Seven Score and Four

By Dave Spiering

How would you feel if someone wrote a biography on you and they completely misrepresented you and what was important to you? How would you respond if, when confronted, they just shrugged it off or said that was how they wanted other to interpret your life?

Or what if you wrote an

• Language: English
• Publisher: URLink Print & Media, LLC
• Release date: Jul 5, 2022
• ISBN: 9781684862177

Dave Spiering

David Spiering and his wife live in Lamar, Missouri. He has bachelor degrees in both arts and theology in Central Christian College.For the past 25 years, Spiering has served at Milford Christian Church in several ministries, teaching Junior Church, helping in nursing home and hospital services,and heading a Sunday school class. He has also been active in the Right To Life movement since 1979, serving as chairman of the board for the Missouri Right To Life since 1993.

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1

The Groundbreaking

To say that the ground moved on Thursday, January 20, 2005, was an understatement of titanic magnitude. That its aftershocks would be felt spanning far more than a century was a stunning reality. Or maybe it was that our reality itself was shaken, with our perceptions of past, present, and future at the epicenter of this upheaval.

At 1:30 AM, Pacific Time, an earthquake registering 9.1 on the Richter scale devastated Seattle, Washington. The last one of such magnitude was believed to have occurred on January 26, 1700, long before the existence of cities and civilization as we know it. But it didn’t just hit a civilized world; it also challenged the resources of our failed government. More directly, it betrayed the ineptitude of the George W. Bush administration.

For years, scientists had been working on earthquake prediction. In the years since 2000, technology offered hope of profound breakthroughs, but budget prevented greater progress. Yet even so, scientists were able to give a nearly 10 percent chance of an earthquake during the decade. At the same time, Bush’s efforts to upgrade civil defense, building codes, and infrastructure were feeble at best. The results were nearly 850 deaths and devastation of unprecedented dimensions.

Psychics had also been busy in the year before this day. This was the year marking the second moon cycle since 1967, when the Age of had begun. Those reading what the spirits told them predicted this to be an earth-shattering day. In this case, it was partially literal. They also had visions of the demise of their greatest nemesis, the intolerant Christians.

The second major event of the day did nothing to dampen their expectations. John Kerry was inaugurated as America’s forty-fourth president. In a picture perfect campaign, he had capitalized on what later were proven as forged documents concerning George Bush’s National Guard record. Dan Rather of the CBS News courageously brought these to light. Kerry, junior senator from Massachusetts, worked hard with Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle to stifle Bush’s policies in the years leading up to this day. This won him strong support with the gay community, women’s groups, humanists, and proponents of genetic cloning research. To this, civil rights activists, environmentalists, and non-Christian religions added financial and volunteer support. In addition to Dan Rather, news media coverage proved critical in his campaign. Major TV networks, ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN, portrayed him as a progressive moderate with the answers to all our problems. The United Press International, Associated Press, and other news organizations played their part as well. Because of strict enforcement of the Shays-Meehan campaign finance law, opponents were significantly stifled. Anyone willing to break this law by addressing Kerry’s stand against right wing extremist issues in the sixty days before the election was already in jail. The same rules netted him a total of 58 Democratic senators, and 302 of 435 in the House. His running mate, Californian Dianne Feinstein, became the first woman vice president. Even her senate seat had been saved for her party.

But neither of these events quite matched the significance of the UCLA scientist’s announcement. On the day before, they had successfully tested a time travel device. A computer and several lab animals had journeyed back to 2001 and returned unharmed after a three-hour stay.

Wormhole travel had been theorized by physicists for years. Now, it was a reality. But there were limits to its use. For starters, travel could only go backward in time. Another limit defied explanation. Objects traveling through time had to stay within a quarter-degree arc in relation to the sun. Travel was limited to roughly four-year increments. Also, objects arrived at the same time of day as when they left. Leaving at noon on January 19, 2005, it arrived at noon on the same date in 2001. Its return was done in the same way.

