Confederation of Dreams

By Chance DeWitt

In 1980, the New Hebrides was approaching independence from the joint governments of Great Britain and France. A group of tribal leaders from the northern islands, enlisted the help of Mike Oliver, a man who had written a book entitled " A New Constitution for a New Country," to assist them in presenting their people with a constitution that would accomodate their customs while assuring the world that the emerging country respected personal and private property rights of all of its inhabitants-citizens of not.
For a number of reasons Oliver sent in his place his attorney, Thomas Eck, to assist in drafting a constitution that was to be voted upon by the all the people. At first, the government-sponsored opposition was merely amused at this rag-tag group that would purport to challenge their authority. But after a groundswell of support made it clear that 80% of the people would vot in favor of the tribal version, strange things began to happen. A small plane, supposed to be carrying Eck was brutally machine-gunned as it landed on one of the country's eighty islands. All aboard died.
After narrowly escaping attempts to capture him, Eck finally was spirited away by a private plane, only to crash on a neighboring island, half of which was cannibal. Then the real ordeal began.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chance DeWitt
• Release date: Feb 16, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458046291

Chance DeWitt

Because of the controversial nature of his works, Chance DeWitt provides no information on himself, preferring to allow the readers to focus on the content of his books. That content, whether fiction or non-fiction, is gleaned from decades of his interaction with governments as both an advocate and a victim.

Book preview

Chapter One

The protesting dirt road spat gravel at the undercarriage of the speeding pickup. A spewing cloud of dust masked the mottled patches of rust that seemed to hold the battered truck together. The driver was in a hurry to get into town and meet with his lawyer. He was not in trouble, but he was more excited than perhaps he had ever been in his eventful life. He ignored the complaining squeaks and rattles of the bucking truck, focusing only on the phone call he had received minutes before. He had just been given the opportunity of a lifetime, particularly his lifetime.

I can’t let this one get by me, Mike Oliver said to himself as he approached the gray asphalt Highway 395 leading to Carson City, Nevada, and to his attorney’s offices.

A diminutive, mousey-looking man with an expansive forehead, thinning chestnut hair and doe brown eyes that seemed to incessantly dart from side to side, Mike hardly looked the part of the charismatic individual from whom officials of emerging nations had sought guidance. In fact, he was not charismatic, but his perceived physical shortcomings had been ignored by those who had been impressed with what he had proposed in his book.

Born Mikhail Olivetski in 1928 near the city of Vilnius in Lithuania, Mike was the fourth of six children in a profoundly Jewish family. In 1941, at the age of thirteen, he watched as his three older brothers and his invalid father were brutally murdered by Nazi invaders. He and two younger sisters, as well as his mother, were spared, but Mike was shipped to a Nazi concentration camp in Dachau. Fortuitously, his life was saved by a German colonel who took him away from the main camp. Whether the colonel’s motivation was charitable or lustful, Mike never disclosed, but during his captivity he became proficient at higher mathematics as well as German and French.

After the defeat of the Nazis, Mike returned to Lithuania which was once again under Soviet rule, having been previously annexed by the Soviets in 1940. Upon his arrival in Vilnius, Mike discovered that his remaining family had been executed by Stalin’s forces. They had been determined to be enemies of the state and were executed as a matter of national security.

What was left of my family after Hitler, was murdered by Stalin, Mike would often lament when he discussed political matters and governmental power.

In 1947 Mike emigrated to the United States alone. His mastery of German, Russian, French and English helped him obtain employment with Litton Industries, an electronics firm in Sunnyvale, California that had been awarded lucrative government contracts in the surveillance arena. While employed at Litton, Oliver developed electronics surveillance products that made millions for his employer, but nothing for him in excess of his salary. Under the terms of his employment, all intellectual property was owned be the company. It was not long after that Mike quit.

