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Well I have gone ahead and commited myself to writing an idea that has been bouncing around my head for about three years now. I have been an avid student of history, philosphy, and a veteran of the most recent incursions in the middle east, and the three have lent me a great deal of experience and perspective I would be remiss not to bestow to the world at some point or another. The problem has always been how. But I feel like, in the influx of distopian novels and successful series about the future, I may find a niche as an author with a great deal of (if contraversial) reality intertwined with the visions of the future. Where stories like Divergent, Hunger Games, the upcoming Maze Runner series, and others are purely based on future scenarios without much reference to actual current world events or how we got from here to there. This series serves to bridge that gap, and add to the possible futures of this seemingly hellbent global community with more realistic and educational foundation. Such topics as elite mulit-centurian family lineages, secret societies, and an underground resistance will all play factor, as is a common theme in all these types of stories, but there will be very accurate (as best as can be gathered) ties back to real world events and scenarios. Names and faces may or may not be changed, I haven't really decided yet, but I will commit the prologue to revealing in plain english the parallels between our "real" world and the story portrayed. The introduction (so far): There is a vast difference between the perception video games and movies give of the life and experience of soldiers and the reality of the same. I suppose it can be said that since time immemorial, the chasm between the accounts of historians and the experiences of combatants they wrote about has been such, as well. Maybe that is a small instance of history repeating itself, as it always tends to do. Likewise what we are seeing the world today is an occasion of historical repetition. We are at a time of unnecessary war; inexperienced leadership directing acts of war and international diplomacy as if that is all that matters. Decisions are made and actions taken without a consideration or pause for all of those affected, all the lives inevitably to be lost, and the entire worlds destroyed. The problem with our current situation is a profound lack of understanding of those people amongst which we conduct these operations of foreign policy. Perhaps the most disgusting aspect of this entire scenario is the Commander in Chief, while inexperienced in war and combat, comes from an international background. His family--whether you want to believe he was born in the USA or not--comes from Kenya, an impoverished and often unstable part of Africa. His childhood was spent globetrotting from country to country, albeit under the umbrella of Islam, which I suppose introduces stability to recompense the shuffling about. But because of this, he should understand, perhaps better than most Americans ever could, the intimate details of the places we have so thoroughly injected ourselves and our policies, and thus he has no excuse for the severe and indiscriminate bombing campaigns that have comprised most of his foreign policy as President. In the end, it is the flag of the United States of America that is on every plane, every bomb, and the shoulder of every soldier, and it is a perception of terror in the minds of every noncombatant that sees that flag in correlation with these campaigns. The people of these nations do not have CNN, Fox, or whatever network you choose to subscribe to, they only see their homes and neighborhoods destroyed and American soldiers with guns associated with it. It is said that one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter. This statement is not one of subjection, but of reality. When I was in Afghanistan for the first many months the people of Afghanistan thought we were Russians. They knew nothing of 9/11, Osama Bin Ladin, or al-Qaeda. When you deal with countries such as these, they have no understanding of geography and flags and politics. They have no access to international news and current events. They only know what they know, and what has been taught to them by their elders. And all of them only know what is empirical, what they can see and prove through demonstrated reality. As Americans and anyone else in a developed nation, we take advantage of our access to international news and aggregate sources like Drudge Report, and forget that we are involved in nations that have no access to that information. That said, those people tend to be exposed to more reality, because there is an absence of politics and bias, because they actually live in…wait for it… The Real World. Our foreign policy is hinged on intelligence that is gathered without international verification and is often responded to with unilateral actions by a President who doesn’t have the power or the wisdom enough to belay an act of war in an effort to achieve a more diplomatic solution. He gives in to the war powers of his generals without any consultation with Congress or the American people, who are supposed to have the exclusive power to conduct acts of war. It is the duty of the American people to come together to defund this greatest act of terrorism on the world, and stop emboldening those labelled terrorists by conducting ourselves in a way more