Book review: Molon Labe

Greetings all, it’s the healthy Angry Webmaster, enjoying the misery and suffering of the Angry Systems Administrator. While Typhoid Systems Administrator is sitting in the corner, hacking up a lung, I’ve been reading a book.

The book is titled Molon Labe and was written by Boston T. Party. Now this is obviously a pen name. I suspect this wasn’t written by a single author, but by several like minded people. Considering the complexity of the writing, I can see how it would take a collaborative effort.

The novel is basically a libertarian story that takes place between 1995 and 2020. The hero of the novel is a man named James Preston. He is a former Army officer wounded in the first Gulf war. He returns home and ends up on a jury for a man being charged with violating a federal gun control law. Preston spots something on the video that was put in evidence and shows his fellow jurors that the Federal BATFE ((Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives)) had falsified the evidence. When the jury comes back and acquits the defendant and charges the prosecutor and BATFE with misconduct, the courtroom explodes.

This episode lays the ground work for the whole story.

Preston decides to initiate a Free State Project ((Free State Project)) plan to try and roll back the excesses of the Federal and state governments. Now this is an actual plan, and while it is mentioned in the novel, the one Preston comes up with takes place in Wyoming, not New Hampshire which was the original target of the organization. I’ll let the readers go through the FSP plan rather then explain it. The book does a good job of describing the idea and why they chose Wyoming.

As Preston and his friends begin the process of taking over Wyoming, the author comes up with a side story on how oppressive the Federal government becomes. He also writes about how the economy essentially collapses and why Wyoming’s economy grows. Now the novel was published in 2004, and a few things the author expected to happen didn’t. For instance, he expected the general confiscation of firearms, however the Supreme Court shot that down with the Heller decision. He also misjudged the financial problems, but only by a few years.

The author also had no idea that the Democrats would take over the house and senate in 2006 along with the presidency in 2008, and promptly run the country into the ground. With the rise of the Tea Party and the Great Shellacking of 2010, there is a chance that the interludes Mr. Party came up with won’t happen.

But, in the novel, all the bad things in the interludes did happen. If they didn’t, then there would be no story.

As the story begins to evolve, the Federal Government sees a trend they find distressing. The FBI begins looking into all the people that are moving into low population counties in Wyoming and basically taking over. As they continue to gather information they learn that the plan is to reject the creeping dictatorship. The reports reach the Presidents and they begin looking for ways to stop this and destroy the FSP group.

A side story that takes place starts with a WW2 veteran who, trained by the old OSS, decides to kill two people who he believes have been working to destroy the Constitution. He writes a long suicide note explaining why he did what he did, and also releases the contents of the hard drives of the people he interrogated and killed.

The released data along with the suicide note unleashes a number of copycat crimes. Another subplot revolves around a man who carefully hunts down and kills judges, administration aides and others who have been working to suppress the rights of the people. The subplot ties in nicely with the rest of the story of course and shows Federal LEO as being nothing more the a secret police force.

As the story moves along, the central character, James Preston runs for and wins the governorship of Wyoming. With the large majorities he has in the state legislature he begins the process of reasserting States Rights under the 10^th Amendment. The changes to the state laws and constitution are very popular with the Wyoming residents, but the current president and his advisers consider this to be a direct threat to their rule.

The final act consists of the Federal Government on orders of the president, trying to arrest Preston and his people. This fails when the federal agents are met by Wyoming police, national guard and citizen militia. Rather then get shot to pieces, the Federal agents withdraw.

The president then decides to destroy Wyoming and orders the military to begin preparations to invade and occupy the state. Gov. Preston alerts the citizenry about what is happening and everyone begins to get ready for the “Epic Battle”.

It’s here the story falls down.

The White House gets a video showing that three nuclear warheads have been stolen from a missile. The President decides he doesn’t want to become radioactive ash and gives in to Gov. Preston. Wyoming doesn’t secede from the union, but basically returns to what the nation was before the Civil War.

In every story I’ve read where a state or group gets to the point of shooting, nuclear weapons suddenly show up in the hands of the “rebels,” State Government, etc. This isn’t realistic. It’s actually a way for an author to dig his way out of a hole. Nukes are the one thing everyone keeps track of. Also, it’s actually rather difficult to make them go BOOM when you want them to. In a real world situation, if the military actually did attack, (Which is doubtful for many reasons), in today’s world the “rebels” wouldn’t stand against them. They would instead go after the power structure. This would mean direct attacks against the President, Congress, all federal government officials, etc. In other words a focused wave of terrorism to cut the head off the chicken.

So, how would I rate the book? I give it 3 ¾ stars out of 5. It’s a good yarn, but has a few to many conspiracy theories and also isn’t aging well with the current events. Yes, some of what the author postulated is happening, mostly on the economic front, he completely missed the rejection of the policies of the Establishment Party. (Primarily Democrats with a sprinkling of RINO Republicans)

So I would say go ahead and buy the book. Just understand that it is a story and the premise is rather strained.

Now back to laughing at the Angry Sysadmin as he wheezes, sneezes and hacks his way across the internet. 😉

~The Angry Webmaster~

(2 votes, average: 1.00 out of 5)

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