Why not accept money for your audiobooks? Why give them away for free?

I think I have covered this before, but a fresh look might have some value. Immediately below are in-summary bulletpoints, with details after that where necessary:

1. For more than any other reason, I simply don't want to. Every other reason boils down to this one in one way or another.
2. The raw power of free stuff.
3. Every time I release an audiobook, it strengthens and advances conservatism.
4. We need a more educated voter base.
5. The most wide open door is a zero-cost of entry.
6. Having a fascination with progressivism, this greatly reduces potential customers.
7. Past lessons learned from the Tea Party era.
8. For works of the Founders, competition from commercial works.
9. The Founding Fathers deserve to have their voices heard. A substitute must arise.
10. Fellow conservatives have helped me, so I respond the same.
11. New: The advantage of having de-monitization as my starting point.

First , third, fourth and ninth are self explanatory I believe.

Second: the raw power of free stuff.

In my opinion, one of the greatest powers shunned by the conservative movement is free-stuff. I of course mean free-stuff that isn't sourced from government, which is called charity, but in reality it is held far and wide among conservatives as almost a badge of honor to cast aspersion and shade toward the prospect of free stuff. If it had value some might think, someone would be charging for it and leveraging the power of the markets to promote it. This whole narrative is of course false, and it is been damaging to conservatism for decades. The real-world effect is conservatives have willingly built a monopoly for progressives and let them live there rent free. The powerful rent free monopoly of free stuff.

I give my charity time to conservatism and to some extent I do so while putting a target on that monopoly.

And yes, free stuff is extremely powerful. On average most of my audiobooks have between 10-15 thousand downloads, and several have upwards of 40 thousand downloads.

Fourth: a more educated voter base.

The amount of historical works that should be considered but simply aren't considered, I wouldn't even know where to begin. However, if I can double how many people are more familiar with the works that made the country it can only have a positive return in my favor. I think this one is probably self explanatory as well but I wanted to expand on it. Additionally, a break with "endless modernity" would serve us all well.

Sixth: my fascination with progressivism.

This answer lies in my side-bar "about" quote from Sun Tzu. We need to get a better handle on the enemy which we do not have, and yes I put myself in that category as well. I still have much more to learn about progressivism no matter how far down this road I've already gone. So in the short term, there wouldn't be people buying them anyways. But in the long run, we must, MUST, know the enemy. So even with a book written by progressives for progressives, this knowledge of them only strenghtens the resolve to advance and honor the Constitution.

Seventh: lessons learned from the Tea Party era.

This is one that I have not written about here before, but is very motivating for me. At the time I knew organizers personally so I can vouch first hand that organizing is extremely time-consuming and painstaking work. Most organizers simply couldn’t afford to be an organizer without finding a way to be an organizer and get paid for it.

The media weaponized this and used it to great effect. I was personally heartbroken when I saw so many fellow conservatives demonize conservative organizers who got paid for it, as if they were taking advantage and getting paid too much or otherwise had sinister motives. It’s all water under the bridge at this point as very very few remember anymore.

But I saw this and realized(this was one of the most important, out of many reasons) that I would never ask for a dime for any of my audiobooks. Never. One more point on this, is that even referring to it as the Tea Party "era" is heartbreaking, but there's a stigma in conservatism generally that shuns activism. "I have a job, so I can't be bothered to lift a finger for the Constitution." No, people don't usually word it THAT way, but that's what you said. Yes, that is what you said. You value your job more than your liberty, and we're all paying the price now for such widespread apathy.

Eighth: competition from commercial works.

As one example. George Washington has several commercial audiobooks available on Audible, so, pragmatically, why would I spend my time recording one? There are also public domain audiobooks of Washington. Great as the man was, this just does not need to be a focus of mine. For one, many other great Founders don't have audiobooks - commercial or public domain. It would be much more beneficial to conservatism to fill that void instead.

Tenth: the Founding Fathers deserve to have their voices heard.

This is a huge problem that only a hard core conservative firebrand activist can resolve. Have you ever noticed something about commercial works? The problem with commercial works is that they are compilations. They aren't direct original sources. What I mean, is that the work tells a story, and often times that story isn't accurate. So to some extent, the commercial work isn't really about the Founder. The commercial work is about the historian. By recording a Founding Father from an original work, you are making it purely about the Founder. Plus at this point most historians are dishonest, so by recording the original work you're also de-fanging those who commit historical malpractice.

You want to hurt the 1619 Project? Free and open source audiobooks are one prime example of how to advance your cause. Time to pick out a microphone and use your weapon. You're the only one stopping you.

