Selected Works of Arthur C. Clarke by Arthur C. Clarke

Author:Arthur C. Clarke [Clarke, Arthur C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-7953-2509-0
Publisher: RosettaBooks
Published: 2012-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

23

TO PROMOTE PEACE

“I like to believe that people, in the long run, are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.”

—DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER

Over the years, the trees on the north side of the White House had been allowed to grow to the point that there were only three windows from which one could see Lafayette Park. But even before the arrival of the Trigger, the landscaping had less to do with the security of Presidents than it did with their insecurities.

Lafayette Park was, and had long been, the favorite gathering place for America’s political protesters and social reformers to voice their complaints. They were there every day, in all kinds of weather, raising handwritten signs on balloons, programming electronic placards, and declaiming amplified diatribes. It was, in the words of one pundit, “Washington’s permanent carnival sideshow—a motley collection of political and philosophical oddities given dignity only by their earnest innocence.” President Engler, whose policies had given almost everyone something to complain about, had dubbed Lafayette Park the Thorn Garden.

But in the wake of the Trigger announcement, there was a new and larger presence in the park—a decidedly more mainstream, middle-class population that looked more like families than fanatics. That presence had grown until it filled the park by day and overflowed it on evenings and weekends. But it was a well-ordered assemblage, so much so that even the Park Service was unable to help the Secret Service by finding a pretext for closing the park or thinning the crowd.

Calling themselves the Liberty Militia, the squatters provided their own toilets, picked up their own trash, stood patiently in line every day at Gate 5 to file their individual requests to see the President, and even sang respectably in tune during their nightly rallies. Raised on several thousand voices, those martial hymns and patriotic anthems could be heard anywhere on the North Lawn, for blocks in all directions, and inside the White House itself through any open window.

The only jarring note was that nearly every man, woman, and child in the park carried a firearm—a chaotic assortment of rifles and shotguns, pistols and revolvers, of all vintages and calibers. As a practical matter, none of the weapons posed a threat to anyone, because the park was well within the range of the White House’s Jammers. But as a matter of the laws still on the books, every one of the Liberty Militia’s weapons was a violation not only of federal statutes (for possession on National Park Service property), but of District of Columbia ordinances (for transporting them there through the streets of Washington).

The militia’s occupation of Lafayette Park could easily have become a public relations disaster on a scale unseen in the capital since the 1960s—with jails filled, open-air stockades being built, and still more protesters arriving to take the places of those arrested.

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