American Stalin — ‘Joe Steele’ in the Age of Obama and Trump

I’ve been a fan of Harry Turtledove’s writing ever since I picked up a copy of Great War: American Front back in 2009. Turtledove has the ability to weave the stories of numerous ordinary people together to make one large patchwork fabric of an impressive, epic tale of a history that might have been. This is the case with his 2015 novel, Joe Steele, which has a relevant message for our time in the age of Obama and Trump.

President Steele immediately begins a series of economic reforms under the first Four Year Plan—an allusion to Stalin’s Five Year Plan but tailored to the President’s term in office—with makes FDR’s New Deal look like a children’s game. The federal government begins confiscating property under eminent domain for large-scale collective farming. The Supreme Court justices who rule the new policies unconstitutional suddenly find themselves in front of a military tribunal for a show trial, and promptly sentenced to death by firing squad. Joe Steele then moves on to purge the military establishment and key political opposition (as well as purging loyal followers who pose a future potential threat to the regime).

For starters, Turtledove proves the extent of his research and his expertise in the field of U.S. history by using real case law from the Civil War that allows the federal government to try civilians by military tribunal rather than by jury trial. And while Americans may sleep well today believing themselves safe from labor camps, current federal documents tell a different story.

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The Hot War: Bombs Away

Published by OMNI

1951: The Cold War has just gone hot!

Harry Turtledove doesn’t identify as an alternate history writer, but rather as “a historian who writes science fiction.” Bombs Away isn’t quite what most readers would think of as science fiction, but this alternate history novel does deal a lot with the science of nuclear weapons, fallout, and contamination. Turtledove delivers another masterfully crafted novel that provides a frighteningly plausible picture of World War III, or when the Cold War turned Hot.

The novel begins in the early winter of 1950 in North Korea...  Veterans of the war against Germany and Japan will be recalled to service; Germans who fought for Hitler will be called to their county’s “emergency militia”... (Read more)

American Stalin — ‘Joe Steele’ book review

I’ve been a fan of Harry Turtledove’s writing ever since I picked up a copy of Great War: American Front back in 2009. Turtledove has the ability to weave the stories of numerous ordinary people together to make one large patchwork fabric of an impressive, epic tale.  Such is the case with his 2015 novel, Joe Steele.

Joe Steele is based on a short story of the same name written in 2003, and expanded in 2014 to be a long, standalone novel.  In this novel, the man who would become Stalin is an American, a Democrat congressman from California rather than a Georgian-born Communist Party bureaucrat in Russia.  Born and raised among farm laborers in Fresno, Joe Steele is a dedicated socialist and is militantly pro-labor.

The story follows the Sullivan Brothers, reporters both, over a twenty year period.  One will unwillingly become a propagandist for the regime while the other is deported to a labor camp and must later fight on the front lines to atone for his political crimes.  Our story begins at the height of the Great Depression.

When the nominating process at the 1932 Democratic National Convention comes to complete gridlock between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joe Steele, no one knows who will challenge Herbert Hoover for the Presidency.  The sudden death of FDR in a house fire leaves Joe Steele the uncontested nominee and the eventual landslide victor over Hoover.

President Steele immediately begins a series of economic reforms under the first Four Year Plan—an allusion to Stalin’s Five Year Plan but tailored to the President’s term in office—with makes FDR’s New Deal look like a children’s game.  The federal government begins confiscating property under eminent domain for large-scale collective farming.  The Supreme Court justices who rule the new policies unconstitutional suddenly find themselves in front of a military tribunal for a show trial, and promptly sentenced to death by firing squad.  Joe Steele then moves on to purge the military establishment and key political opposition (as well as purging loyal followers who pose a future potential threat to the regime).

J. Edgar Hoover

J. Edgar Hoover also plays a prominent role in the novel.  Joe Steele’s second term is when the Government Bureau of Investigation—an alternate-history play on the FBI but resembling Stalin’s NKVD and later KGB—sets up a system of labor camps in North Dakota, Colorado, and New Mexico where political prisoners work themselves to death for “political reform.”  These are an obvious take on the true-history Gulag concentration camps in the Soviet Union.

This novel shows America slogging through the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War much the way it did in true-history, but with the frightening tones of an endless Executive dictatorship, one-party rule, and a police state.  It’s frightening to watch Norman Rockwell’s America descend into a totalitarian state.  While certain true-history events are changed—for instance, a ‘Japanese War’ kicking off the Cold War instead of the Korean War, or Albert Einstein refusing to design an atom bomb for Joe Steele—much of the novel is grounded in truth.

