- Rawles, James Wesley.
Land Of Promise.
Moyie Springs, ID: Liberty Paradigm Press, 2015.
ISBN 978-1-4756-0560-0.
-
The author is the founder of the
survivalblog.com
Web site, a massive and essential resource for those
interested in preparing for uncertain times. His
nonfiction works,
How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It (July 2011)
and
Tools for Survival (February 2015)
are packed with practical information for people who wish
to ride out natural disasters all the way to serious
off-grid self-sufficiency. His series of five novels
which began with
Patriots (December 2008)
illustrates the skills needed to survive by people
in a variety of circumstances after an economic
and societal collapse. The present book is the first
of a new series of novels, unrelated
to the first, providing a hopeful view of how free people
might opt out of a world where totalitarianism and
religious persecution is on the march.
By the mid 21st century trends already evident today have
continued along their disheartening trajectories. The
world's major trading currencies have collapsed in the
aftermath of runaway money creation, and the world now
uses the NEuro, a replacement for the Euro which is
issued only in electronic form, making tax avoidance
extremely difficult. As for the United States, “The
nation was saddled by trillions of NEuros in debt that
would take several generations to repay, it was mired
in bureaucracy and over-regulation, the nation had
become a moral cesspool, and civil liberties were just
a memory.”
A catastrophically infectious and lethal variant of Ebola has
emerged in the Congo, killing 60% of the population of
Africa (mostly in the sub-Saharan region) and reducing world
population by 15%.
A “Thirdist” movement has swept the Islamic
world, bringing Sunni and Shia into an uneasy alliance
behind the recently-proclaimed Caliphate now calling
itself the World Islamic State (WIS). In Western
Europe, low fertility among the original population
and large-scale immigration of more fecund Muslims is
contributing to a demographic transition bringing
some countries close to the tipping point of Islamic
domination. The Roman Catholic church has signed the
so-called “Quiet Minarets Agreement” with
the WIS, which promised to refrain from advocating
sharia law or political subjugation in Europe for 99
years. After that (or before, given the doctrine of
taqiya
in Islam), nobody knows what will happen.
In many countries around the world, Christians are beginning
to feel themselves caught in a pincer movement between radical
Islam on the one side and radical secularism/atheism on the
other, with the more perspicacious among them beginning to
think of getting out of societies becoming ever more actively
hostile. Some majority Catholic countries have already
declared themselves sanctuaries for their co-religionists, and
other nations have done the same for Eastern Orthodox and Coptic
Christians. Protestant Christians and Messianic Jews have no
sanctuary, and are increasingly persecuted.
A small group of people working at a high-powered mergers and
acquisitions firm in newly-independent Scotland begin to
explore doing something about this. They sketch out
a plan to approach the governments of South Sudan and Kenya,
both of which have long-standing claims to the
Ilemi Triangle,
a barren territory of around 14,000 square kilometres
(about ⅔ the size of Israel)
with almost no indigenous population. With both claimants
to the territory majority Christian countries, the planners hope to
persuade them that jointly ceding the land for a new
Christian nation will enable them to settle this
troublesome dispute in a way which will increase the
prestige of both. Further, developing the region into a
prosperous land that can defend itself will shore up both
countries against the advances of WIS and its allies.
With some trepidation, they approach Harry Heston, founder and boss of
their firm, a self-made billionaire known for his Christian
belief and libertarian views (he and his company got out of the
United States to free Scotland while it was still possible).
Heston, whose fortune was built on his instinctive ability to
evaluate business plans, hears the pitch and decides to commit
one billion NEuros from his own funds to the project, contingent
on milestones being met, and to invite other wealthy business
associates to participate.
So begins the story of founding the Ilemi Republic, not just a
sanctuary for Christians and Messianic Jews, but a prototype
21st century libertarian society with “zero
taxes, zero import duties, and zero
license fees.” Defence will be by a citizen militia with a
tiny professional cadre. The founders believe such a society will
be a magnet to highly-productive and hard-working people from
around the world weary of slaving more than half their lives to
support the tyrants and bureaucrats which afflict them.
As the story unfolds, the reader is treated to what amounts to
a worked example of setting up a new nation, encompassing diplomacy,
economics, infrastructure, recruiting settlers, dealing equitably
with the (very small) indigenous and nomadic population,
money and banking, energy and transportation resources,
keeping the domestic peace and defending the nation, and the
minimalist government and the constitutional structure designed to
keep it that way. The founders anticipate that their sanctuary
nation will be subjected to the same international opprobrium
and obstruction which Israel suffers (although the Ilemi Republic
will not be surrounded by potential enemies), and plans must
anticipate this.
You'll sometimes hear claims that Christian social conservatism
and libertarianism are incompatible beliefs which will inevitably
come into conflict with one another. In this novel the author
argues that the kind of moral code by which devout Christians
live is a prerequisite for the individual liberty and lack of
state meddling so cherished by libertarians. The Ilemi Republic
also finds itself the home of hard-edged, more secular libertarians,
who get along with everybody else because they all agree on
preserving their liberty and independence.
This is the first in a series of novels planned by the author
which he calls the “Counter-Caliphate Chronicles”.
I have long dreamed of a realistic story of establishing a
libertarian refuge from encroaching tyranny, and even envisioned
it as being situated in a lightly-populated region of Africa.
The author has delivered that story, and I am eagerly anticipating
seeing it develop in future novels.
December 2015 