But most of all, it needs to leave me and my family alone.
Sammy Honda (Hollywood Producer)
The valet glides the Ford Ventura up to us as we wait on the curb. Honda is so busy talking to me that he doesn’t notice, but then again it’s electric so the producer probably didn’t even hear it. A few decades ago, no one in Tinseltown would have been caught dead driving an American car, but Ford’s refusal to be bailed out and the massive technological advances that came about after Marlowe’s deregulation initiatives during the 2020s and 2030s put the venerable automaker back on top as the car the Tinseltown players drive—or, rather, ride in while the auto-drive sweeps them to their destinations.
The valet waits with the door open as Honda finishes telling me about his next project.
I’m making a movie about the Iranian War. Lots of action, but with a message, you know? That message is, don’t be a punk if you’re president!
It’s going to really drill the libs. It’s written by this Gallegos guy who fought in it. It’s harsh. It shows how Clinton and her gang talked big, got our boys to hang their asses out over the line, then left them hanging. It never could have been made before.
Flamenco (Performance Artist)
With a performance happening in a half hour, the artist talks to me while changing into an outfit consisting of a pink skullcap, a leather jacket, and what the artist describes as an “enqueered Lebanese kilt.”
Flamenco cares nothing for politics now. Flamenco does not need to. Flamenco pays some of Flamenco’s income in taxes, Flamenco is left alone. This is the way it should be.
Government should be off in the background, out of our lives—though Flamenco always votes, and for the most conservative candidate. Without interference by bossy liberals, Flamenco can concentrate on new projects. Currently, Flamenco is examining identity issues by rejecting the use of the first person in everyday speech.
Gail Partridge (Leftist Show Host)
Partridge fulminates, enraged that the progressive world of 2013 has morphed into her own version of hell in 2041.
This isn’t my country anymore. People like me get no say at all. People are doing whatever they want, with no guidance, no leadership, totally out of control. You call that freedom?
True freedom is freedom from having to do everything for yourself. I think people will miss when we had a government that took the load off their shoulders, a government that let people with some education make decisions instead of just anyone.
Supposedly everyone is making money today, but why are we only discussing material issues? What about morality? When Obama was president, yes, we had a few problems, but we were a moral country. Now, someone like me who wants to put progress in motion gets laughed at. It shameful.
I love what this country was 30 years ago, but I hate it today. America doesn’t deserve liberalism!
Epilogue
The following is newly sworn in President Robert Manuel Patel’s inauguration speech, given on January 20, 2041, in its entirety:
My fellow Americans, we gather here today to continue our work to fulfill the vision of the Founding Fathers. As such, upon today taking office as president of the United States, I shall be brief, for the responsibilities of the federal government as set forth in our Constitution are few.
We have come far as a nation, yet we have truly come full circle. After over a century of misguided expansion of the role of the federal government, thinking this would make us more prosperous and free, we instead found ourselves much less prosperous and much less free. Today, embracing the principles of the Founders, our nation once again stands above all other nations in terms of material wealth and military power, but most importantly, in terms of freedom.
For without freedom, wealth simply means life inside a gilded cage. That is not a fit life for any American.
The Constitution clearly sets forth my duties and the limits upon my authority. I shall endeavor to perform those duties to the best of my ability, and no others. Under our system of limited government, a president who does more than the enumerated duties our Constitution sets forth is as great a failure as one who fails to carry out his enumerated duties.
I shall lead the executive branch and see that it faithfully carries out its duties under the Constitution and the laws promulgated under its authority—all of the laws, not merely those I pick and choose according to my whims and my own short-term political interests.
I shall endeavor to make the executive branch ever smaller but ever more efficient, and to ensure that its employees understand that their ultimate accountability is to the citizens.
I shall lead the military as the commander in chief, a great and grave responsibility. Our military has once again assumed its rightful place as the most powerful in the world, but its true distinction remains that the United States military is the greatest agent of peace, freedom, and justice in all of human history.
The protection of our nation is properly the president’s most important duty, and the fighting men and women who stand between us and our enemies—for we must never again delude ourselves into believing that we have no enemies—will always be foremost in my mind.
But what I shall not do as president is presume to lead you. Nowhere in the Constitution is the president denominated the “leader” of the nation; he or she is only an executive with carefully defined responsibilities for certain specified and limited parts of federal government. I am not, and do not propose to be, your guide, your teacher, or your master. The president is not a ruler; he is a servant, an employee hired by you, our citizens, to perform certain tasks. He is nothing more.
As a nation, we once forgot that. We chose to look not to ourselves but to a remote potentate cloistered in his imperial chambers in the capital to provide the guidance we should have sought within ourselves or from our Creator.
And some presidents, human beings with human weaknesses, came to believe that they had not merely the ability but the right to rule their fellow citizens.
No president rules any American. An American citizen is free, with rights granted by his Creator. Through the Constitution, the citizens grant the government certain powers, but no more than are clearly enumerated.
You, the American citizen, by right, rules the president. Now, once again you do, and for as long as I am your president, you will.
May God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America.
Afterword
“I have not yet begun to fight!”
We built this country. We fought for it. It’s ours, and we’re taking it back.
The fight to take back America from the progressives will not be just a battle, or even a campaign. It will be a figurative war, and a long one. We need to understand that returning America to what it should be will take a generation, maybe two, and especially in the early years we will face defeat after defeat.
And there will be thuggery—threats, intimidation, even minor violence—committed by our enemies against us, designed to silence us. We are seeing that already. They ignore laws, rules, and traditions when it suits them—even when they can be seen on video vehemently arguing the now inconvenient contrary position.