extreme than they ever could. I suppose it is only to be expected from a nation who responds to murder with murder (death penalty), and rape with enabling rape (men are statistically raped astronomically more than women, if you include prison populations, of which the US has the highest population in the world), and poverty with forced continuation of the same (pick any one of the 80+ welfare programs in America), but that is for another article. We must as the people of this nation, the people that the flag our neighboring nations see conducting all these bombing campaigns destroying their towns and lives represents, stop worrying about our personal self-image and come together to stop allowing the government to tarnish our collective national image for the sake of only their and their constituents (and controllers) self-interest. We The People gain nothing from war. Our homes, our jobs, and our livelihoods are taken to pay for these expensive multi-thousand dollar bombs that are dropped on mud huts and children. The lives of our children and grandchildren are used as collateral to get loans from foreign bankers to finance this war, as has been done since they dropped the gold standard. The power is still with the people if only through majority. And if it takes cutting off the cable television and internet to get people to wake the fuck up and do something about it, then maybe we need to look at that as a means to an end. This is an introduction to my vision of the future from here. This is everything I believe and the foundation for everything you will read hereto forth. I firmly believe that history repeats itself, or at least humanity is limited to certain duration before it reverts to the same old shit. Enjoy, or be horrified, but know that I have to the best of my ability maintained truth and integrity in everything this is based on. ---from the author, Jesse Lohse, veteran and citizen of the Old AmericaDonate BTC: 1BJFJdMyy5ASC6uA4SZ9qEgsSNsGLg6RET The New America series

Hi all! I've recently completed a short story inspired by the voluntarist / liberty movement, and thought the community might find it enjoyable . Any critiques, criticisms, or comments in general would be appreciated. Also, if anyone is aware of any liberty-minded publishers of fiction, I too would love to be made aware! Thank you, my friends. Enjoy! All Is Fair in Love and Lottery Dating.doc

Hi everyone, I'd like to share a writing project of mine called The Odessia. It is an exploration of philosophy, economics, self-knowledge, child-rearing, feminism, and all manner of interpersonal relationships. The heroine of the story is a young woman called Odessa, who travels from place to place by means of magical bridges. In each locale she encounters individuals or societies who embody or which have adopted as supreme values certain principles. The narrative is driven mostly by Socratic dialogue: Odessa is genuinely curious and her relentless questioning (à la The Little Prince) either generates conflict or resolves it. If you'd like to read it, all the chapters that have been written to date (15 so far) can be downloaded in a single Google Document. Alternatively, I am recording readings on YouTube. Please let me know what you think, I'm very open to feedback! Also, I'd love to collaborate with other liberty-minded artists.

Hello everyone. I'm working a fiction project of mine, and I wanted to try a different style of writing for this one. The story is centered around 3 teenagers, Flint Coal, Mally Tate, and Errm Kladson, from a small town in America in the near future, on their pilgrimage through the wilderness in search of a place that holds the mysteries of the past. This project in particular is heavily inspired by Chuck Palahniuk's Rant: an Oral Biography of Buster Casey. It's a great book, and it's formatted as a series of interviews with people who know the main character, and as more and more people are interviewed, you begin to put the pieces together and unfold the plot. It also has a similar rural Americana flavor for large sections of the book. So anyway, this is the first interview, let me know what you think. Does it make sense? is it intriguing? Is it overdone? Thanks and enjoy. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Josah Huff: 58 years old, Sherman Town Sheriff “The guy’s named after rocks for Christ’s sakes. What’d you ‘spect from a guy named after rocks? Flint Coal.” He spits. “Wasn’t never good at nothin’ - growin’ up i mean. Never went huntin or fishin’ much. Never liked workin’ on the farm or helpin’ with the irrigation or reconstruction or nothin’ like that. Think when he was younger his mom tried to get him involved in the church, thinkin’ that... well, i don’t know, that it’d bring him outta his shell or somethin’. You know, all the grandeur, and the guidance of Elias an’ all. Look, I love Epsy, her family did so much for me back durin’ the End, and she’s very dear to me, so i could never say this to her face, but, truth is, if ya ask me, Flint Coal is all shell. What you see is what you get, and you ain’t seein’ very much neither.” “I don’t know what to say about him. He wasn’t exactly an open book, since he’s a mute I mean. Though I ‘spect that even if he were an open book, there wouldn’t be much to glean. The only thing he ever really did was look at rocks. Rocks an’ pebbles and such, rocks for skippin’, on the water i mean. he’d spend hours doin’ that, just skippin’ rocks. Weird right? Well, what’d ya ‘spect? He just never seemed present. What I mean is, most of the time whatever he was doing it felt like he wasn’t really there, ya know? He quit his schoolin’ pretty early on, and was never the life of the party at town get togethers if ya know what I mean. Schiff and Beck Kladson even offered to teach him how to help out with keepin’ the bees, seein’ as that was one of the few livings you could make ‘round here if you didn’t never talk to nobody. But 'cordin to Beck he was unteachable Elias said he was ‘disengaged’. So i guess the only thing he ever did, only thing he was ever engaged in, besides rocks, was with those trucks he and his uncle Goose found down by the lake. We were all surprised to see the black one drive up that morning; it’s been along time since anyone had seen one of those in workin’ condition. Impressed is probably the wrong word, no one was really sure what to make of it. ‘Specially since it was in the middle of Sunday Church and that truck was loud as hell. ‘Sides that we didn’t have much use for ‘em - the trucks I mean... well same is true for Flint i guess. Just puttin’ it out there, I don’t care much for Goose neither, I mean, he’s a nice enough guy, but he’s... Well Elias says he’s ‘eccentric’. I prefer the term, ‘screwball-and-a-troublemaker’ personally. But those two got along for some reason, Flint and Goose I mean. I don’t intend to explain it, much less understand it, but it’s the truth. He is probably the only real friend Flint had, growin’ up I mean. You’ll hear rumors that Goose is Flint’s real father. This is absolutely not true. Epsy is a respectable woman, an’ anyone who thinks she would do wrong and mess around with her own brother, as much of an oddball as he is, and then make up a story to cover it up? Anyone claimin’ that just doesn’t know what the hell they’re talking about. I’m not interested in adding fuel to that fire to let’s move on.” “No i guess. No one predicted it. It wasn’t foretold in scripture or written across the sky or nothin’. ‘N fact, I remember when I visited him on his eleventh birthday, I had given him this old uke -I played ukulele I was younger- and he, well, he didn’t know what to do with it. I sat there with him for an hour tryin’ to show him basic chords, bein’ all encouragin’ and whatnot, and he just gave me this look like - like he was sayin’, ‘what’s this for?’ like he didn’t get it, or that he didn’t like music. He didn’t even try. Anyways, that’s when i figured, ‘well, he’ll replace old Toab as the gravedigger when he grows up’. That was my prediction, and I was completely wrong. Flint Coal is good for nothin’. Not even’ grave diggin’. Well, to be fair i guess, he has turned out to be great at causin’ a big mess. Not just for me an’ his family, but for the whole damn town. Biggest issue we’ve had since those looters from Oak L’oma came up here. But it’s like I said earlier: What’d you expect?” “Elias had said -he told me a few weeks back- that he heard him talk once, and I trust Elias. Seems to me it’s a good sign if it means Flint can talk, even if he don’t ever show it. Then again, I wonder if that really gives Elias any comfort- knowin’ his daughter ran off with Flint I mean. But how much comfort can one really find in a trauma induced coma? ‘Course Mally says Flint talked to her too. Some people think that if someone’s quiet and odd, someone who just don’t fit in, that deep down they’re really a good person just waitin’ to be coaxed out. Seems to me, if someone seem off, if it seems like they’re hidin’ somethin’, it’s ‘cause they are. More often than not, what’s different is harmless, but this is an exception to that rule. No, no one saw it coming. We all thought he was just a oaf. No one would’ve guessed he was- that he would do something so... extreme. Elias and I had talked about all this before, and he said that he saw somethin’ special in that boy, even though they didn’t get along, and that one day we’d all understand Flint’s purpose in this world. But, bein’ that he’s a preacher an’ all, i mean, ain’t he gotta say that? It’s all a big mess. I can’t make heads or tails of it. Elias might be the only one who knows what Flint and Mally are up to, but I can’t wait around until he wakes up. Fern says it could be days or even weeks if - God forbid - if ever. Ask me again when i’ve tracked down and killed Flint Coal. Then maybe I’ll have some answers for ya.”

I'm what some people call a "PT", which stands for "perpetual traveler" or "perpetual tourist" or what have you. I'm also seemingly addicted to writing, and I now have two novels out, the most recent of which is a dystopian/utopian tale of the collapse of the United States and what happened thereafter. The title is The Dropouts. The subtitle is America Died and Nobody Cared. Elements of the main plot were heavily inspired by Stefan Molyneux's works here on this site. You can read it on your computer for free on Authonomy at http://bit.ly/1580ByF or, if you want to carry it around in your Kindle you can find it at http://amzn.to/14LsYaxf. I'm told it will soon be available in paperback, but it isn't today. Maybe by the time you read this it will. If the old style physical book is what you enjoy, try Amazon and search the title. Reader reactions are of course always good to see. If you go to Authonomy you'll see a place for you to rate it and leave comments right there. I hope to get to know you better as time goes on. Paul