"That's a very interesting statement, Mr. Fellows, she said. "One might almost say that it constituted a threat.
"There's no ˜almost' about it, congresswoman. But it's not me who's making that threat.
"Is that to say that you speak for someone else?
"I speak for a lot of people, including the chief executive.
"Do you really? Then you won't mind if the Sergeant-at-Arms holds you in custody while we find out a bit more about you.
"You wouldn't dare. Everyone knows that the congress is a toothless tiger. You make a lot of noise, but in the end you're powerless.
John Davis stopped glancing back and forth between them and angrily slapped his palm on the table. "May I speak, please?
Simington glanced at Hove, and then nodded. "You have the floor.
"Thank you. When I challenged my class to put themselves in the position that the founders of this nation were in a few hundred years go, I wasn't asking them to imagine life before Edison. The idea wasn't to step into the past, but into the shoes of ordinary people faced with the extraordinary challenge of standing up to the clearly superior power of the government and business interests that were determined to treat them as serfs, as subservient to what was then the most powerful national force on Earth. That is the position we must all learn to speak from if we are ever to regain the sense of individual sovereignty that infused Thomas Jefferson when he wrote, ˜We the People' at the top of the Constitution.
The teacher from California glanced at each member of the committee in turn, and then at the paper in front of him. "Thierry Vlandoc is more than just a good student. He is exactly the kind of person who would have thrown in with the conspirators who started our own Revolutionary War, the kind of person who is unafraid to look those in power directly in the eye and tell them, in as loud and as clear a voice as he can, that there are limits to that power, and then to back up those words with action.
"I have no doubt that the founders were faced with exactly the same kind of threats that were made by the man standing behind me, by the man to my right, and I suspect was just made to the chair of this committee by Congressman Hove.
Hove glared at Davis, Simington smiled in breathless amusement, and a volley of shutter clicks fought to be heard over the anxious chatter filling the room.
"And that is precisely why my student's paper was so important, why it is so important. Thierry Vlandoc did a masterful job of mapping the sense of outrage that the conspirators in Philadelphia must have felt, to the situation that we find ourselves in today. His focus was on the consent of the governed. Well, the vast majority of the citizens of this country no longer give that consent. Their problem, though, is that the stated means to do something about that, which was laid out in the second amendment, has been stripped from them.
"In Jefferson's day, a well-regulated militia meant the concerted actions of individually armed members of the population to defend their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. Being individually armed is no longer a choice for most people, and so, in my student's vision, that task fell to the ordinary people who have been lured with lies and bribed with promises into taking up arms as part of the very government whose power was most definitely not derived from their consent. The soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines who have been sent abroad to perform the dirty work of invasion and occupation, making them act out the part of the very forces that this nation rebelled against.
"Thierry Vlandoc's fictional militia, in individual collective action, abandoned a role that was as abhorrent to their sacred honor as it would have been to the founders, and converged on this city to confront those who have, willingly, or unwillingly, participated in the desecration of that honor. And if I lose my own liberty, or even my life, to expose the people of this country to that message, then I'm happy to say that the cost will have been worth it.
Davis closed his eyes and sat back, spent. The room was very quiet for a moment, and then several pagers and cell phones sounded at once. Behind him, the door creaked open, and someone strode purposefully past him, towards the panel. He couldn't make out what was said over the growing noise around him. He opened his eyes to the sight of a very surprised Congresswoman Simington, standing across the table from him.
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