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In 2013, I got tired of my kids’ schoolteachers and their creepy progressive indoctrination. They would be taking kids and making them write about how wonderful Obama was and asking them about who their parents voted for. Well, my kids naturally said “Mitt Romney” and the teachers gave them hell. Of course, the school’s test scores were dropping, but they didn’t care about that. It was unbelievable.

I had never been active before, but something had to be done and I decided I’d do it. I knew most of the parents at the school and I started talking to them, then Facebooking about what was happening in the district.

Then I had a meeting at my house. There were five of us, but we decided we’d all go out and bring at least two more folks to the next one. There were 20 people at the second meeting—I ran out of coffee and cookies! We used the web to link ourselves together, and I took some ideas from the FreedomWorks website about how to deal with local government agencies like the school board.

We decided to show up at a routine school board meeting—suddenly about 100 ticked-off parents walked in and I thought the board members were going to faint. Parent after parent just lambasted them. Finally, the chairwoman looks at us and, in a really condescending voice, says, “Well, we certainly appreciate your input, but we have real work to do now.” I looked at her and it just sort of popped out of my mouth—“Oh yeah? Well I’m running for your seat!”

She laughed at me then, but she wasn’t laughing when I won.

* * *

Lieutenant Jim Gallegos (Iranian War Vet)

Lieutenant Gallegos walks with a limp, one of a number of physical reminders of his time as a prisoner of war outside Teheran after the failed retaliation following the Iranian nuclear attack on Israel on November 30, 2020. Wounded severely during the initial amphibious assault to seize various strategic sites along the coast, the young Marine was abandoned in the chaos of the withdrawal President Clinton ordered after it became clear that the expected popular uprising was not going to take place. “We were supposed to be greeted with flowers,” Gallegos recalls bitterly.

None of them in the Clinton administration had ever served in uniform. We military people were aliens to them. They didn’t understand us, or trust us, or listen to us. The Joint Chiefs told the president that the force was hollowed out. I guess they didn’t understand what that meant. They saw the military as a great place to take money from to give it to people who didn’t feel like working. That cost a lot of people a helluva lot—lives, their health, years in Iranian dungeons.

But that didn’t matter to the liberals. They turned on us and blamed us for not making up for a flawed plan, weak leadership, and inadequate resources.

I missed out on some of the most critical years of the insurgency being stuck overseas. But when I was released thanks to President Marlowe—she didn’t take shit from the mullahs—I left the Corps and went home. New Jersey is deep blue and the state rep for our hometown was as liberal as they came. I ran against him and took it to him.

During a debate, he started talking about “liberalism means this” and “liberalism means that” and I got pissed. I took off my shirt and showed the scars from the war and said, “See these scars on me? That’s liberalism. The scars on our country? That’s liberalism.” That video went viral and I won the election. I served three terms and then turned the seat over to another constitutional conservative.

* * *

Flamenco (Performance Artist)

In 2041, the toast of Manhattan is edgy performance artist Flamenco. Pierced, tattooed, and of indeterminate gender (“I don’t really believe in gender, but if you do, cool”), Flamenco gets noticed with often outlandish and bizarre installations that combine painting, dance, holography, and music. I was able to get a few minutes of the artist’s time before a performance later that evening.

I’ve always been a conservative. I grew up in a liberal family. They were really liberal and so smug. All the liberals I knew wanted to do was tell me what to do. Go to this doctor. Don’t drink a soda that big. No smoking! I hated it!

The liberals never talked to me about freedom. Never once. Liberals were always about controlling me! At college, I would get shit from the liberal professors when I said what I thought if it didn’t fit in their ideological box. And the rules! Liberals love their rules—for them it’s all about control. I once tried to do a performance that involved a little campfire in the college quad and five cops showed up. One Tasered me! And they gave me an air pollution ticket!

You know who never gave me grief? The conservatives. Oh, a lot of them weren’t into what I was doing, but not one ever thought it was his or her right to shut me up. They never told me what to do. It was liberals who told me I couldn’t smoke or speak up or whatever!

I kept hearing how conservatives were going to have me arrested for having sex. That never happened. It was all bullshit.

Chapter Five: Lawfare

“It Was Hand-to-Hand Combat in the Courts”

I am not a lawyer—like most Americans, what I know about the court system largely comes from videos and e-books. While most citizens don’t understand the mechanics of litigation, we Americans still tend to see the courts as a venue where right and wrong battle it out. It’s very binary—there is Atticus Finch, and then there are the bad guys.

The conservative insurgents knew this. They exploited the courts ruthlessly, especially in the early years when they literally had no other forum where they had to be treated equally and where their arguments could not simply be dismissed out of hand. It was a very special kind of cultural warfare. They called it “lawfare,” and without it the entire movement might have collapsed.

* * *

Roberta Klein (Conservative Activist/Attorney)

The receptionist asks me to wait because the woman I am there to see is running behind schedule. I get the impression that’s not unusual. The law firm of Parnell, Farrell, Moskowitz & Klein occupies the thirtieth through thirty-fifth floors of a sleek new office building in downtown Dallas, the nation’s emerging business center. Its client list is a who’s who of major corporations and wealthy individuals. After 15 minutes, Roberta Klein herself comes out and introduces herself with a handshake. She is short, even in heels, and immaculately dressed. “I’m glad you came personally,” she says. “I’m old school. I hate video conferences.”

Her corner office opens up on a view of the city so spectacular that I simply stop and stare for a moment. She smiles. Her walls are lined with photos, all signed, of the major movers and shakers of constitutional conservatism, past and present. Prominently displayed behind her massive maple desk is one showing her with president-elect Patel, both of them holding Mossberg 12 gauge shotguns, smiling at a skeet range.

The note reads, “Roberta, we could not have gotten here without you! Best, Rob.”

She motions for me to sit in one of the reddish leather chairs arrayed before her desk, and begins…

They called me “traitor.” Literally. And I would ask them, “Traitor to what?” I never got a straight answer, but I think it came down to me betraying my class.

I was a Yale Law grad and I was rejecting the unspoken assumptions of what a Yale Law grad was supposed to believe in and fight for. It was the school that produced Hillary Clinton, and here I was, frustrating her and her minions. I was trained and groomed to march along with my classmates into a progressive future and I was rejecting that. Hence, I was a traitor.