Glen Tate: 299 Days: The Restoration

Drugs were decriminalized, but truly scary drugs, like meth, could be criminalized, though it would take a two-thirds vote of both houses of the Legislature and the signature of the Governor. This was a compromise because many people wanted total drug decriminalization.

This showed the debate among the pure libertarians and the “practical” libertarians. Grant considered himself one of the “practical” ones. He had basically run a small community and saw things slightly differently than the “pure” libertarians, but not too differently.

“Civil forfeiture,” which was where the police and prosecutors got to keep whatever it was they seized in a case would be eliminated. Getting the cash had been the prime motive in many prosecutions. That was over now.

Searches would be curtailed. A warrant would be required in almost every case. Searches would be rare, as they were intended to be by the Founders of the country.

This did not mean that crime was made easier with the new Constitution. A one-strike law was authorized for rape. One time and that person went to prison for life. Egregious cases, such as rape of a child, got the offender the death penalty. However, conviction required the testimony of two witnesses. Gone were the days of an ex-wife in a divorce case sending a man to jail and ruining his life with no evidence.

Restraining orders were changed. Grant was shocked to learn that, right up until the Collapse, a person could go to a kiosk—a little ATM-like machine—in a mall and simply say a person was harassing them and then a restraining order would be signed by a judge back in a court room. It was that easy: get mad at someone, go to a kiosk in the mall, and then get a restraining order against them, thereby ruining their life. There had been no need to even go to a court and look a judge in the eye, let alone have a jury decide if this person was really a harasser. That ended. In New Washington, the way to prevent people from harassing you was now to exercise your right to keep and bear arms.

The new state Constitution had a “no, really” clause in its version of the Second Amendment. The new version stated that the right to have and use weapons could not be limited by registration, permits, taxes, or licenses of any kind. The new Constitution provided that this right was not only for personal defense, but “to equip the people to ensure, as a practical matter, that the government honors its obligation to protect individual liberties,” and added that: “Infringements on the right to keep and bear arms, however seemingly slight at the time, will not be tolerated by the people, who have the right to overthrow any government attempting to infringe their rights.” That was a not-so-subtle threat.

To keep the government honest and to protect citizens, New Washington needed a militia, but not with that name, which had too many negative connotations. The new state constitution provided for the “Civil Guard,” which was voluntary and open to all men and women of a certain age. The officers of the Civil Guard would be elected by the members of the unit. The Civil Guard would answer to the people, not the government. The name “Civil Guard” was intentionally picked to contrast it from the “State Guard,” which answered to the state. The Civil Guard was specifically described in the new state Constitution as a check on the power of the government, which would prevent the Civil Guard from becoming a political goon squad like the FCorps had become. The State Guard would maintain a small full-time force that largely existed to be able to train and equip the Civil Guard in times of emergency.

Of course, the FUSA no longer existed except for on paper. The FUSA issued proclamations, demands, and pathetic court orders to the wayward states, but had no power to tell the free states what to do. It was limited to bossing around California, which was still in the FUSA, as well as the east coast states. Many states in the Midwest had broken into two parts, like New Washington: a Patriot new state and a Lima old state. The FUSA was a patchwork of little states and territories.

This made sense to Grant. The FUSA, with over three hundred million people, half a continent of land, and some extremely different cultures (Texas versus New York) had become too big to be one country. Grant thought about all the free republics of the past in Greece and the middle ages in Europe. They had a few million people at most and one basic culture. It worked just fine for a republic that small. Look at the original thirteen colonies; a small population and roughly similar culture.

New Washington was the same way. It had a reasonable-sized population and a similar culture since Seattle was not included. New Washington had a good chance of succeeding as a small republic, like Pierce Point did on a mini scale.

New Washington would consider being part of a union with the other free states and it was a decision that would be weighed for quite some time. There was no rush; New Washington was doing well on its own. It traded with the southern and western states. Business was booming. It was still small compared to the pre-Collapse economy, but was growing every day. People could feel that a real economic recovery was happening and they got to keep the money they earned for a change.

There were several currencies in use. Many local areas had Free Dollars, which were redeemable in gold or silver by free banks, like the ones issued by Joe Tantori’s bank.

In addition to local free bank currencies, the people of New Washington had quickly adopted the southern and western states’ currency, the New Dollar. There was no government decision on what currency to use; people just starting using the New Dollar because it made sense. That was the magic of a free market.

The New Dollar was actually backed by gold, silver, and, indirectly, oil. A person could take a New Dollar into any bank in the southern and western states, and eventually a New Washington bank, and walk out with gold or silver. They couldn’t walk out with a barrel of oil, but oil was indirectly backing the New Dollar. The southern and western states had plenty of oil and used it to buy gold and silver that was then used to back the New Dollar.

There was no inflation wherever the New Dollar was in circulation and people flocked to the New Dollar for that reason. This increased the economic and political influence of the southern and western states. Everyone wanted to hitch their cart to the economic powerhouse of these states.

There was no burning reason for New Washington to formally join a union of the southern or western states, however. That certainly might eventually happen, but New Washington had a stable currency courtesy of the New Dollar, so joining a union of states wasn’t necessary to have a currency. No one was trying to invade New Washington, so they didn’t need military alliances, which could suck New Washington into a war it didn’t want. Why get dragged into some border dispute between Wyoming and Nebraska or whatever just to be in a union of states with Wyoming? No, joining a union of states had to make sense to the people of New Washington. They were thinking about it. It was a big decision and any treaty to join a union of states would be voted on by the people. They had seen what being part of a too-large union of states ended up getting them.

A much bigger debate among the people of New Washington than whether to join the southern and western states was what to do about the “Seattle question,” as it became known. Should New Washington force Seattle to join it? To reunite the state so it had its old borders?

Most people in New Washington initially wanted a forceful reunification with Seattle. There was something mesmerizing about the old borders of the state. The whole state had to be under one flag.