"The United States of America is a country that was founded more than two centuries before the present in the search for liberty. For most of those two centuries, we Americans have enjoyed such a degree of liberty as to appear positively spendthrift. […]

Now, in the year since the murder of our President, what has the United States seen? We have seen the formation of death squads, operating directly under the orders of President Chang and her lackeys, as New Orleans' own Special Prosecutor Jim Garrison has proven beyond a doubt. We see the birth of a regime that, just as in Germany in 1940, is willing to begin an unprecedented reign of terror against those who are different. And we see a government that, in starting a devastating Asian war that has already killed fifty million people and threatens to turn the world into a slaughterhouse, has categorically proven its contempt for human life.

This has to stop. It will stop, for as long as I am Governor of nôtre belle Louisiane, I will defend the right of my fellow Americans to exercise their Constitutional rights […]"

"If the military was guilty of anything before the War, it was a combination of blindness and a excessive commitment to political neutrality at the expense of our duty to protect the Constitution. The military was divided between its loyalty to the commander-in-chief and its loyalty to the constitution. The reason why Chang had an advantage in forces early on was that she knew where the bombs were going to fly, and she had her FBI armored death squads located in safe havens. There were genuine 'loyalist' army units before the War. After it, there was just those who were for Chang, those who were against Chang, and those who desperately wanted to stay out of the way. I was in the last part. If I had my way before the War, Ramsey would have staged a coup d'état and executed everyone of those FBI bastards, and put the US under martial law until the 1984 elections."

"The National Guard had more sense than the Congress. They wanted to pull out and head for the mountains and they managed to persuade a small number of Congressmen to leave with them, but most believed that Richmond was safe. No-one actually thought Chang would simulate a Russian attack in such a clumsy and self-serving manner."

"They practically kidnapped me! These men were not ones for pleasantries. They knew if I remained in Richmond with the members of Congress, I would have been vapourized along with them. (Once it was realized I was president, Chang would use every trick in the book to kill me.) It wasn't until I had been relocated to safety that I even knew my savior, in the unlikely person of General Ramsey. I had known he had resigned as Chairman of Joint Chiefs but I didn't realize the loyalty the man had commanded."

*     *     *

"The days after the big bomb drop were a hard time for everyone, and I sank into a deep depression. Only General Ramsey could keep me going by reminding me of my duty to my country. His famous first words shook me out of my catatonic state. He put his hand on my shoulder, looked me straight into the eye, and said 'Mr. Hosperger … Mr. President, your country needs you.' I didn't function as a human being, I put away my sorrows and my grief, and I functioned as the President of a country that a few short weeks prior had almost ceased to exist."

"They let us die. To them, we are all equally guilty."

"It took a lot of bile swallowing for me to accept that medal [commemorating the Mars mission] from Secretary-General Zoorsprung. If the League of Nations had followed its treaty and its moral responsibility my parents would still be alive."

"Neither Hosperger nor Chang knew much about military strategy. What saved the Congressionals is that Hosperger knew that he didn't know much about military strategy, while Chang believed that she did. Chang micromanaged, while Hosperger trusted Ramsey and the field commanders for the most part. Ramsey knew that the traditional pre-War US tactics of armed warfare wouldn' t work in this smashed battlefield […] [M]obility and acquisition of resources would keep the Congressionals alive."

"The first priority given to the partisans was always to destroy supplies. Presidentialists had a lot more firepower early on, but Hosperger and the Congressionals had gas for their vehicles and ammo for their guns."

"Was it an offensive operation against the United States? Maybe, but as my papa told me 'If you beat a guy up and tell everybody he'll want revenge. If you beat a guy up and tell no one he might just pretend it never happened.' Miss Chang's Army fell down a lot of stairs that day."

"Cubans to the south, partisans all around us, and reinforcements not soon to come. We decided to 'liberate' ourselves from ourselves. The Confederates were mighty confused that day."

"The A-7 was too slow, and not impressive-looking enough, for the US army in 1981. However in 1988, this plane -- code-named by the congressionals 'Sledgehammer' -- took your average Changist tank and turned it into scrap metal in about 2.7 seconds. If the Congressionals had been able to produce 500 of them and give them sufficient air support, there wouldn't have been a Changist army left standing between New Orleans and Wheeling, West Virginia. The damn thing caught the Changists so completely by surprise that they avoided any further massed tank offensives for the remainder of the war."

"The New African Confederacy did as much to destroy the old America -- from a political standpoint -- as Chang did. However, the Confederacy fought alongside us and respected the rule of law, so we willingly worked with them. The sequence of events that led to the exodus to Rattus Prime probably began here. You couldn't have a pluriethnic republic with ethnically based states. I still worry about their future."

"Far too African-Americans have been murdered by the Chang Administration for their relatives to consider the restoration of the United States to be even a half-way acceptable idea. A decade ago, we would have still regarded ourselves as part of the American nation; now, the idea of belonging to that nation is unpopular. I would hope that in a generation's time -- maybe more, hopefully less -- we will be able to reconcile. Until that time, we would like to exist apart, on our own lands."

"Half the stuff that they shipped was useless. The Cubans could at least make competent rifles, but the Mexicans were more valuable for their gasoline shipments than for their equipment. I will admit the Swiss sent some pretty sweet automatics that our Special Forces made good use of."

"We were the forbidden fruit, while the war raged on the mainland […] While many Europeans were bitter, others were mournful or even wistful for a taste of America. That's what Cuba was for -- a taste of America with a Spanish accent. They were driven away from self-pitying, neo-puritan, politically correct Europe to this mecca of casinos, drugs, prostitution, and -- yes -- freedom."

*     *     *

"How do you define a real man? […] A real man is one person with no power to speak of, who not only manages to stop the northward advance of the largest army in North America without firing a shot, but then with a act of grace erases the scars of more than a century of neo-colonialism with a single stroke of the pen."

"The repeal of that treaty was probably the single most brilliant diplomatic act of the 20th century. A leader of a practically non-existent state basically gave up nothing but a dead-letter treaty and secured the borders of several small weak nations against a much larger nation. By signing the new treaty as 'President of the United States', even as Hosperger gave Mexico a 'great moral and cultural victory' over its former foe he also bound Mexico to its 1848 boundaries, thus effectively ending Mexico's claims to Pacific, East Texas, and FSA territories and Mexico's northward expansion. This caused great embarrassment among some Mexican politicians who realized the treaty ended the border dispute, and paved the way for the entry of the American successor states into the League of Nations. […] With the entry of the FSA and Pacifica into the League, any further expansion into their territory would be unthinkable."

"Mexico has the potential to be the linchpin of a united North America. The Mexican nation can ensure that as North America develops, it will develop as a civilized and democratic civilizational space. How can we do this without hypocrisy if we do not recognize the right of all peoples in North America -- yes, including the Oregonians and the east Texans -- to determine their future? […] If our nation truly is a democratic state, it will let these peoples decide their own futures; and if they decide to exist apart from Mexico, what right do we have to stop them?"

"Confederation is probably too strong a word, but 'Collection of North America' seemed a bit tacky. However, the real meaning of St. Louis for Mexico is that our country has several more allies instead of only one US ally."

"Canada is a country with so much potential. Even before contact with the ITA, we knew that we 16 million Canadians could only day enjoy one of the highest living standards in the world; contact has simply demonstrated that Canada is indeed one of the happiest countries on other worlds. Why can't we do the same?"