletariat said in the 1960s. But that was license, not liberty, and no society could long sustain it or survive it.
As the American Founding Fathers knew and incessantly preached, liberty really meant something else: substituting self-discipline for the imposed discipline of the state. They called that self-discipline “virtue.” Through virtue, men would do the right thing even though the state would allow them to do wrong, up to a point, anyway. Of course, in the late 18th century, Americans understood the difference between right and wrong. Even those who were not practicing Jews or Christians respected the Ten Commandments.
The pledge became the tool with which the Northern Confederation recreated right and wrong. When people took a pledge, they accepted the
action to which they pledged themselves as defining right conduct. Because pledges were public, backsliders were known. Social pressure came to provide the sanctions the state would not, and far more effectively, too. Those who pledged and faltered became objects of scorn and shame, cut off from their neighbors, their community, even their families. As it must, virtue had an edge to it.
As Bill left the platform that evening, I worked my way through the crowd to him and walked him home. I could read him pretty well after all we’d been through, and I knew it had cost him some to say what he did.
“I know it hurt to give up your Buick,” I said by way of a Marine’s clumsy consolation.
“It did.”
“How do you think people will respond?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’ve taken a risk.”
“I have.”
We walked on in silence. I remembered a Viking friend’s description of an Icelandic salon. Everyone sits around looking at the table; at fifteen-minute intervals, someone says, “Ja, ja.”
As we neared the governor’s house, Bill turned to me, very intent yet also somehow far away. “John, the war was our nation’s course of instruction. It taught us life’s most important lesson: what is real and what is not. Now, in what I proposed tonight, we face our final exam. Have we grasped reality firmly enough that we can reject both illusions that drove America to suicide, the illusion of beneficent government power and the illusion that decadence can be indulged? If we fail the exam, we will fail as a nation, and swiftly too, I think. Never have we, have I, taken a greater risk than this. Yet there is no other way.”
More than once during the wars I envied Bill his chateau campaigning. This night I realized chateaux can be cold and lonely places. At his gate, we parted with a nod. That’s Maine for I think I understand.
Victoria: A Novel of 4th Generation War Page 47