For starters, Turtledove proves his expertise in the field of U.S. history by using real case law from the Civil War that allows the federal government to try civilians by military tribunal rather than by jury trial.  And while Americans may sleep well today believing themselves safe from labor camps, current federal documents tell a different story.

President Obama signed a series of Executive Orders that essentially allow the federal government to create an America similar to the version in Joe Steele.  Free speech is nothing but a privilege as long as Executive Order 10995 remains in effect, allowing the government to seize and control all communication media.  Natural resources and utility companies aren’t safe from seizure while Order 10997 gives the government carte blanche over all electrical power, gas petroleum, fuels, and minerals.

A maximum security FEMA camp in Wyoming

Collective farms are made possible by Order 10999, giving the government authority to take over all farms and food sources.  Order 11004 gives the Housing and Finance Authority the power to relocate communities, build new housing, and transit large populations.

Even worse, labor camps are also made possible by President Obama’s Executive Orders.  Order 11002 allows the Postmaster General to watch the entire population by operating a national registration of all persons.  Order 11000 allows the government to mobilize civilians into work brigades under government supervision in times of war or peace.

After reading what the federal government currently has the power to do, does Joe Steele still look like pure fiction?  This novel is highly recommended to any students of American and Soviet history, as well as anyone who values liberty.

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Joe Steele cover art courtesy of Turtledove Wiki. J. Edgar Hoover picture courtesy of The Guardian.  FEMA camp image courtesy of Popular Mechanics.  These images used according to Fair Use.

Rand Paul Writing Contest UPDATE!

In light of Marco Rubio announcing his presidential candidacy, the Stand With Rand Writing Contest has a new category option for submissions.

Rand Paul supporters who want to be published in a book about Rand can choose to write on any of these six topics:

1)      Why Conservatives should vote for Rand

2)      Why Progressives should vote for Rand

3)      Why Independents and the politically homeless should vote for Rand

4)      Rand Paul is a better Republican candidate than Ted Cruz

5)      Rand Paul is a better Republican candidate than Marco Rubio

6)      Rand Paul is a better candidate for America than Hillary Clinton

Multiple submissions are allowed, but each one should be on a different topic.  Each topic will be its own individual book.  The eBook editions will be distributed free of charge.

If you do choose to submit your work for the contest, it would be published it under the Creative Commons (CC BY 4.0) license, so you still retain the rights to your work.  Not only are you allowed to re-publish your work, but the Creative Commons license gives you permission to independently re-publish the entire book!

Submit your work to politicalzachfoster@gmail.com with the subject line 'WRITING CONTEST'.  The final deadline is 11:59 P.M. Pacific, June 1, 2015.

See the full contest guidelines here.

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Picture courtesy of Politico and used according to Fair Use.

Stand With Rand Writing Contest

Four years ago I launched a special writing contest.  Contestants were to write an essay to any audience—liberals, conservatives, independents—about how Ron Paul best represents them and is the best candidate for the Presidency

The best essays were compiled into a campaign book in support of Ron Paul’s presidential candidacy, and it was written by We the People.  This book was published as VOICES OF REVOLUTION: Americans Speak Out for Ron Paul (download it for free).

Nearly four years later, I’m pleased to announce to you the Stand With Rand Writing Contest.

This time, we’re going big and we’re going long. We understand that the mainstream media will attack Senator Paul ceaselessly as he campaigns and spreads a message of individual liberty, sound money, and peace.  They’ll attack him on TV, on the Internet, and in print.

Our plan is to flood the eBook market with books that are pro-Rand and pro-liberty.  In order to do this, I’m calling on fellow patriots and lovers of liberty to put pen to paper and speak from the heart.  I’m calling on YOUR essays on why fellow Americans should vote for Rand Paul.

The essays can be any of these five topics:

1)      Why Conservatives should vote for Rand

2)      Why Progressives should vote for Rand

3)      Why Independents and the politically homeless should vote for Rand

4)      Rand Paul is a better Republican candidate than Ted Cruz

5)      Rand Paul is a better Republican candidate than Marco Rubio

6)      Rand Paul is a better candidate for America than Hillary Clinton

If you do choose to submit your work, it’ll be published it under the Creative Commons (CC BY 4.0) license, so you still retain the rights to your work.  Not only are you allowed to re-publish your own work, but the Creative Commons license gives you permission to independently re-publish the entire book!