His exit from Litton was not motivated by the arguably unfair compensation structure, but solely because he saw the activities in which the U.S. government was beginning to engage—particularly when conducting surveillance on its own citizens. Even in those days, he saw aspects of government surveillance that were not unlike Nazi and Soviet undertakings in the past. This concerned him greatly.

Upon leaving Litton, Oliver moved to Carson City where he began to dabble in land development. At that time, Carson City, the state’s capital, was a sleepy town where the legislature met only every other year. But it was just becoming to be a destination for retirees and others who wished to escape the high taxes and oppressive regulations of neighboring California. Mike saw an opportunity and seized it. By acquiring small tracts of thirty or forty acres, he was able to fashion one acre parcels with roads, sewers and water which he sold to builders. The space-starved Californians snapped up these gigantic homesites.

Typical of Mike’s attitude toward life and government was the alpine sounding name he gave to several of his subdivisions—TANSTAAFL. In reality, it was an acronym for There ain’t no such think as a free lunch. Successive subdivisions were dubbed Tanstaafl #2, #3 and so on. Very few picked up on the significance of the name.

Mike rarely ventured beyond the thirty-five lot development model, and soon became known for his consistently top-quality projects delivered on time. More often that not, Mike had the lots sold to builders even before he had received final approval for his subdivisions.

In spite of this reputation and the demand for building sites, Mike never gouged his business associates. He sold for fair, even below market, prices, repaid his investors and pocketed what remained. His life was comfortable but far from lavish. He lived in a modest three bedroom rambler home in a middle class subdivision with his wife, Betty, and his two sons, Glen and Mark, and his daughter, Wendy. He drove a twelve year old Datsun pickup and eschewed a more opulent lifestyle even though his income may have warranted such. In many ways, Mike retained the simplicity of living which he had endured in Lithuania.

It was without doubt that the loss of his family at the hands of two successive oppressive governments, molded Mike into a zealot who believed in restricted and limited government. His experience in the United States as an employee of a government contractor specializing in surveillance did nothing to abate his fervor, and in 1972 he channeled some of his zeal to the authorship of a 110 page paperback book entitled A New Constitution for a New Country.

The thesis of his treatise set forth his ideas as to what government should be—limited, with powers of governance originating with the governed. It was upon what the United States had been founded, but, in Mike’s view, was quickly disappearing in recent years. Oliver contended that the government had no right to engage in activities in which a private citizen could not also engage, since the right to govern came directly from the people. No person, he contended, could give more power to the government than that person himself had. Thus, Oliver claimed the government had no right to take another person’s money without his consent and give that money to a third party, just because the government believes that third party did not have enough money. Similarly, the government did not have the right to throw a citizen in jail to protect him from himself, as long as that citizen posed no threat to someone else. In Oliver’s mind, as expressed in his book, the government’s sole purpose was to protect its citizens from force and fraud, particularly those who could not protect themselves. It was a government formed to defend its borders from outside aggression and not a government to exert excessive power on its citizens.

The appendix of the book contained a proposed constitution which Oliver contended reflected the principle of governance he espoused in his book. It was somewhat simplistic but refreshingly unconvoluted.

A New Constitution for a New Country was far from a best seller. Many critics in the U.S. scoffed at the idea of a Lithuanian Jew immigrant, with no legal or political background, purporting to criticize the American system. Besides, he was from Carson City, Nevada, hardly the political center of the United States. Who in the hell did he think he was?

But the book did have its supporters. Among those who valued its ideas and content were some leaders of foreign jurisdictions facing promised independence from their colonial masters. At various times, Mike had been contacted by leaders of Abaco, Tonga, Aruba, Fiji, and even the New Zealand Maoris, who all sought a greater degree of self determination than they had at the time. Mike spoke to them all, but in the end, none sought to engage his services. Whether it was Mike’s mousey and sometimes annoying demeanor or their own disinclination toward giving up what power they then possessed, no one ever knew.

