Free 299 Days: The Stronghold by Glen Tate

Constitution. They wanted to see how this Grant guy and that Constitution thingy related to their daily lives during this scary time. “The Ninth and Tenth Amendments related to the states versus the federal government, which we no longer need to worry about.”
    That was a controversial thing to say, Grant knew, because some people in the audience still believed the United States existed. It did, on paper and maybe in practice in some places like the East Coast or California. But Grant was mentally preparing the people listening to him to conclude that they were on their own out there and the only government they had—or needed—was right there in the Grange that night.
    “Finally, I think we need to vote on things,” Grant said. “We will need to vote to give authority to people to do things, like the immigrations people need the authority to screen people. We can’t all meet down at the gate to individually interview a dozen people a day. That kind of thing. We wouldn’t give people powers without electing them, starting with me. Like I said, if I suck, remove me. We need to elect a Sheriff and I think that should be Rich.” Lots of nodding.
    “Oh, and I think we should have a civil justice system,” Grant said, realizing that he needed to wrap up this legal stuff. People were there to hear about guard duty, but he had their attention and this was an important topic. “By ‘civil justice system,’” Grant said, “all I mean is a way of peacefully resolving the inevitable disputes that will arise. Your dog ate my chicken, that kind of thing. But nothing complicated and,” Grant smiled, “other than the judge, no damned lawyers.” That got a couple of laughs.
    Grant paused, got very serious, and said in a very resolute voice, “We’re going to start over out here and do things right. This is our chance to set up simple rules that everyone can live with. Unlike the old system.”
    The crowd was silent, taking it all in.
    Then the clapping started. Lots of people yelled, “hell, yeah!” and “right on!” A sizable portion, about a quarter, of the crowd was not as enthused. Some sat there stone-faced, others just clapped politely. Grant was paying close attention to who they were. Not to retaliate, but to intensify the persuasion efforts on those people. They were undoubtedly afraid that Grant was too much of a leader and was promising too much. That was fair. The old government had taken way too much power and promised so much—and then failed miserably—that people were entitled to be skeptical of someone with a rifle saying they’d follow the Constitution.
    When the cheering died down, John yelled out, “Let’s take a vote on following the Constitution!”
    More cheering.
    John asked, “All in favor?” and almost all hands went up. John spoke in an exaggerated and comical formal voice, “The ayes have it. Pierce Point will follow the Constitution.”
    Now, Grant thought, we have to actually do it; that’s the hard part. Wait until someone acts like a jackass and the Constitution protects him. That’s when the real leadership kicks in. These people had no experience actually living under a constitutional system. Oh, they were told in high school about the Bill of Rights. Then the rest of their lives they were taught that the government had to put “reasonable” restraints on all these rights. Free speech? Sure, as long as it didn’t offend anyone. So these people had never experienced reacting to offensive speech by letting the speaker continue to be offensive. They had seen the authorities take care of the problem; they never had to deal with the problem themselves. Now they would.
    Grant remembered how hard it was for people in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe to operate under freedom. Freedom is hard, although most think it is easy. It used to be natural to Americans, but that was over a hundred years ago. When people become used to looking to government instead of themselves