Founders

So, I 'read' this book on a long car ride.  Founders. By James Lesley Rawles.  I liked Patriots, and I like this book too.  But their are quibbles.

A husband and wife team walk from Chicago to Idaho, mostly.  Sure they hole up on farms offering their skills as security, but there are long stretches they go with no real visible means of getting enough food.  Less realistic because of that. They get a flu, slight injuries, and one nasty one, and that's it.  Lucky.  Too lucky.

After the war, the gov't that form is an idyllic minimalist one.  A near ideal libertarian one.  Do you know how luck the country would have to be to get a good government after a collapse and war with occupying UN forces?  We were lucky enough to get what we got in the 1780s.

And about the UN... So the the US collapses economically, but Europe does ok?  I don't go along with that.  If the US get's a cold, the rest of the world with any sort of wealth gets pneumonia.  Even China would be scrood.

New Amendments come to the Constitution to cement this Libertarian gov't, vesting power back to the states and hamstringing federal power.  Well except for a new Amendment that says the States can't trample the 2nd Amendment anymore.  So do the States have power to govern themselves or are they being forced by the Feds?  Oh, and the 14th Amendment is dumped.

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.
Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.
Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

So ALL that is bad?   You'd need to do something with Section 3 after a civil war, maybe.  No reason to worry about Section 1 naturalizaton stuff if you dump the trapping of the welfare state and wealth transfer.  And the rest of 1 is good, depending on your judges.  Section 4 would probably need to be altered to say 'no more debts, anyhow'.

It seems the only people that would survive the circumstances described would be farmers, and we see lots of examples in the book.  I am wondering how 150 million Americans do.

The book is more churchy than the previous.  Lots of witnessing.  That is what it is, and is ok, I guess.  Not really my cuppa. 

The Patriots book was as much instruction as a novel, and I liked that.  There is some survivalist instruction here, but not as much.

There is that wookie suiter shout out to Tam in there I liked very much...