Happy Birthday, Dr. Franklin

315 years ago, on January 17th, 1706, Benjamin Franklin came into our world. He would go on to do amazing things, things which it is not my intent to spend another 50000 words re-telling. What I wanted to do instead was invite you and invite everybody to celebrate his life and legacy, and take the time to get to know him a little better on a more personal level. This can be done.

There is a fantastic free open source public domain audiobook of Franklin's autobiography which you can download here, it is well put together and is a great reminder of who we as Americans truely are. Sure, you could read the text of this, that's also freely downloadable online. But there is a distinct power in a human voice as it is heard, a power to which only the audiobook can provide when it comes to a work such as this.

Note: I did not have a hand in the creation of this audiobook. That was before my time.

Who owns America's history? Well, for now the progressives do.

There's a rather uninteresting article over at National Geographic that puffs up rioters and sculptors. The real issue though is a little bit deeper than that.

American history is in fact naturally conservative. It's anti-statist, pro-individual, and and based on Judeo-Christian principles. Why so few conservatives play in this arena is beyond me given the natural advantages, but it is what it is.

The fact is, conservatives gave history to the progresives. Ever since Charles Beard started propagandizing the Founders with his 1913 "Economic Interpretation" (reinterpretation) of the Founders, the Progressives have set out on a century's-long journey to first misunderstand, then erase, then replace the Founders as something else entirely from what they actually were.

And they did it 100% unopposed. Nobody wanted to oppose them. That is why in an oversimplified but accurate way, progressives have come to own history and it happened simply by being the only team who showed up to play ball.

It's amazing what you can do when you don't have any opposition.

America is now Iraq, thanks to the formula of media coverage on COVID

I remember how over a decade ago, it was fashionable to point out "the media never tells the good news" of what our soldiers were doing over in Iraq. What did we get? Here's what we got every day:

10 US soldiers killed....... 3 US soldiers killed...... 10 US soldiers killed...... car bomb wounds 18 US soldiers....... attack leaves US soldiers....... 8 US soldiers killed....

This is no different than how the media covers Covid. You ever heard about the falling percentage rate? I know I haven't. What are we hearing?

Covid kills 50......... State of New York sets record deaths........ Covid kills 300....... Covid kills 1000........ Covid kills 75......

Why do the media always follow this same formula? It's what they're taught.

In chapter 1 of the book "Public Opinion", The Father of Modern Journalism Walter Lippmann wrote: (page 40)

The wireless constantly used the statistics of the intelligence bureau at Verdun, whose chief, Major Cointet, had invented a method of calculating German losses which obviously produced marvelous results. Every fortnight the figures increased a hundred thousand or so. These 300,000, 400,000, 500,000 casualties put out, divided into daily, weekly, monthly losses, repeated in all sorts of ways, produced a striking effect. Our formulae varied little: 'according to prisoners the German losses in the course of the attack have been considerable' ... 'it is proved that the losses' ... 'the enemy exhausted by his losses has not renewed the attack' ... Certain formulae, later abandoned because they had been overworked, were used each day: 'under our artillery and machine gun fire' ... 'mowed down by our artillery and machine gun fire' ... Constant repetition impressed the neutrals and Germany itself, and helped to create a bloody background in spite of the denials from Nauen (the German wireless) which tried vainly to destroy the bad effect of this perpetual repetition."

And that's what the media is doing to keep up the pressure and use the virus to achieve its goals. It's a suppression tactic, which produces "a striking effect", right out of the playbook of journalism. Right there on page 40.

Public Opinion, free public domain audiobook

Do you want to subsidize big tech, or do you want big tech to subsidize you?

Bouncing off of what I posted yesterday, I think it might be a wise discussion to have that we can use the progressives' own rules against them. Alinsky 101 if you will.

Progressives have set it up so that when we purchase software, we subsidize progressivism, and opensecrets.org proves this to be an undeniable truth. Well, then, clearly the opposite is also the truth.

When we use free open source software, progressivism subsidizes us. Your bank account is to smile upon thee. Are you subsidized by progressivism? You can be.

Maybe embracing "free stuff" isn't so bad after all.

Will disenfranchised Trump supporters boycotting big tech lead to the year of the Linux desktop?

There can't be much doubt in anybody's mind: The way to strike back and strike hard against big tech is through their pocket books - and there's no bigger door for opportunity than the myriad of easily downloadable open source technologies. But one of the biggest "bigs" of the big tech world has largely gone with less scrutiny than the rest: Microsoft. Here, look at the image:

Trump certainly noticed. Now it's not that Microsoft doesn't give huge amounts of money to progressive causes, because they do. It isn't that Microsoft really doesn't want conservative customers, because in reality, the people who work at Microsoft are exactly of the same mind as the people who work at Twitter and Amazon and Google and any other big tech company you would name. If you're a conservative, they do not want you nor your money. Let's get that straight right now. Twitter doesn't want it, Apple doesn't want it, none of them do. Do you see Microsoft out there telling the rest to slow things down a bit? Of course you don't. That's what it is.

However as luck would have it, Microsoft isn't in a position to visibly silence conservatives, as has been done by the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Apple, and many others. That's why they've missed the heat. They don't have a social platform nor the direct ability to strike a blow to a social platform, otherwise they'd be doing it too.

So it is that reality is a tough cookie. If Facebook needs to be dealt with, and they do. And if Google needs to be dealt with, and if Twitter, Amazon, Apple, and others, let's be real here. They do need to be dealt with. But leaving one out just extends the problem further down the road in terms of time and years. Microsoft needs to be brought down a few notches as well. Big tech needs to be made a little smaller. All conservatives now know this instinctively. The only question left, is how to strike the blow.

