The Ultimate Answer to Kings: "I never meant to do any harm..."

They say that Louis XIV had the inscription Ultima Ratio Regum cast into all the cannon of the French Army. It means "The Ultimate Argument of Kings," and that always struck me as one of the most honest and up-front things any ruler or would-be ruler ever said. "We can dress it up prettier than this, but when it comes down to the unvarnished truth this is what it's about: You'll do as I say or I'll send my goons to kill you."

I thought about that for a long time. If there's an ultimate argument, it seems only logical that there must be an ultimate answer. For years I thought the ultimate answer must be the bullets in my rifle, but it never seemed quite right. I've got bullets - he's got frigging Cannon Balls. I mean, if there were three hundred million rifles throwing bullets at him, then maybe. But we all know that's not going to happen. So if there's an ultimate answer to his ultimate argument, it sure as hell ain't bullets.

It finally came to me - and that's when I left the city, abandoned a goodly percentage of my goods, and gave all that was behind me a good, stiff Randian Shrug.

The ultimate answer to kings is not a bullet, but a belly laugh.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

"I never meant to do any harm..."

"Well, you know...other than to the people I murdered."

Sales of Walt's Gulch having fallen to 0, I have elected to serialize it on the Survival Podcast Forum. You can read it for free here.

3 comments:

Plug Nickel Outfit said...: Thanks Joel. Only up to the beginning of chapter 10 - but I'm enjoying it.; October 29, 2009 at 1:09 PM
wrm said...: So I read it for free there, and then I bought it, and the three others, and then they shipped me two copies of _Walt's Gulch_.

Now to figure who I can give 'em to for Christmas...

You really hafta stick a gmail addy or something on the site so I don't have to post a comment to an ancient post to get your attention :-P; August 18, 2010 at 8:45 AM
Adam said...: I bought the PDF of Walt's Gulch and like it very much, will buy the sequel soon. I'm not gonna read it for free, I don't mind to pay.

I read it on my Kindle, which can read PDF files. Joel, you should make your stuff available for Kindle on Amazon.com! A bigger market than Lulu by far. And whatever happened to your old URL?; August 28, 2010 at 3:34 PM

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Wednesday, October 28, 2009

"I never meant to do any harm..."

3 comments:

Why the hell did you scroll all the way down here?