What baffled scientists was that this pattern seemed unaffected by our travel through the galaxy. Later experiments would show that traveling more than two hundred years was affected by this, or some unknown force, and was deadly. These were small details, though, to elated scientists and ambitious social engineers who now could boldly go where only science fiction could go before. None of the failed and feeble voices of an obsolete religious past nor a George W. Bush wannabe, could stop it from happening. A score of farsighted corporate donors and a new government policy guaranteed this.

Earthquake survivors were among the first to grasp the promise of time travel. For the three thousand fractured and thousands of other wounded families, it could provide a miracle healing. To be able to leave the area before it hit, or even not to have ever lived there at all, were now choices in the realm of reality. But in the months ahead, other demands to rewrite history became legion, among them the prevention of disasters, assassinations, and even wars.

Louis Pasteur said, Chance favors only the prepared mind. And twenty-first-century America, blossoming into the glorious freedom of post-Christian civilization, was ready. No longer could its narrow moral shackles bind her. Humankind had now evolved and redefined the family, human values, and even life itself to usher in an enlightened, brave new age. No outmoded scruples would now inhibit the use of this incredible advancement.

Politically, all the pieces were falling in place to turn theory into policy. The Supreme Court would, within days, find itself restaffed with seven progressives and only two reactionaries of a bygone era, Clarence Thomas and Sandra Day O’Connor. David Souter was now chief justice. Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader-Ginsburg were his closest associates. Nearly every reactionary federal judge was purged and replaced with a moderate. Part of the credit for this went to eight years of Bill Clinton’s presidency and four more to Tom Daschle’s heroics in blocking Bush’s radical right-wing nominees. Those remaining few were being challenged and impeached.

This Democratic control of the White House and Congress mirrored the morality of most young Americans. And for the first time in US history, a major political party recognized Christianity as a social evil and a threat. Bush had been a lackey of those bigots, a Don Quixote who attacked windmills of moral decay while our security and prosperity were imperiled.

Security concerns had now become urgent. After a decade of domestic terrorism that began with Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols in Oklahoma, it was a national priority. Americans now concluded that most of it, including the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, was preventable. All that was needed was a little more surveillance, a little more monitoring of personal lives, and more governmental control, especially of right-wing extremists. Americans were more than willing to trade a little liberty for security—something narrow, intolerant, Christians could neither understand or accept.

But the Democrats and news media did. Bush’s anemic homeland security was expanded. To rely on deity for security was an archaic concept from a superstitious past. Government was responsible for the health, security, and welfare of the people. House Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Leader Barbara Boxer promised quick action in all areas.

By March 2005, bills were sent to Kerry providing for much greater national security. All weapons owners must submit to a background check that included any association with potential fringe groups and especially fundamentalist Christian. All firearms, even antiques, would be profiled by ballistics fingerprinting. Owning more than three required a special annual license. Also, any chemicals or materials that could be used in any way to make bombs, ammunition, or any weapon of any sort were monitored. To avoid issue with the forty-two Senate Republicans, these votes were taken in an emergency meeting at the Pentagon, where only twenty-two of these Republicans cleared security. Kerry promptly signed them all into law.

Within weeks, fraudulent circumvention of these new laws led to new verification rules. Since so many could be monitored through use of driver’s licenses, the genetic fingerprinting of all drivers became law. In addition, license plates were fitted with a locator chip to enable the tracking of any vehicle at any time. Within the next eighteen months, all vehicles would have a mandatory genetic ID ignition lock to prevent anyone but authorized drivers from operating them.

Campaign finance rules were further tightened. In one Missouri race, several private individuals worked together, circumventing the law, to keep Kit Bond in the senate. Each one of them individually had gotten the word out on his opponent’s record, thus luring voters into voting for Bond. This was now illegal. But a legal exception was amended into that law for victims of prior discrimination to do so, gays, minority groups, woman’s rights, environmentalists, and the like. Once again, Kerry signed it into law.