But today things had changed. Mike knew that today’s phone conversation was the beginning of something big, something that would materialize into a new country. This time he would handle things differently. He would stay in the background and utilize the services of a professional. Someone who could write, speak and explain his constitution in a way that people would understand and accept. He would engage someone with the educational and professional background that foreigners would respect. He would need to convince his lawyer to take up the cause for him.

Chapter Two

Oliver screeched to an abrupt stop directly in front of a white Queen Anne Victorian home, the offices and home of his attorney, F. Thomas Eck, III. The large, two story structure, graced with a round turret on the northeast side of the building topped by a gray slate roof and boasting a porch that wrapped around the front and sides, was at one time the boyhood home of former Nevada governor, Charles Russell. Just north sat the boyhood home of former governor and new U.S. Senator Paul Laxalt, who once admitted to Eck that the Russell house was off limits for a year as a consequence of his liberating one hundred fifty of Mrs. Russell’s chickens imprisoned in the back yard.

On top of that, I couldn’t sit down for a week. Those suckers from Mrs. Russell’s apple tree made brutal switches.

The apple tree which seemed to straddle the north boundary between the Laxalts and the Russell’s was reported by the local newspaper, The Nevada Appeal, to be the largest living apple tree in Nevada. Even though it annually spread its canopy of white pink blossoms and green leaves over both yards for a total distance of almost forty feet, its rotted half hollow trunk attested to its numbered days. As a lawyer, he knew his potential liability for damage that a toppling tree would bring, but he could not convince himself to cut down that still producing, majestic piece of history.

The beauty of the neighborhood, the heart of Carson City’s historic district did not go unnoticed by movie makers, who filmed such movies as John Wayne’s last film The Shootist in Carson City. In fact, Eck’s home was used in that film as well as the movie Ty Cobb with Tommy Lee Jones, who, as Ty Cobb, beat his wife in the parlor.

The homes in the area had been built in the 1870s when Carson City was booming from the gold strike in nearby Virginia City and merchants became wealthy supplying goods to the bustling Virginia City. With Lake Tahoe just thirteen miles away and perching one thousand feet above it, Carson City’s western Nevada pine covered slopes provided a welcome respite from the parched and excavated gold fields of Virginia City.

Founded in 1864 by Abe Curry, who mapped out the streets, Carson City was named for John Fremont’s intrepid scout, Kit Carson. Although it became the state capital, in 1865, it never grew to the size of Reno to the north or Las Vegas to the south. It still retained a small town atmosphere when Tom Eck first saw it in 1968 while he was visiting his parents, who had moved there from Los Angeles. Tom’s first reaction to the ‘hayseeds’ who drove slow (compared to the frenetic pace of the L.A. freeways) was to laugh at their tempo and way of life. After a few visits to his parents, however, he changed his mind.

I realized that those ‘hayseeds’ had more cause to be laughing at me living in crime infested, smoggy Los Angeles than I did to be laughing at them. He often told his friends, I lived one hundred and fifty yards from a grammar school, yet my kids were set to be bussed to central Los Angeles, two hours away.

So after graduation from U.S.C. law school, he packed his first wife, Patricia, and his three sons, Tom IV, Jeff and Toby and moved to Carson City to accept a position as law clerk to John C. Mowbray, Chief Justice of the Nevada Supreme Court. Eck was awarded the position because Mowbray had been pressed with Eck’s academic achievement. Tom was married in August 1963 after his freshman year in college. In November 1964, his first son, Tom, was born.

In order to support his family, Tom worked the graveyard shift in the revenue accounting offices of Pacific Telephone Company. In spite of a full time job and full time college schedule, required by the terms his scholarship to Loyola University in Los Angeles, Tom managed to finish second in his class in 1966.