Remember these guidelines to make your writing most effective:

·       Multiple submissions are allowed, but each submission has to be on a different topic.  The above 5 topics will be 5 different books.

·       Write from the heart. Don’t preach to strangers.  Tell them from the heart why a Paul presidency is important to you AND to the reader.

·       When writing to Conservatives, back up your arguments with Bible verses. Also mention Ronald Reagan and the “conservatarian” philosophy of Reagan and Barry Goldwater that Americans overwhelmingly supported. It wouldn’t hurt to mention Rand’s response to Benghazi, or Glenn Beck leaving the GOP in disgust.

·       When writing to Progressives, don’t forget to mention the damage inflicted on the black community by the Obama administration and Democrat Party policies.  Also stress the Establishment Left’s betrayal of the working class and abandonment of the LGBTQ community.  It’s also good to refer to Howard Zinn’s populist histories and tie Rand in with empowerment of the working classes.  Also, don’t forget that Bill Maher is a huge supporter.

·       If writing about Hillary Clinton, focus on every documented lie, half-truth, and cover up involving Hillary, especially her hawkish support for George W. Bush's, Dick Cheney's, and Barack Obama’s wars. Stress that Clinton represents a new type of imperial/colonialist America.

·       When making a factual claim or referring to something that happened in real time—a historical event, words someone said or wrote, etc.—back it up with a citation in a footnote.  At least provide a url to make it easier for your poor editor.

·       The deadline for submissions is 11:59 P.M. Pacific Time, June 1, 2015.  Even though that’s 6 weeks away, don’t sit on this.  The liberty movement NEEDS your contribution and I'm accepting submissions NOW.

Send submissions to politicalzachfoster@gmail.com

Every bit of VOLUNTARY grass roots activism counts.  Will YOU stand with me?

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'I Stand With Rand' banner courtesy of Latino Rebels.

Libertarian vets weigh in on Chris Kyle, Iraq War

By Zach Foster, Chris Padilla, Adam Clossman

Originally published by Young Americans for Liberty

The cornerstone of libertarian philosophy is the non-aggression principle: you won’t harm anyone if they won’t harm you either. This principle guides our conduct in peace and in war. We’re libertarians who served in the Global War on Terrorism; a soldier, a sailor, and a marine.

One of us is a constitutional conservative and two of us are dues-paying Libertarian Party members. We think our government should never have started the Iraq War. Intervention was wrong because it opened Pandora’s box of medieval rivalries and medieval brutality. We also don’t regret our decision to serve. We found out how the non-aggression principle becomes less and less black-and-white when shrouded in the fog of war.  In the middle of a terrible war we don’t agree with, Chris Kyle made the best of a bad situation.

All the controversy surrounding Kyle’s legacy truly baffles us. For starters, most of the people throwing fits over his hit count and calling insurgents “savages” have never even read his autobiography, American Sniper. They’re just reciting quotes from the book, often taken out of context then hastily-written in online editorials.  Talking about things while completely uninformed is called being ignorant. We say to our readers: if you haven’t read American Sniper cover to cover, you don’t have an informed opinion on Chris Kyle. Full stop.

Furthermore, the histrionically inclined are calling Kyle a liar and sociopath based on anecdotal citations. This narrative is pushed harshly in order to attack Kyle’s character. The infamous Jesse Ventura story is one of them. The only people who truly know the extent of truth in that story are Kyle, Ventura, and others in the bar that night. The same people pointing to the jury’s decision to award Ventura the royalty money and claiming that it’s iron clad proof Kyle may have lied, are the exact same people who turn around and decry the system we have in place when white police officers aren’t indicted.

And to clear something up, there’s a huge difference between a lie and an exaggeration. An exaggeration to a civilian is typically called a “fish story” or a “tall tale.” In Kyle’s Navy, they’re called “Sea Stories.” Sailors (along with all service-members) have a long, proud tradition of telling Sea Stories, going back at least six hundred years. Choppy seas? No. Rogue waves from every direction crashing down onto the flight deck of the carrier, almost capsizing her? Definitely!

It’s a completely cultural phenomenon, folks. Just as Democrats do not understand “gun culture” and Republicans don’t understand any culture, most civilians don’t understand military culture. Sea Stories are not something to get worked up about, and they are certainly not the smoking gun of poor character. Perhaps Kyle and Ventura simply exchanged words. Maybe they exchanged numbers. Or maybe Kyle knocked out Ventura for bad-mouthing the troops. The bottom line is that it simply doesn’t matter at this point. One of the most important pieces of military equipment is a “finely calibrated bullshit detector,” but anti-Kyle critics don’t understand "carpe diem."

