Granite Republic

I’m not a frequent reader of fiction.  As I see it, there is enough real in this world to marvel at.  But I will, on occasion, pick up an alternative history novel.  It helps limber the imagination, broaden one’s view of the possible.  So, when J.P. Medved’s short story, Granite Republic, popped up on my Kindle recommended list, I gave it a try.  As a New Hampshire resident and a Free State Project participant, how could I not, given it portrays a libertarian revolution in New Hampshire?

The story is told via a stream of newspaper stories,  television broadcast  transcripts, magazine articles, blog posts,  emails, etc., as a confrontation between the libertarian-leaning state of New Hampshire and the left-leaning federal government comes to a head.  I won’t say much more, lest I give away plot details.  But I do recommend this gripping short story.

The one thing I expected to see, but didn’t, was an explicit mention of Article 10 of the New Hampshire State Constitution:

Government being instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security, of the whole community, and not for the private interest or emolument of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, whenever the ends of government are perverted, and public liberty manifestly endangered, and all other means of redress are ineffectual, the people may, and of right ought to reform the old, or establish a new government. The doctrine of nonresistance against arbitrary power, and oppression, is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind.

That would have been quite appropriate, I think.