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Hope
Can Alexander Hope, the accidental President, restore basic values and freedom to the nation? **** His opponents will stop at nothing to force their own agenda on the nation including killing the President of the United States. **** An electrifying what-if political thriller by Aaron Zelman (founding member of Jews for the Preservation of Firearm Ownership) and four time Prometheus Award winner, L. Neil Smith, author of Pallas and Tom Paine Maru.
228 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 12, 2024
This's a libertarian wish-fulfillment novel. What's more, it's one from a different era - 2001, before the heady days of the Ron Paul campaigns and their sad failure, when it was still not just possible but common (among libertarians) to believe the silent majority of Americans were actually libertarians or could be brought over if they could just hear the good news.
In an indefinite future, a libertarian businessman-turned-history-professor runs for the Presidency on a third-party ticket - and unexpectedly wins. In his first term, he fights and wins with assassins, bureaucracy, income tax, abortion laws, gun laws, the United Nations, et cetera. He spreads the word of libertarianism, jury nullification, and the Bill of Rights, to mass popularity and the despair of career politicians. Every opponent is roundly defeated, usually within one chapter.
I was a libertarian myself, in the days of Ron Paul. I don't call myself one anymore, but I still have sympathies in that direction. I know I would've welcomed this premise then; now, I was still very interested.
Unfortunately, the development is lacking. Our protagonist is a Mary-Sue, and the sudden popularity of libertarianism is no longer believable two decades after publication - but that's pardonable in a wish-fulfillment novel. Worse, the authors don't seem to care about the details of how their plot events would get done! Their libertarian President is making some of the worst power-grabs ever for executive orders, and nobody even remarks! His impeachment not only happens mostly offstage, but nobody even remarks that it would require a two-thirds majority to remove him from office! Most of the book seems to be an excuse for speeches and announcements about what a libertarian President would do.
When I read about a President abolishing the ATF, I want to read about his fight to get it through Congress (which legally established the bureau), about what he does with the agents in the meantime, and about the actual effects on the American people. I want to bask in the details of what part of me still counts as wish-fulfillment, and see something of how it might work. This book doesn't give me any of that.
In an indefinite future, a libertarian businessman-turned-history-professor runs for the Presidency on a third-party ticket - and unexpectedly wins. In his first term, he fights and wins with assassins, bureaucracy, income tax, abortion laws, gun laws, the United Nations, et cetera. He spreads the word of libertarianism, jury nullification, and the Bill of Rights, to mass popularity and the despair of career politicians. Every opponent is roundly defeated, usually within one chapter.
I was a libertarian myself, in the days of Ron Paul. I don't call myself one anymore, but I still have sympathies in that direction. I know I would've welcomed this premise then; now, I was still very interested.
Unfortunately, the development is lacking. Our protagonist is a Mary-Sue, and the sudden popularity of libertarianism is no longer believable two decades after publication - but that's pardonable in a wish-fulfillment novel. Worse, the authors don't seem to care about the details of how their plot events would get done! Their libertarian President is making some of the worst power-grabs ever for executive orders, and nobody even remarks! His impeachment not only happens mostly offstage, but nobody even remarks that it would require a two-thirds majority to remove him from office! Most of the book seems to be an excuse for speeches and announcements about what a libertarian President would do.
When I read about a President abolishing the ATF, I want to read about his fight to get it through Congress (which legally established the bureau), about what he does with the agents in the meantime, and about the actual effects on the American people. I want to bask in the details of what part of me still counts as wish-fulfillment, and see something of how it might work. This book doesn't give me any of that.
September 26, 2013
What would you do if you no longer feared the government? This book tries to suggest one set of answers to how that could happen.
March 12, 2014
I loved it, but coming back into the real world was a bit of a disappointment.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews