Libertarian
New Libertarian Novel
A series of libertarian novelettes, newly brought to print, portrays police-state tactics in America. Set in the fictional town of Abe’s Turn, “The Conscience of Abe’s Turn” (http://AbesTurn.com/) tells the story of four civil-rights activists who resort to espionage in order to challenge the police-state tactics of their hometown local government. They form an underground organization to serve as “Conscience” to the government around them.
“It’s extremely political,” says series author J. Timothy King, “but it doesn’t get into party politics. Our heroes have just as many conservative sympathies as they do liberal ones. So far, episodes have addressed freedom of speech and assembly, gun rights, due process, anti-drug laws, sexual assault laws, police brutality, and official corruption.”
The story is told in the style of a dramatic television series. Each episode not only tells a self-contained story but also develops a planned 24-episode story arc. Originally posted at http://AbesTurn.com/, the first four episodes have now been released as a book, about the size of a novel. This first volume also contains “Bonus Extras,” including a behind-the-scenes essay about the inspiration and politics behind the story and an additional short story involving the series characters.
For more information, visit http://AbesTurn.com/.
The Department of Caffeinated Beverages
I always look forward to Monday morning coffee. It’s brewed fresh, almost worth the $5 fee. But this Monday was different. This Monday offered a first look at a new improved Department—this after I had just figured out their last set of improvements. You see, the DCB brews adventure along with the coffee. I never know what kind of experience I’m going to get. Unfortunately, like every other Monday, I did find out.
I entered the establishment. It looked the same. Maybe this won’t be so bad after all, I thought. I walked up to an empty teller and placed my standard order.
“I’d like a large coffee with cream, no sugar.”
Without a word, the man behind the counter made an expressionless gesture toward an overhead sign, one of several identical placards, hand-crafted in uppercase letters:
THIS WINDOW ONLY
Ignoring the misstatement, I replied, “Okay. So where do I get my coffee?”
He silently reached behind the counter and handed me a full-color brochure: Guide to the new Department of Caffeinated Beverages: Dedicated to serving you better.
“Okay. But where do I go to get my coffee?”
With an indication of actual human emotion, he thrust a finger to the right and sternly intoned, “Over there.”
I turned and saw something I hadn’t noticed before. There was a crowded seating area arranged in two sections with a single aisle between. The seats faced a counter. A sign read:
Why Drug Prohibition is Ungodly
The failure of drug prohibition dwarfs that of violent crime. Drug prohibition is the direct cause of most violent crime. Peaceful non-governmental public-service organizations—churches, inner-city missionaries, drug intervention programs—could accomplish ten times over what the government can, if only we Christians were permitted to give our money to them instead of to the DEA.
But none of this really matters. Because the strongest case against drug prohibition is simply that it is anti-christian and immoral.
Tell me, if you discovered that your own son or daughter were involved with drugs, what would you do? Would you turn her in, so she could spend years imprisoned under mandatory-minimum sentencing laws? Or maybe you would willingly forfeit your belongings under our nation’s anti-racketeering laws. Or you could make an anonymous tip and inspire a SWAT team to kick in your door in the middle of the night. Or perhaps, as a last resort, you could leave your daughter’s life in the hands of the pushers and black-market thugs.
The politicians in Washington know the correct answer. Whenever one of their sons or daughters is caught with drugs, they treat it as a private family matter. They even pull strings to get the DEA off their backs. But, in their arrogance, they refuse to let America’s parents take responsibility for their own families.
There is nothing godly about using the force of the police power to quell consent. Is it good when government social workers intrude into the homes of christian home-schoolers? Is it right to force people to associate with homosexuals? Should we rejoice that our tax dollars are being used to fund smut and anti-christian schools? Yet this coercion flows from the same idiocy that promotes drug prohibition. Click to continue »
You Might Be a Libertarian if...
You might be a Democrat if you believe that a school that can’t teach kids to read is qualified to teach them about sex.
You might be a Republican if you believe that this same school is qualified to teach them about God.
But you’ll become a Libertarian when you realize that only government monopoly schools have trouble teaching kids to read.
You might be a Democrat if you think tobacco smoke is more dangerous than AIDS.
You might be a Republican if you think marijuana smoke is more dangerous than tobacco.
But you’ll become a Libertarian when you realize that government agents are more dangerous than all of these put together.
You might be a Democrat if you believe guns cause crime but criminals don’t.
You might be a Republican if you believe new gun laws are bad but bad gun laws should be enforced.
But you’ll become a Libertarian when you learn of the thousands of Americans who are assaulted, raped, and murdered every year because their government has taken away their Right of Self-defense.
You might be a Democrat if you believe government welfare helps the poor.
You might be a Republican if you believe corporate subsidies bring economic prosperity.
But you’ll become a Libertarian when you notice all the political interests lining up for tax-funded hand-outs up on Capitol Hill.
You might be a Democrat if you believe a person has a right to sell porn, but not tobacco.
You might be a Republican if you believe a person has a right to choose his own employees, but not his own sexual orientation. Click to continue »
Miracle Cures
Non-profits, such as churches, seem to be particularly prone to the belief in miracle cures. While God does sometimes perform miracles, far more often He works through the mundane. It’s very easy to look favorably upon grandiose projects. It’s easy to want to evangelize the world, or to eliminate poverty. But, try as we might, we can’t. Only God can.
Each of us must ask himself: Where do I fit into God’s overall plan? In what detail can God use me and my church to His ultimate purpose? What specific thing does God want me to do for Him? We need to have reasonable objectives and realistic goals.
Otherwise we will fall into the same traps that have snared a million others. Their goals become self-evident moral absolutes, rather than obtainable targets based on moral objectives. Their programs become the embodiment of goodness. Any suggestion that they try something different, to get better results, is an attack on their raison d’etre. They lose their sense of balance. They waste their resources, fail to slough off yesterday, and let new opportunities slip away.
To give just one example, how many of us know of The Partnership for a Drug-Free America? I guess it wouldn’t be quite so euphonic to name it “The Partnership to Minimize the Damage Done by Drug Abuse.” Yet, if ten million people have to die in the war against drugs, will it have been worth it? Is any price too high, as long as the objective is eliminating drugs, rather than helping drug addicts? And the failure to meet that objective, far from indicating that the objective is wrong, is only an excuse to redouble efforts. And waste more resources. What would happen, I wonder, if small-time inner-city missionaries got the money wasted by anti-drug zealots? As the War on Drugs fades out of vogue, what will happen to the Partnership for a Drug-Free America? Click to continue »