As the year progressed, social issues were the focus of legislation, with the intention of correcting past injustices. The gay community won full civil rights. This included marriage, social security, survival, and insurance benefits. More importantly, it banned religious discrimination. Churches could not exclude professing gays or lesbians from either membership or leadership positions. To a lesser degree, the same applied to practicing drug addicts, adulterers, alcoholics, or others labeled as sinners. No church could legally condemn these people or attack their lifestyle choices. It was time for the church to learn a little tolerance and to practice a little love. All churches and ministers were also required to be licensed and to obtain governmental approval for all their functions.

Other laws were enacted to address the family. Spanking or any other acts of violence or coercion of children were outlawed. Home schooling was banned, as was compelling a child to attend religious services or training. Child health and education were emphasized, proper diet and physical activity mandated, and parents of overweight children faced stiff penalties. Smoking of tobacco in any place children lived, or even frequented, was prohibited as well.

As 2006 dawned, even more progressive civil rights policies were enacted. All victims of past injustices, as a race, class, or even individuals, were now entitled to reparations for their injuries. All Blacks, Indians, and Hispanics received a negotiated cash settlement voucher for past injustices. To pay for all of this, churches, gun owners, and anti-abortion groups were hit with lawsuits and special taxes to pay for their past sins. Those deemed as leadership of these groups also had all tangible property confiscated and could be specifically sued by victims of past abuse or discrimination.

By 2006, most earthquake survivors had been able to pretty much put their lives back together. Some relocated; others were rebuilding in Seattle. Their US senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, were grateful for how Washington, DC, had responded to the crisis. But the tragic memory of the catastrophe could not be erased from much of the Northwest.

While the time machine testing was still mostly top secret and in its experimental stage, Seattle was exerting tremendous pressure for its use. If a team of credible experts were sent back in time to Seattle, 850 lives and a lot of property could be saved. The major limitation was that these travelers would have to go back to January of 2002. Since the wormhole had to line up with a past position in earth’s orbit. An early exodus would likely send the economy of the region plummeting. It could also pose major security risks to the nation, not just by a mass exodus, but by a potential leak of all the political changes that were to occur in 2005. Like it or not, 2002 America was not yet ready for that kind of change. Even 2006 America was struggling. The mission would also jeopardize the existence of the time machine itself, as Seattle, Portland, and Tacoma were critical in providing so much technology and hardware to develop it. Any mission to save Seattle would have to wait until late 2008. The plan was put on hold.

Meanwhile, the time travel experiments was exceeding all expectations for those involved. Paleontology professor Vernon Nelson successfully visited his grandfather in March 1946, a year before the professor’s birth. In April of 2006, he began a series of travels all the way back to 1906. Later, other scientists would go back as far as 1810, but they were almost lost in their return trip at that point.

By August, scientists had been able to open the travel window to up to 300,000 mile arc around the sun for extremely small objects, fueling hopes for freer travel.

Objects the size of a frigate were successfully transported that month. In September, a hovercraft in flight was transported. From April on, efforts were made to conduct all tests in underpopulated regions, but an occasional stray probably fueled UFO legends. Both the scientists and the military worked well together in all missions. Any discord that did arise was from the public, as the debate over time travel’s potential was intensifying.

But the country had other issues to deal with as well. Among them was national health. Of great concern was the growing toll of preventable diseases on an aging population. Not only were these an emotional drain on family members, they put a financial burden on society too. Tobacco use alone caused terrible strains on the health care system, as had alcohol and other types of substance abuse. But a silent epidemic of poor diet and exercise habits threatened to sink the whole system.

The new government took broad steps to correct these issues for future generations. Following the bold leadership of California, junk food and beverages had already been removed from the nation’s schools. In March 2006, any food that was determined to be junk food was assessed a health tax. To address the obesity crisis, all Americans were put under monitoring for weight and cholesterol levels. A high cholesterol level, or body fat over 30 percent landed a person into a compulsory diet program.

To protect both our health and the environment, the emissions of greenhouse gasses were punitively taxed as well. Again, following the lead of California, the emissions of carbon dioxide headed the list. Drivers of vehicles not meeting the new standard now paid stiff annual vehicle taxes. By the end of 2006, the Kerry administration had chalked up a stellar record in strengthening America’s heritage of rights. A foundation had been laid for a safer, freer, healthier, and more prosperous future.