He declined an offer to attend Harvard Law School because the move would have uprooted his family from their home he had purchased at age nineteen. Instead, Tom accepted a full scholarship and a stipend of $600 per month from the University of Southern California School of Law. The stipend was intended to cover his living expenses, but by 1966 he had another son, Jeff, and continued to work graveyard shift full time, risking expulsion and loss of his scholarship if the administration discovered his employment status. Apparently U.S.C. believed that its law courses were so rigorous that no one could both work full time and attend classes full time. They were wrong. In June of 1969 Eck graduated in the top 10% of his class to the standing ovation of his classmates, wife and three sons, the youngest of which, Toby, had been born in March of that year.

At his interview with Chief Justice John Mowbray, Eck met a stuffy curmudgeon and who immediately informed Eck that in fifteen years he had never hired any law clerk, other than from his alma mater, Notre Dame. When asked by Mowbray why he wanted the job, Eck replied, I’ve been working full time and going to school full time for almost seven years. Those twenty hour work days are getting to me. I need a rest.

Mowbray did not even crack a smile, and Eck surmised that his corny attempt at humor had fallen far short of its mark. But to his surprise, Mowbray offered him the clerkship the next day. Mowbray often bragged that Eck was his best law clerk. Even years later, while he was a practicing attorney, Eck was occasionally called upon by Mowbray to assist in writing court decisions for him. Of course, it didn’t hurt that Tom’s fourth son, born in August of 1970, was named John after the judge and who also served as the baby’s godfather.

The clerkship ended after one year and Tom entered private practice in Carson City, with a well-established and respected Carson City attorney, Ted Stokes. It was early in his practice when Tom began doing work for one of Stokes’ clients, Mike Oliver, who Stokes foisted on Tom because of Mike’s incessant, long-winded telephone calls at both the office and home. Being a new attorney and excited to practice law, Tom gave Oliver the time and patience he wanted. Thus, when Eck split away from Stokes in 1976, Mike followed Tom. A year later, Mike and Tom agreed that Eck would be compensated for his land development legal services by receiving a five percent interest in each of the limited partnerships that developed the projects. Mike was pleased with the arrangement because now he would not be forced to pay for Tom’s appearances before the planning board or for drafting contracts and negotiating with city councils until the project was completed and sold. More importantly, Oliver would not have to pay for a failed project and Eck, in turn, obtained higher compensation for those projects that were successful.

Fortunately for both men, only one project failed to obtain approval out of the thirty plus applications to the cities of Reno, Carson City, Las Vegas and Henderson. Both men knew they could trust each other. Oliver knew he could rely on Eck to obtain the required approvals, and Eck knew that he could trust Oliver to complete the construction of the necessary roads and offsite improvements, sell the lots to builders and divide the proceeds as agreed, including utility refunds of deposits made years earlier and mailed to Oliver by checks payable to him individually. In short, both men knew that they could count on each other to do what had to be done.

Chapter Three

So what you’re asking me, Mike, is to write a constitution for an emerging country on the other side of the world, Tom said in a playful tone bordering on sarcasm.

Mike nodded diffidently, as his face washed red. Tom continued, I’m not sure I still have my powdered wig and tights from the last time I wrote a constitution—when was it? Oh, that’s right—never. Besides, the chicken scratch that passes for my handwriting would never rise to the flourishing standards of John Hancock, Tom said in good natured mockery as he enjoyed the joke his old friend appeared to be playing on him.

I’m serious, Mike protested as his usual sideways glances transformed into an intense stare. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity.

More like once in ten lifetimes, Eck replied with a chuckle that still suggested Mike was joking.

Tom, let me explain, Mike pleaded. You know about my book. Although it wasn’t such a great success here, it did make its way to several other countries including some who were about to either break away or obtain their independence. You might remember some officials and some leaders of a few of those places contacted me.

I do remember, Tom said in a slightly more serious tone. And nothing really came of it. Most of the guys were charlatans, trying to feather their own nests and grab all the power for themselves.

Mike slumped and nodded weakly. I can’t forget… But that was in the past. Let me continue. For the past few weeks, I have been talking to Jimmy Stevens on the telephone. Jimmy is the leader of a group of people and tribes in the New Hebrides.