As far as those defending him, most of them are completely down-playing the messed up skeletons in his closet which he casually wrote about. They’re hiding his skeletons and re-branding him as a modern-day John Basilone or Audie Murphy. It’s mostly because, after two long and bitter wars, they badly needed a hero for our time.

Despite our evolved political views, nothing will EVER change the fact that Kyle kept a lot of good, perhaps misguided young men alive—men like us. We all did our time in the service, and that time in uniform showed us how things weren’t the way we were led to believe in the past. We became intimate with war and warfare. We’re no different than the many other soldiers, sailors, and marines for whom Kyle provided watch.

Most Americans—even most people in the military—will never know what it’s like to live under the protection of sniper fire. We’re glad that Chris Kyle was a sniper and we agree that every shot he ever took in the war was justified. Now give us a moment to flash our Ron Paul lapel pins before you write us off as imperialists and burn us at the stake for deviating from libertarian orthodoxy.

Chris Kyle said some messed up things about killing, but he never called Iraqis savages as a whole, nor any like names. These comments weren’t extended to include the indigenous interpreters, the patriotic Iraqi soldiers and police trying to rebuild their country, or the civilians who set a positive example and treated Americans with friendship and respect. It was the insurgency to whom Kyle referred constantly as savages.

And the insurgents, their ranks saturated with jihadist terrorists and organized crime groups, really were savages. They were monsters. The things they did were absolutely unspeakable. We're talking about mass executions, daily beheadings, suicide bombings in civilian crowds, punitive amputations on civilians, and especially exploitation of children as cannon fodder. While Kyle had issues, the people he was killing—according to strict Rules of Engagement—were nothing less than savages.

Many in the liberty movement claim that the Iraqi insurgents had the moral high ground in the war. This theory looks good on paper, until one takes a closer look at who the insurgents were and what they did. The picture most anti-war activists have is one of noble patriots fighting to liberate their country from the foreign aggressors. Lest we prove to the world abroad that Americans truly have a short-term memory problem, the Islamic State terror-army currently committing horrible crimes against humanity in Iraq and Syria emerged under a different name in 2004: AQI, or Al Qaida in Iraq.

AQI was the predominant enemy we engaged and they are no friend even to nation-states who detest the United States. The U.S. being a mutual enemy, "The Great Satan,” has not given any common ground to ISIS and terror-sponsoring states like the Islamic Republic of Iran. The “Iraqi freedom fighter” delusion might have held substance back in 2003. Maybe. But 2004 and onward was a VERY different story.

By 2005 most Iraqi patriots had chosen a side and were either in the new government army, the police, or the local militia. They joined because they wanted to actually rebuild their country, or at the very least keep their neighborhoods safe from the psychopath insurgents. Whereas the Iraqi patriots were on our side in the war—they resented the hell out of America for invading, but they fought on our side. The insurgency was quite literally either: 1) organized crime groups bolstered by AK-47s and Republican Guard veterans, or 2) foreign, non-Iraqi jihadists who had no more of a right to be there than Chris Kyle did, only the jihadists didn’t give a damn about rules of engagement.

The reason the insurgency gained more power than the government security forces is that the insurgents—gangsters and jihadists alike—were able to hack off limbs, chop off heads, murder entire families of interpreters and informants, kidnap hostages, assassinate local leaders and elders, and a slew of other techniques of “guerrilla war” not open to government soldiers and police. But hey, they were freedom fighters, right?

The Iraqi (and foreign-born) warlords of Al Qaeda in Iraq, the Shia Mahdi Army, and the various regional and neighborhood gangs who became overnight “insurgent groups” were, and are, a far cry from the Rothbardian militia volunteers at Concord in 1775. At no point did any American guerrillas kidnap Lord Cornwallis’ wife and children and float their bullet-riddled bodies down the Rappahannock. At no time did American guerrillas bomb or burn down churches with civilian Loyalists still inside. The American guerrillas always engaged the Redcoats away from their homes rather than use civilians as human shields and make propaganda out of their corpses.

Quite simply, there exist human beings who choose to be something other than human. Gang members who peel faces off, terrorists who decapitate hostages and murder civilians en mass, rapists, child molesters, etc.; they aren't human. They're monsters and the epitome of evil. To be considered a human being, one must behave like one, not like a demon.  But as libertarians, we have no choice but to treat all lives with equal value until given a legitimate reason to do otherwise.

