CRA$Hmaker: A Federal Affaire: A Novel

Anyone who occupies a federally elected office should read this book. Even though it's a work of fiction, there is enough philosophical, legal and moral substance to justify it's reading as a requirement for occupying a Federal office. Unfortunately, the subject matter may exceed the intellectual capacity of most, whether elected or appointed. For the average citizen, it's a must for understanding the inner workings of the government and how it evolved from a decentralized weak institution to the powerful Leviathan that dominates all.

CRASHMAKER serves up page after page of legal, Constitutional and economic arguments for the gold standard and truly limited government. In CRASHMAKER we sail the high seas of global finance and economics with ports-of-call in Constitutional and natural law, monetary history and policy, environmental wackoes, conspiracy theories and the role of morality in daily life. Frankly, to do a proper job of reviewing this tome requires an advanced education in law and economics. Undaunted, I will proceed with my own amateurish efforts. As the authors themselves put it, "CRASHMAKER challenges the reader - in its themes, its characters, even its style and vocabulary. But by design. For any people capable of self-government deserves and demands something more substantial than politically sanitized intellectual pabulum." (Pgs. iii-iv) The book's TWO volumes and 1572 pages should not intimidate potential readers as the average chapter length is only 4.5 pages long. This makes any individual chapter a fast read. At the end of this tome, the discerning reader will reach the inevitable conclusion that it took a great deal of education to write it. I assure you that when it comes to income taxation as well as monetary history and policy that they know the subjects inside out, upside down, forwards and backwards. To share just one example of their breadth of learning, they mention that Spanish churchmen such as Saravia de la Calle, Martín de Azpilcueta and Luis de Molina were the intellectual precursors to the Austrian School of Economics, and that Spanish theologian Francisco de Vitoria was talking about the unalienable individual rights and sovereignty of the people two centuries before Thomas Jefferson, [p. 818]. In fact, one of the authors claims to "not be disabled by his four degrees from Harvard." I predict that readers who enjoyed Atlas Shrugged will enjoy CRASHMAKER more as there are no long winded, 68 page speeches to wade through. The philosophical arguments are structured in the form of rancorous debates between opposing camps within meetings of the FED's Board of Governors, or economic conferences, simple conversation, talk shows and the like. This presents multiple sides of any given issue, avoids Ayn Rand's polemics, and makes for a much more interesting novel. Nevertheless, you can depend on the heroes {as well as the authors} to stand foursquare behind guns, the gold standard and limited Constitutional government. The real thing, that is. ~James J. Odle writing for THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE