"William W Johnstone - Ashes 18 - Flames From the Ashes (txt)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Johnstone William W)

the FBI. Ben had tried, in his books and in his lectures, to call the
alarm. He had been met at the best with indifference, at the worst with
open hostility.

"Don't rock the boat" and "bend with the bamboo" had become the national
philosophy. The Japanese were selling America televisions, VCRs, and
what later proved to be cheaply made, and then buying up a whole lot of
America with the proceeds. Every ayatollah and two-bit strongman in the
Middle East thumbed his nose at America. The Chinese communists raped
the minds of 600 million people and Uncle Sam paid the bill for it
through "Most Favored Nation" trade status. Latin America made gringo
bashing the national pastime. The European commu-

8 nity looked down their haughty, pseudoaristocratic noses and quietly
loathed everything American. Idiotic adventures in Africa had sent the
deficit skyrocketing, while the recipients of American largess secretly
hated their benefactors and plotted to destroy the nation.

Ben Raines saw all of this and recoiled in revulsion and
disillusionment. There had to be a better way. Then came the Great War,
and all that changed.

Ben Raines had been a soldier, as well as a teacher and author.
Sometimes, he believed he would spend the rest of his life as a soldier.
Particularly after the Great War. Out of the ashes of devastation and
disorder, Ben soon formed a small gathering of like-minded people. They
journeyed through the country, seeking others who shared their stern,
but fair, beliefs and their dreams of rebuilding a shattered nation.
While what was left of the central government (read: politicians) of the
United States still staggered around and pointed fingers of blame at one
another and appointed and staffed endless (and certainly useless)
committees to study this problem and that, Ben Raines and his growing
band of followers, who would soon be known as Rebels, were cleaning out
and setting up their own brand of government in the northwest.

It was called Tri-States, and before the nitwit politicians who made up
the new central government of the United States -its capital now in
Richmond (Washington, D.C., had been destroyed, a condition that many
Americans, whether a part of the Rebels or not, felt to be long overdue)
- knew what was happening and stopped stomping on their hankies, they
discovered that there was a country-within-a-country, and that
everything was just fine in the Tri-States.

To their shock and horror, the Tri-States had a zero crime factor, zero
unemployment, clean, pure running water, electricity, social services,
schools that actually taught useful subjects to the young, medical

9 care for all, and all the other amenities that made life good for the
law-abiding. Everything just hummed along peacefully in the Tri-States.
And they did it all without help from the central government. They even