Keeping the flame

Historically, liberty required courage and self-sacrifice, Minutemen standing guard, Marines ready to deploy, ships at sea, submarines, Air Force silos and bombers to deter aggression. It takes a special sort of hero to patrol our highways, streets, and ports. I admire them -- brave, strong, clear-eyed defenders of peaceful American civilian life. We do a terrible disservice to ourselves and our innocent children, if we fail to stand up for liberty and its defenders. They are few in number, 1 million LEOs and 2 million soldiers, sailors, and airmen.  99% of us are civilians. Only 12% of Americans are legal gun owners capable of engaging a threat, if they're in the right place at the right time and adequately trained for battle.

I carried a gun a couple years in Central America, never liked it. The work I do is challenging, and at times I distrusted myself to have a lethal weapon nearby. I bought an air pistol to deal with critters, and it looks like a Ruger 9mm to impress the neighbors, but peace and freedom have to be guarded by others. My job is to defend liberty with words, often explicitly, but in fiction as well. Imagined stories are important, to show why armed men and women have to fight for freedom and justice. It's a controversial concept, often misunderstood by lunatic criminals and communists who feel entitled to kill. That's why my nonfiction work addresses the rule of law. No one has a right to kill, unless it's in self-defense and there's no immediate existential alternative to save life in an emergency.

Keeping the flame in literature is, in fact, more important than keeping the peace by force, because lawmen, military, and armed civilians need intellectual moral support. Morality is controversial and often misinterpreted. It has nothing to do with God or Allah. The supreme value in a free society is liberty. The highest virtue is courage. Having less of it than other people, I lacked enough physical courage to defend liberty by devoting my life to military service or sworn law enforcement. I did what I could, writing about justice and creating stories about courage, a crystal clear personal issue, because I know what it means to face danger alone. Our overseas troops are hamstrung by terms of engagement and prosecutorial military law. LEOs are hobbled by procedure and judicial due process. An individual cop or soldier on patrol is in terrible peril, if attacked by a murderous enemy gang. Courage is the moral power to face death, to rely on one's experience and talent, to fight evil with clarity and valiant resolve as a defender of civilian liberty.

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