Behind the Story: The Intellectual Bodyguards

For forty years, I have written extensively about current events, with a focus on property rights. Much of my writing has addressed the flawed ideas underlying government and social policies, as well as the proper alternatives. While I found this intellectually stimulating, it wasn’t as satisfying as I had desired.

Presenting alternatives to conventional ideas is valuable. However, in doing so, I often lacked concrete examples to show how the alternative ideas would work in the world. This made my position less compelling. As I thought about this, I realized that writing fiction would address that problem. Writing fiction would allow me to create examples to show alternative ideas in action.

The idea for The Intellectual Bodyguards occurred to me when I watched a lecture by energy philosopher Alex Epstein. In his talk, Alex said that when he graduated college, he aspired to be an intellectual bodyguard. I thought that was an interesting idea, and it stuck with me. When I began thinking about writing fiction, I realized that if the heroes were intellectual bodyguards, I could apply much of the knowledge I’ve gained from writing nonfiction.

In a certain sense, in writing nonfiction I was engaged as an intellectual bodyguard. I was identifying intellectual threats and providing an antidote. Fiction, however, can be a more powerful means of doing that. My goal with each novel in The Intellectual Bodyguards series is to dramatize a battle of ideas. In each novel, the heroes are engaged in challenging destructive ideas and promoting rational, healthy ideas. Given the state of the world today, there is no shortage of potential plots.