Where in the hell is that? Tom said. I never heard of that country.

Mike seemed to brighten up. He knew he had piqued Tom’s interest. The New Hebrides is located in the south Pacific about 500 miles west of Fiji and about 1000 miles east of the northern tip of Australia. It is a chain of about 80 islands that are volcanic in nature, like Hawaii. Jimmy Stevens is the tribal leader of the northern islands and has influence throughout the country. He is probably supported by at least 70% of the population.

How big a population?

"About a hundred thousand. The population is the dark skinned Melanesian like Fiji and a white population of French, British and Australians. Probably 70% black and 30% white.

Any race relation problems?

None. The people all live in unusual harmony. They have no army, no navy and a very small police force. They all get along incredibly well, with very few issues among them. What’s more interesting, it’s the only country in the world with a condominium government. That means the entire country is under both French and British rule—all within the same boundaries.

It sounds complex. How do you decide under what law you will be governed? Tom asked.

I’m not sure, but it won’t be an issue for long, because the country is set for independence from both France and Britain on July 30 of next year.

Tom’s interest seemed to increase, but he said nothing.

Mike continued, What does add some complexity is that most of the Melanesians govern themselves under a local form of law called ‘custom law.’ It’s not like any European or English based judicial system, but it works with the Melanesians and has for centuries. For example, if I am driving my car and I kill your daughter by accident, I must give you my daughter as a replacement.

What if I don’t have a daughter? Eck asked.

Then you must give me a son, Oliver answered, and if you don’t have a son, you must make a child within one year.

Or what?

I don’t know. I don’t think the ‘or what’ scenario has even occurred since the men have several wives, Oliver laughed.

So what does custom law have to do with the new constitution? Tom inquired, still a bit skeptical.

It must somehow be accommodated by the new constitution, Oliver replied.

Wonderful, Eck said sardonically and then his face grew more serious. Mike, I know you have been on a few wild goose chases with people who are looking for guidance in establishing emergent jurisdictions, why do you believe this time it’s different?

Because I know Jimmy Stevens. He was educated in Australia and is a very gifted leader. But what is more important, he is very receptive to the ideas expressed in my book and he has the backing of a big segment of the population.

Tom still looked skeptical. But does that really count for anything? Is he a part of the existing government?

He doesn’t want to be, Mike said defensively. His popularity will be what makes this project a success. He just needs the tools to bring about the right results. And these tools are a constitution and some legal credibility, Mike insisted.

And you think I can do the job? Tom chuckled.

I know you can. You know how to listen. You have the law degree which is a big deal in the New Hebrides and you are an American, which they greatly respect. We aren’t going to force some foreign document on the people. We need to listen to them, understand their concerns and direct them in a manner that they deal with those concerns consistent with what we believe is good governance.

And what if they don’t agree with our recommendations, Tom asked.

That’s why you need to visit them, to find out, Mike said sheepishly. Tom’s eyes narrowed, but Mike quickly continued, not wanting to field comments. He explained his ongoing contact with Jimmy Stevens through letters and phone calls. He acknowledged that he was not the man for the job, that it needed someone more credible.

Why me? Tom asked, almost in a whining tone. You are the guy they know from the book. I took constitutional law in law school and have argued some constitutional issues in federal court, but I am far from an authority on drafting a constitution.

Who is? shrugged Mike. I doubt anyone in the U.S. and few in the world have ever drafted a constitution.

Tom winced. Mike was right, of course. Drafters of constitutions were not listed in the yellow pages like personal injury or divorce lawyers. He started to protest but Mike interrupted. "I know you, Tom. I’ve worked with you for over six years. You have an easygoing attitude, not intense like mine, and you get along with all types of people because you respect what they have to offer. I remember all the attention you gave me when I rambled on about things that were not even relevant to what I had come in to see you about. You never laughed or ridiculed my mispronunciation. I know people will