But not everyone in America seemed pleased with these achievements. In every region, Christianity was on the upsurge. What was even worse, all this growth was in the fundamentalist sects. No longer meeting in public centers, they met in homes or private businesses. Over 45 percent of Americans now associated with these fringe groups. There weren’t enough government agents, or even civilian volunteers, to police all of them, and their total rejection of true civil rights was impeding the nation’s progress.

Unfortunately, they also could vote. Some states, as with California, found ways to stem the tide. With a comprehensive voter identification system, that state pioneered a program that canceled voting rights of these fundamentalist subversives. What made the program so successful was its in-house camera surveillance program. Anyone suspected of extremist sympathies was monitored, labeled a felon, and denied voting rights.

Even so, in the fall of 2006, Republicans scored significant gains. In the House, they gained seventy-eight seats, putting them just three short of a majority. In the Senate, they gained six, to hold forty-eight seats. Unfortunately, progressive-minded Socialists, Greens, and Oxygen (woman’s) parties bled votes that might have prevented this. It also posed a potential crisis.

Calling a lame duck session of Congress, leadership was able to pass a national program after the California model. In addition, to prevent small parties from affecting future elections, all candidates were now required to obtain a federal license before campaigning. Only the top two contenders would be approved. While this upset some party supporters, a consensus was reached to pass this needed change. When it did, even the Supreme Court signaled an unwillingness to overturn it. A fear of a return to the era of institutionalized Christian bigotry trumped all lesser concerns.

During 2006, advancements in time travel capabilities were so numerous that they often failed to grab front-page attention. In October, the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk made an historic journey, embarking to a lonely and rarely traveled spot in the Denmark Strait where she was locked into the wormhole field. Departing on October 9, she was transported back to October 9, 1978. For twelve hours, she recorded every radio frequency her sensitive gear could pick up before returning to 2006. By year’s end, the movement of a whole fleet battle group was achieved.

What remained to be determined yet was the actual mission. Any intervention into the past would alter the present. This was brought home in December. In an experiment designed to tap the sun as an energy source, a power surge inadvertently mirrored back at the sun. This bruised the sun as the device was set on December 13, 1862. A mass of plasma energy was deflected, which prevented a display of the Northern Lights on the night of the battle of Fredericksburg. While the unalterable records in the UCLA science vaults still had a record of the lights on that date, no other historical accounts now did. While this change didn’t alter the course of the Civil War, it did serve as a warning as to what could happen. The devise was also lost as it ricocheted into history unknown.

Several ideas for a mission now competed with each other. One was to go back to 1947 and avert the Cold War. Another was 1939, prior to the outbreak of World War Il, or 1911, prior to the First World War. Each time, benefits were compared to risks, and fears that somehow the wrong parties—such as Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany or fundamental Christians—would find a way to benefit. Also, there were concerns about economic or social disruption and of the failure to stop an earlier preventable atrocity.

Two things were certain. Since America created the technology, she, with limited input from the rest of the world, would determine the mission. Secondly, any mission would require a significant military force. Kerry secured funding to pull numerous ships and aircraft out of mothballs and to restore them to mission capability. Crews were already in training for their operation. Old armored vehicles, trucks, transport, and storage equipment were to be overhauled. Thirty portable runways capable of handling any aircraft were ordered.

The very politically popular call for returning to pre-earthquake Seattle was now being given little more than lip service. Social reforms and the prevention of past atrocities was now taking center stage. The educational community was in the forefront, calling for the redressing of past injustices. One such concern was the massacres and forced relocation of the Native Americans. The issues of women’s and children’s rights came up frequently, too. Persecution of the non-Christians, whether atheist, Wiccan, pagan, or Muslim, was an unacceptable outrage. So was the mistreatment of alcoholics, adulterers, and those living alternative lifestyles by a legalistic Christian establishment.

One issue more and more on people’s minds was our past involvement with slavery. For years, the educated elite had focused on a collective guilt for the sins of prejudice and discrimination. Now, advocates of redressing other areas of past wrongdoing were coming to a similar conclusion, a return to the Civil War era. This time frame appealed to much of the rest of the world as well. In Europe, it was a time when Darwin was winning the intellectual community. The forces of socialism and self-determination were on the rise. And German nationalism could be halted.

