Pretty Flowers

Congratulations!

Excellent!

The rules of engagement allow morons who are unfit to hold public office to feel warm, fuzzy, and good about themselves.

Heinlein had a point in 1959.

From Chapter Six (I'm still working on it) of The Path Of Life:

I also got a closer look at the gold decoration at the center of her collar.  It appeared to a large feather pointed
down superimposed over a short sword pointed up.

“Pen over sword?”  I said.

“Oh!”  Miriam responded.  “It’s my citizen pin!”

Miriam finished tying the necktie.  From this I would have to assume that they were still in general use.  Or that this was a contingency that the nurses were trained to deal with.

Miriam spoke again.

“I passed USAT.”  She said.  “I’m a full citizen.”

USAT.

Universal Sovereign Authority Training.

It was something I proposed as an alternative to Heinlein’s concept of Federal Service that he laid out in his novel Starship Troopers, as a means of separating potential good citizens from the kind of idiots who put the looters, god-kings, and just plain morons into the old American presidency and other public offices.

USAT, as proposed in my monograph, The Concept of Government, was both a course in civil knowledge and in basic military skills.  The successful graduate of the course would receive a voter identification card, and an infantry weapon to back up the voter card the way a coin or bar of gold would properly back up a banknote.

If they did it here as I suggested in the monograph then I was going to like living here.  And I was really going to like Miriam.

“Good!”  I said.

Miriam smiled.

I've wanted someone to write a novel with the following as the premise.  It could be the main story, or something as a background note to another story.

All of the nations of the earth bought into the global warming scam in the late 20th, early 21st century.  They enacted legislation to stop carbon emissions and cut back on greenhouse gasses.  However, the next ice age still came on, only this time with a vengence. Because of complete incompetence on the part of the scientists that were paid by the governments to discover "facts" about global warming, all of the cutting back led to a much more extreme ice age.  Had everything been left as is, the ice age would have been bearable.

One good thing did come out of it, though -- conservatives.  They used their survival training, hunting skills, and general intelligence to allow them and their families to survive.  In a fit of poetic justice, the ice age ended up killing mostly city-dwelling liberals accustomed to their technological creature comforts; the very thing they rebuked, and demanded others give up as bad.

Try this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallen_Angels_(science_fiction_novel)

"a nice house in secure undisclosed locationville. down none of your damn business lane, take a right on trespassers will be shot drive."

Oh ya I see you, nice house....did I mention Google Street View has been down  "None of Your Damn Buisness St", and Trespassers will be Shot Dr. 8^)

The Flower in the M14 muzzle brings back a memory.

This memory is of Colonel John Sharp.  He told me as a very young 1st Lt out in California in the late '60's he was standing quard duty with his platoon.  They where preventing anti-war protestors from breaking into their base in southern California.  At one point the protesters where putting flowers in the muzzles of their rifles.  As it turned out Jane Fonda happened to put a flower in the muzzle of then Lt Sharp's rifle.  The Colonel Sharp I knew when he wanted to had the coldest set of eyes you have ever seen,  when he turned on this look he looked like an mass murderer, and executioner.  Believe me with that stare he could make a dead body run in terror.  When Hanoi Jan put the flower in Lt Sharpe's rifle staring at her with this stygian look his told her to get it out or he would shoot her, that in fact he would rather shoot here the fuck her, she took the flower out a fled the scene.  To bad they didn't have video phones at the time.

Are these the troops on the Arizona border?   Just checking!

Grin!