SAMPLE CHAPTERS (CONTINUED):

Prologue … This reporter has been writing these year-end reviews for a quarter century now. That task has become increasingly difficult and depressing during this past decade, especially so in the last few years. It has been absolutely gut-wrenching for all of us to watch as our once-great nation has declined at an accelerating rate. The unfolding drama has been surreal.

America is bankrupt, and not just financially—but also politically, economically, socially, and, dare I say it, morally. Our leaders on both sides of the aisle have been inept at stopping the rapid plummet toward domestic chaos and international disdain. Their constant bickering, blaming, and name calling have prevented any real progress toward reversing the downward spiral. Any reasonable ideas to change the system and to deal realistically with our devastating problems have been drowned out by the constant stream of partisan rhetoric. It seems that no one even tries to offer solutions anymore. The unemployment rate passed 23 percent this year, and it is over 30 percent if you count those who have given up looking. The recession that started in 2019 turned worse when it became obvious that default was imminent. The economy plunged another 8 percent last year. Real GDP is now lower than it was in 2007, a long fourteen years ago!

Chapter 2 … Who knows, we may be able to get everyone to agree within a few weeks, and be done with it by the holiday. That would be a great way to celebrate the Fourth of July. On the other hand, there could be total disagreement and the whole thing could fall apart. Then we’ll all be in trouble, a complete disaster. All the effort and sacrifice, all the fighting and dying, it might be in vain. We could end up in worse shape than before it all started. Truth be told, we are almost at that point now.

He was exhausted. Mud was splattered all over his boots and pants. His long hair was caked with dirt and grime, and he could not wait to take a warm bath. He had only ridden sixty miles from New York City, but it had taken almost two days on the soft spring roads. It had been nothing, though, compared to the miserable two weeks of traveling by horseback and stagecoach a month earlier, to get from Virginia to Manhattan. He had stopped in Mount Vernon to visit the general to make sure he was coming, and that had helped to break up the trip. Finally he was back in the big city, ready to settle in for as long as it took to get the job done. In a sense, he had spent his whole life preparing for this meeting. As he pulled the reins and the old horse came to a stop at the corner of Fifth and Market Streets, he heard someone call his name.

“Hi, Jemmy, welcome back!” shouted Eliza Trist.

“Glad to be here, Eliza,” he responded, as he forced his small, aching body to climb down and began to unload his bags. His eyes surveyed the familiar scene and focused in the distance, across Chestnut Street. There stood the Pennsylvania State House, where it had all started almost eleven long years earlier. The red brick building with its tall white steeple seemed to beckon to him. It was in that hallowed edifice that they would attempt to make history—again.

Chapter 4 … Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and others are said to have been deists who agreed with these bold truths. The great philosophers of the eighteenth century and the leaders of the American Revolution were intelligent and educated men who challenged accepted doctrines and traditions. It is not surprising that so many of them held these rational beliefs, despite the public pressure against such honest analysis. It was not the path of least resistance.

A reasoned conclusion that a higher power designed and created the universe supports natural law but is inconsistent with unquestioned religious faith. Thomas Paine argued this point in his 1794 pamphlet Age of Reason: “Search not the book called the scripture, which any human hand might make, but the scripture called the Creation. . . . It is only by the exercise of reason that man can discover God. . . . Man cannot make principles, he can only discover them.” Despite his great contributions to the American Revolution, Paine suffered much criticism later in life because he dared question the superstitions and inconsistencies of religions. He was branded an atheist by those who would not admit a distinction between rational belief in God and unthinking adherence to religious doctrines—or that the two might actually be mutually exclusive.

Paine and other deists never sought to exclude religions or reject them outright. In Age of Reason, Paine concludes, “Let every man follow, as he has a right to do, the religion and worship he prefers.” Religions have provided social and community structure for thousands of years. They have educated, cared for, and supported many of the least fortunate people on earth. Many religious beliefs are consistent with natural law and therefore beneficial to society, but many are not. Religions have also been responsible for brutal governments, wars, intolerance, hatred, persecution, and violence. The Founding Fathers of this nation recognized the danger of religion and sought to remove its influence on government. At the same time, they honored and protected the freedom to exercise religious beliefs, as long as that exercise does not interfere with the liberty, security, and rights of others.

Chapter 17 … However, to achieve the true potential of America, the principles associated with the natural laws of freedom, labor, and truth must be entrenched in the law of the land. These principles are the indispensable building blocks of a healthy economy and stable society. They are essential to the “pursuit of happiness.” Without the protection and enforcement of these values, the long-term strength of the national recovery would be put at risk. With their perpetuation, it could not be threatened.

A free market for business and labor is necessary to achieve the maximum output of the economy. Competition, entrepreneurship, responsibility, and accountability are the direct consequences of the rule of law founded in freedom, labor, and truth. The result will be a strong, vibrant economy with maximum productivity growth. As has been shown, maintaining high productivity growth is the key to the economic transition contemplated here and would substantially raise the standard of living for future generations. Alternatively, the low level of productivity that has become embedded in our restricted economy would threaten the recovery and artificially limit the true potential of America. True freedom of enterprise and labor, with minimum regulation, licensing, and other barriers to competition, buttressed by enforcement of the truth, will maximize productivity, quality, and innovation.

The proposed transformative changes to correct the current fiscal problems and reenergize the economy could not be implemented within the dysfunctional conglomeration of autonomous state, county, and local governments. Fifty states independently attempting to oversee such dramatic transformations, with counties and municipalities fighting to preserve areas of control, would be a recipe for failure. A successful transition could only be accomplished within a unified, cost-effective national government. The comprehensive plan that would turn the nation around is entirely dependent on the contemporaneous transition to a unitary governing structure. The fact that this consolidation of government would save hundreds of billions of dollars in annual public expense is also an integral feature of the strategy. Every dollar of cost reduction in government operating expenses would directly increase the UShare distributions of each citizen.