As early as April 20, 2005, Susan Sontag of The New York Times had raised the question of What if… in reference to the Civil War. Stem cell therapy in 2004 gave her a second chance over leukemia, and she now saw herself as a visionary. But it was not until September that other publications began to pick up on the idea. A consortium of Southern leadership led by Earnest Hollings, whose state, South Carolina had lead the rebel charge, advocated a rewriting of history beginning in the 1860s. This prompted a series of articles in late October and into November by the Times. Only this time, other papers began to coalesce around its promise.

In April 2006, the Brookings Institute began an in-depth study of Civil War era intervention. If social engineering and nation building could work in the twenty-first century, why not the nineteenth as well? A window for the greatest probability for success was proposed. Since the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect at the beginning of 1863, America was awakening to focus on a moral cause. But if intervention was postponed until 1864, this would allow the radical Republicans and the religious right to take center stage in American politics. Also, if the dreadful carnage of Gettysburg or mayhem of Sherman’s March to the Sea were averted, the result would be a much kinder and gentler history.

By mid 2006, a general consensus was beginning to form. Still, special interests were unsettled on this point in time; some argued for intervention as early as the 1820s. These voices wanted to avert many of the scourges against the Indians, protect the environment during the advance of the Industrial Revolution, and check European imperialism. Others wanted to wait until time travel technology could take them back to the American Revolution. A few even spoke of going back to the birth of Jesus and ending Christianity before it could begin.

It was not until certain issues were settled in the Lame Duck session that this one could be fully resolved. Although many wanted to go back to 1800 or before, technology could not safely provide this option. With the present resurgence of radical fundamentalism, any wait for this technology to become reality was risky. Already nearly a dozen plots to destroy the wormhole device had been uncovered and thwarted. As for a mission to the 1820s, the infrastructure and transport systems of the day were too primitive to be easily converted for use. Even those of the 1860s were lacking, but adaptations could be made. The year 1863 fell into the immediate four-year cycle and was a pivotal point in history. There was not yet enough promise to allow an attempt for 1862 or 1864, and risks outweighed the probability of success. The mission goal was beginning to jell on 1863 and definitely before Gettysburg. But once again, another issue had to be resolved first.

Standing firmly in the path of any plan was the powerful minority party in Congress. Buoyed by their election gains, they now had enough power to block Kerry’s agenda. Their forty-eight members in the Senate could filibuster almost indefinitely. In the House, they could easily find at least four Democrats who could be bribed into their camp on any given issue.

Kerry would have to go above Congress if he had any hope of achieving his mission. Executive order could only go so far, as he would run into the War Power’s act that his own party had enacted back in the 1970s.

He realized his only hope lie in what amounted to a sacrifice of a large degree of American sovereignty. He appealed to the United Nations. On February l, in a speed unknown in UN history, both the security and the general council approved the 1863 project. In exchange, Kerry agreed to accept UN sponsorship of it. While officially the UN was in charge, Kerry would lead a coalition to rewrite history. This coalition of at least thirty-six nations would send a contingency to join a predominantly American-based force. While giving lip service to the UN for approval, for all intents and purposes, Kerry would have free reign.

In so doing, Kerry irrevocably opened America and her territories to UN authority. All US laws and policies were now subject to international scrutiny, and the military now had to swear allegiance to both the US Constitution and to the UN as well. For American forces abroad, this was nothing new. In Bosnia, under Bill Clinton, American personnel had been required to swear allegiance to the UN. Those radical few who refused were court-martialed. Most Americans recognized the frivolity of the issue or simply ignored it. Now, the need of the hour took it one step further.

This time, a number of voices were raised, namely the forty-eight narrow-minded Republicans in the Senate. To address this, the UN had conferred on Kerry a significant new power. Under UN laws that now applied to the US, any governmental entity or person suspected of terrorist intent could be removed, by force if necessary, from their position. With this new power, Kerry now had the authority to tame Congress.

