"William W Johnstone - Ashes 21 - Betrayal in the Ashes (txt)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Johnstone William W)

Blanton, flushed and said, "Now, you listen to me, Raines. There are
charges we could bring against you. You-"

"Go sit in the car," the senior agent told his younger partner. "Right now!"

Alone with Ben in the living room, the older agent said, "I've got one
year to go, then I pull the pin, Mr. Raines. I want my retirement." He
sighed. "Look, what I'm about to say, I didn't say. OK? Hey, I agree
with you-one hundred percent. But you're fanning the flames of
insurrection through your writings. You have too many people ready to
pick up a gun and start a revolution. This administration is out to get
you, Ben. Not just you, but every writer who advocates change through
violence." He jerked a thumb toward the outside, where the younger agent
was sitting pouting in the car. "You see the type of men we're actively
recruiting now. They kiss the ground around President Blanton's feet.
And they're dangerous, Ben. The liberals have firm control of the
government, and they're not about to turn loose."

"Death will make them turn loose."

"Goddamnit, Ben, don't say things like that in front of me! You've got
to tone it down, Ben. If you don't, it's going to get rough. And I mean
that." He walked to the door, then turned to face Ben. "Tone it down,
Ben. If you don't, they'll silence you. And I'm telling you straight."

It wasn't about to get rough, it was already rough. Several writers of
popular fiction, those men and women who were openly scornful of the
present administration and were demanding change through
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their writings, were getting hassled by federal agents and agencies in
an attempt to shut them up. They were making the liberals in power (the
touchy-touchy; kissy-kissy;
disarm-and-stomp-on-the-rights-of-the-law-abiding-taxpaying citizens,
take-a-punk-to-lunch bunch) very nervous.

Ben and others could clearly see the writing on the wall. And it was
being written by hands who, politically, leaned so far to the left it
was nothing short of a miracle they could even stand up straight.

Thanks to liberals, conditions in America had deteriorated to the point
of anarchy: discipline in public schools was virtually nonexistent; the
juvenile justice system was a joke; teachers lived in fear of their
lives; law-abiding, tax-paying citizens were afraid when they went out
shopping, out for a drive, even sitting in their homes. The land of the
free and the home of the brave had become the land of the frightened and
the home of the powerless. The liberals in control were so terrified
that some decent, law-abiding taxpayer might actually use a gun to
defend or protect self, family, home, or possessions against some
slobbering, quasi-literate, shit-for-brains asshole, carefully