As libertarians, we don’t believe in preemptive strikes as the default strategy—especially not when cooked up by a bunch of rich-kid draft-dodgers whose military prowess is surpassed by any ten-year-old playing Call of Duty. However, we do believe in self-defense and in ambushing or apprehending would-be murderers in transit to commit an evil deed, with evidence in hand. All lives are equal until an individual embarks on a course of action to take other lives without just cause.

It’s at that point when it becomes necessary for good men to stand on a line between the weak and those who would exploit their weakness. Between the wolves of the world and the men, women, and children who want peace and to live free from the oppression of the beast. The recognition of this reality is how we as Constitutionalists and Libertarians can operate with a clear conscience. We stand ready to vehemently fight just conflicts and meet the enemy on his home soil so our countrymen can live in peace and freedom here at home.

This is not to say that we want to drag our country into endless wars via government action. By no means! We simply were, and are, prepared as individuals to stand and volunteer for what we think is a just cause, if not always a just war.

The majority of Iraqi insurgents blatantly disregarded the non-aggression principle and butchered civilians in their quest to harm Americans, whereas we the foreign invaders had absurdly restrictive rules of engagement. We’re sorry about the drone strikes and the horrifying collateral damage, but UAVs have nothing to do with Chris Kyle or the boots on the ground. End of story.

Again, let us remind our readers that we’re not apologists for the Iraq War. The public has Fox News for that kind of crap. As veterans, we support our brothers and sisters who volunteered to serve and those who have suffered the burden of deployment. As libertarians, we choose to view participants in the war as individuals—this includes American troops; private military contractors; allied nations soldiers; DoD and State Department civilians; Iraqi troops; Iraqi police; Sons of Iraq (militia); Iraqi civilian interpreters; Peshmerga guerrillas; Shia, Sunni, Kurdish, Chaldean, Assyrian, and secular street gangs; Ba’ath Party loyalists; Fedayeen squads; Iranian Revolutionary Guard veterans; foreign-born Pan-Arab nationalists and Mujahedeen (jihadists); nomadic highway gangs; and a range of Syrian, Saudi, Jordanian, Yemeni, Egyptian, and Iraqi lone wolves.

When we view participants as individuals, we weigh their actions as individuals. As an individual, Chris Kyle did the right thing the entire time he was in-country. It does bother us a bit that he seemed to take pleasure in killing. However, people’s minds and morals tend to get twisted when they’re in the business of death and destruction. Despite that, Chris Kyle was exactly what we needed him to be, and he did exactly what needed to be done, when it was needed. And there is no doubt that many American families are together today because of his actions. A child has a father safe at home, and a mother was able to hug her children again. Sons, daughters, friends, spouses, moms and dads; these are the countless invisible faces blatantly and hurtfully disregarded by all sides in this debate. On the other hand, the oft-praised insurgents by and large were monsters. This story does not begin and end with Kyle alone.

Chris Kyle and the other men of SEAL Team Three not only turned the tide to defeat those psychopaths in "God’s blind spot," Al Anbar province, but also enabled the beginning of the Sunni Awakening. The only reason the Sons of Iraq, Sunni neighborhood militias, were able to “awaken” was because the insurgency had received enough of an ass-kicking that the untrained, poorly equipped volunteers could finally patrol their own neighborhoods and fight the insurgents on a more level playing field. Again, Kyle made the best of a bad situation.

Someday, when the state becomes obsolete and unregulated libertarian “anarchy” begins to take off, there will still be non-state groups with evil members who act as conquering tribes (as described in Rothbard’s Anatomy of the State). Maybe they’ll be bankers looking to start a new Federal Reserve in this brave new world; perhaps they’ll be just a criminal gang who would rather loot than do the hard work of producing. They could even be a fundamentalist religious group, a philosophical order, or a school of scientific thought seeking to impose their answers on the whole world, even to the death.

Either way, the people those conquerors attack will fight back in a libertarian people’s war of national liberation, or they’ll be totally subjugated by tyrants. If they do fight for their lives, their homes, and their freedom, they’ll need volunteer soldiers who possess the same qualities as Chris Kyle. Liberty will ultimately be defended by hometown boys and girls who are damn good at killing people.

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Chris Kyle photo by Cpl. Damien Gutierrez, USMC. Army combat photo by John A. Foley.  Hostage video screenshot by Nick Berg.  Iraqi insurgents, photo by the Department of Homeland Security.  SOI photo by the US Army.  All images obtained from Wikipedia.