The next day, Friday, February 2, Kerry presented his package to the US Senate. Vice President Feinstein, on Kerry’s behest, allowed each senator to speak for fifteen minutes prior to casting their votes, while at the same time, overriding any attempt at a filibuster. Christopher Bond of Missouri had the distinct honor of being the first Republican to do so. After voicing his deep misgivings, he voted no. He was suddenly branded as a terrorist and impeached. A proxy voter was appointed to take his place.

The Republicans then deferred, letting Orin Hatch of Utah, Senate minority leader, address the body. He spoke of a day in Roman history. In 83 BC, amidst a crisis largely of his own making, Sulla forced the Roman Senate to declare him as their Supreme (dictator). While he addressed them, they were distracted by tumult in the streets, the death cries of thousands of his opponents. Now, it was 2006, and Kerry was making himself Supreme, but in his zeal to rewrite the past, he would doom the future. Before Hatch could continue, he was arrested. As he was removed, he cried out, I was born free, I will now die free. The Republican party died with him that day.

But a majority of Americans seemed no longer concerned with issues of sovereignty or separation of powers. They had become enchanted with a greater vision, one of rights for all, of environmental protection, and bringing peace and harmony for everyone except for right-wing extremists. They embraced Kerry’s moves with overwhelming zeal. Media icons like Dan Rather and Ted Turner most eloquently whipped this support into a gigantic appeal for volunteerism and sacrifice. To show theirs, they offered their services in the coming mission to rewrite the American legacy.

By late March, operation plans were completed and set in motion. On Tuesday, April 24, 2007, the first military expeditionary and support units would begin arriving in obscure locations, such as Bonneville in Utah. By the twenty-sixth, key locations near large cities would be secured. Air units were scheduled to begin action against Southern targets on Friday the twenty-seventh, or Monday on the 1863 calendar. Lincoln would then be contacted. By the twenty-ninth, a force of nearly 560,000 UN coalition personnel were to have arrived. Of this force, about twenty-thousand would be non-American.

To meet the challenge, Kerry relied heavily on units pulled out of reserve, with weapons out of retirement. But the mix also included many new and ultra modern ones such as the USS Donahue surveillance vessel, and three B-2 bombers. Five aircraft carriers, the Constellation, Coral Sea, Forestall, Enterprise, and Kennedy were the backbone of a 110-ship fleet. Retired nuclear vessels, such as the cruisers Bainbridge and Long Beach were readied. Over 2,500 aircraft with a heavy emphasis on helicopters and cargo transport were to support seven combat divisions. Portable harbors, the now twenty-four runways, bridges, electric generators, storage bins, and mountains of materials were to go as well. All but about fifty thousand of those involved were past or present military personnel.

It was anticipated that the South would be shock and awed into capitulation by May 1, and that Lincoln and the North would welcome the Coalition as liberators. Quick consolidation of power should keep Europe, especially France and Britain, out of the war. By midsummer, diplomacy, economic opportunity, and technological marvel would persuade North American and European leadership to accept Coalition directives. By year’s end, most, if not all, of their world-building plan would be completed.

The domestic scene in America was beginning to unravel, though. Much of it was senseless violence and vandalism, primarily by those under age twenty. The failed policies of the Bush administration, to adequately fund education, meet the needs of one parent families, or to properly address security and law enforcement programs all contributed. Bush was more interested in faith-based initiatives (forcing religion), abstinence programs (rather than condoms), and promoting individual responsibility rather than facing reality. Now the nation was paying for it in aimless youth having no purpose in life and bent on venting their frustrations on society.

Another Bush failure, neglecting the economy, caused a recession that began in early 2006. While many ignorant voices falsely blamed the Kerry agenda of health, economic, security, environment, and civil rights reform, the news media rose to defend the administration and the righteousness of its goals. Unfortunately, many of the newly unemployed weren’t farsighted enough to see past the lies, joined with the fundamentalists and were now contributing to the problems. While the youth were without vision, these older ones saw themselves as being without opportunity in the new America. As many lost homes and