For every one of us, it's no more simple than taking a glance over there to the side - that's right, right over there at your computer tower. There are plenty of companies out there who contribute to an abundance of open source technologies, but let's be real. It's a platform that they can't really control. It's a platform that can't entirely be monetized because it was built from the ground up by developers who don't want to be under the thumb of a corporate entity. Any corporate entities who are writing small patches here and there, are only doing so in places that benefit their organizations personally. Anything that benefits you or I, its a matter of coincidence. That wasn't their intent to benefit you. They rely very heavily on you remaining on a controllable platform. It's time to force the issue, but that could only happen if there was a larger user base.

Now, I've never been one for boycotts myself. My past blog posts will ilustrate this. I never really thought they worked so why call for them. The continued march toward progressivism that corporate entities have taken over the last 5, 10, and 20 years would lend proof to the claim that they haven't really worked. I switched to Linux years ago for the fact that in many ways, it's simply easier to use Linux than Windows, due to the software being less bossy. So I can't be called a "boycott'er" in that sense. I switched out of practicality and ease of use. But hey why not jump on the bandwagon while it's hot and fast moving?

If you want to hurt big tech, by all means, cancel your Amazon subscription and never order from them again, cancel your Netflix account, shut down your Facebook and Twitter accounts, never ever buy an Apple product again, and any other ways you can find to shut your wallets. But don't forget, whatever you do, don't forget to also wipe your Windows drive and install an open source operating system on it. It's the consistent thing to do. The big stock and trade for the progressives at Microsoft really isn't that licence fee that's paid in the beginning, it's the ongoing market dominance that's promoted every single day by continued usage.

Every one of you has a weapon against big tech sitting right there at your desk. It's your choice whether or not you use it.

Yes, I am open to taking requests for free open source audiobook production

As Facebook and Twitter and other big tech firms continue to cement their positions on the side of progressivism, Google, Microsoft, Apple and many other companies, I just wanted to point out to others who may see this that I think that free open source audiobooks now more than ever offer a great way for any conservative to express themselves. In particular, its a way to create something high profile that can't possibly be silenced by big tech. This is in fact censorship proof.

I'll tell you right now, The Founding Fathers do speak for me. John Jay, James Madison, John Hancock and Samuel Adams, they do speak for me, as do the Pilgrims and the early Christian leaders who built this country. Consider this thought: What would happen if you spoke for them? I have done this, and its quite fun.

Now, I will say, that I do have specific goals for the ProgressingAmerica project, those include an abolitionist audiobook, a biography of one of the founders, but mainly, a dedicated focus on exposing progressivism using the words that they've worked so tirelessly to make sure everybody forgot. This is a reiteration of what has been in the project's "about" since day one:

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle - Sun Tzu (Art of War, Chapter 3)

Despite these goals, I want to try to foster more open source audiobook growth among conservatives, since I know so many around you and around me are frustrated about being silenced. Changing the rules is one way to win.

Now, one topic that I must insist upon is that I cannot do any work that was published after the year 1925 for copyright reasons. But if it was published prior to 1925, it's all ours to work with. That is the copyright cutoff until next January.

We live in a time full of lies. Our voices promote the truth.

Progressivism in culture: Where are progressives the weakest?

One of the things we need to do, and I don't see anybody anywhere doing this, is we need to try our best to objectively identify where progressives are the strongest, and where they are the weakest.

Culture is downstream of politics, so if we want better elections then we need to capture aspects of culture. In various websites I see many of the same items listed. Ok, so you tell me. In which of these are progressives the weakest?

• Media
• Academia/universities
• Hollywood
• Government
• Sports
• Protesting (Not rioting)
• Religion/Churches
• Social media
• K12 schools
• Corporations
• Tech
• Talk radio

Even though it is a subset of "media", I added talk radio to this list to demonstrate a thought process. Sometimes, a subset of a larger item is what is needed. Talk radio is indeed active in culture, and its a part of media. But its a subset that progressives don't control.(and they hate it that they don't control it)

So, in this list which one do you believe progressives are weakest? Is there a subset where you think they might be weakest? What kinds of things can individuals do to target that weakness and exploit it?

I'll go first. I happen to think progressivism's stronghold is Media as a whole. One of their weakest points is probably tech. One way to significantly damage tech is this: Anybody can write a program, open source it, and in so doing cut off tech's funding. We could defund the beast in very short order if we actually focused and tried to do it. Just thinking.

In this respect, there's no question that tech is weaker than media. You tell me.

The bottom line is this: If we are going to move forward, we need to find that weakest link and burn it.

If nature abhors a vacuum, what vacuum is created when conservatives shun protesting?

Everybody knows that nature abhors a vacuum.

Well, we saw how successful the Tea Party protests were. But for decades, we've had a cancer that looks down on the constitutionally required act of protesting, as if that's just "a left wing thing". This is a widespread viewpoint among Establishment Republican, but its prevalence is both wide and deep and not limited to them.

It stands as a good topic for discussion. What kind of vacuum have you created by not protesting? There was no protest last April 15th, there have not been any protests in front of the Supreme Court for the last - I can't think of any Supreme Court decision protested by conservatives besides Roe. Certainly not Wickard. Certainly not Obergefell. Certainly not any other tens or hundreds that all deserved more heat than they got. There have never been any large-scale protests in front of major media outlets, and they're on the forefront of destroying everything. When the Department of Education was formed, there were no protests. Twitter and Google and all the rest of them are shutting down speech, I have not seen one major protest planned by anybody. This is the easiest and most direct way to engage in culture, and its the most unused and unleveraged.

We have a whole lot of protest-worthy issues that won't receive their due. Since they won't receive their due, what vacuum is being created?

Who is filling that vacuum?