Now realistically microphones did not exist at the time of the founding, so the Founders can never and will never be able to speak for themselves as it has come to be known. But they can still have a voice, if conservatives gave it to them. To use a phrase, "The Founding Fathers speak for me, so I speak for them", in the most literal sense - a word for word recording of an original source without any commentary whatsoever. Only a word-for-word recording would be sufficient. We don't need to and we shouldn't change their contexts and meanings.

I will say it because I need to: One day I would like to work with fellow conservatives in the creation of open source audiobooks. The reality is that right now, one man cannot do this in the span of one lifetime and complete the work. There are too many Founding Fathers, and they wrote way too much. And that's not including the philosophers they read (Locke and Adam Smith, for example), the first-generation histories that got it right about the founding, and even many of the second-generation written histories that got it right. 100 years (assuming I'm lucky to live to that age) is not enough time. Luckily there is some of this work already done, but that still doesn't bring it down to one lifespan.

I can think of worse things than giving charity time directly to the Founding Fathers. That is the real world result.

Eleventh: the De-Monetized advantage.

This only became an advantage to me in the last year or several. I started out doing free or pro-bono work for many other reasons, and the reasons are different now because finances are being used as an aggressive banking target. But the reality is that this does give me a rare advantage that I know many in the conservative world simply can’t afford.

I actually have probably forgotten a few, but I think this is a good summary statement or re-statement about the value of what is being accomplished here. I think I should close with this: I'm not telling anybody how they should live, though I have called out a few false premises. I only give away because I choose to and that is my choice alone. At the end of the day, you do what's best for you.

But DO NOT think that de-monitization and censorship go hand in hand because they absolutely do not. Censorship can come alone, and de-monitization cannot silence us all.

In progressivism, government must recognize corporations.

Since this is something progressives want and need, we should favor abolishing it. Government must not recognize corporations, they are not within the scope of the United States Constitution anyways. In the book The Promise of American Life, Herbert Croly (Founder of The New Republic) wrote the following: (These are all from chapter 12 section 2, The Recognition of Industrial Organization)

The constructive idea behind a policy of the recognition of semi-monopolistic corporations, is, of course, the idea that they can be converted into economic agents which will make unequivocally for the national economic interest; and it is natural that in the beginning legislators should propose to accomplish this result by rigid and comprehensive official supervision.

This is a two step process for progressives. First, government becomes "aware" of corporations, and because of this can then regulate them and take control. This is the first step toward government picking winners and losers, as Croly states below. By this phrase "economic agents" above, he means wholly owned subsidiaries of government. Then the corporations advance the governmental agenda like puppets, which gives government cover and plausable deniability. As for picking winners and losers, he wrote:

Thus the recognition of the large corporation is equivalent to the perpetuation of its existing advantages. It is not an explicit discrimination against their smaller competitors, but it amounts to such discrimination. If the small competitor is to be allowed a chance of regaining his former economic importance, he must receive the active assistance of the government.

So you see, small businesses should be turned into welfare queens with "active assistance". Then a central planning board can be established because everybody has been purchased with tax dollars, and with that the entire economy is government-based:

The powers bestowed upon those commissions are based upon the assumption that the corporations under their jurisdiction cannot be trusted to take any important decision in respect to their business without official approval. All such acts must be known to the commission, and be either expressly or tacitly approved, and the official body has the power of ordering their wards to make any changes in their service or rates which in the opinion of the commission are desirable in the public interest. Thus the commission is required not only to approve all agreements among corporations, all mergers, all issues of securities, but they are in general responsible for the manner in which the corporations are operated.

The purpose for this is simple, to abolish free enterprise. But free enterprise can of course be exchanged for collectivism using these schemes according to Croly:

Nevertheless, at the last general election the American people cast a decisively preponderant vote in favor of the Roosevelt-Taft programme; and in so doing they showed their customary common sense. The huge corporations have contributed to American economic efficiency. They constitute an important step in the direction of the better organization of industry and commerce. They have not, except in certain exceptional cases, suppressed competition; but they have regulated it; and it should be the effort of all civilized societies to substitute coöperative for competitive methods, wherever coöperation can prove its efficiency.

Of course, Croly brings Ch. 12 S. 2 down to the bottom line of wealth redistribution. With cooperation, comes government's hand in your back pocket.(The pocket containing your wallet) He wrote:

That cases exist in which public ownership can be justified on the foregoing grounds, I do not doubt; but before coming to the consideration of such cases it must be remarked that this new phase of the discussion postulates the existence of hitherto neglected conditions and objects of a constructive industrial policy. Such a policy started with the decision, which may be called the official decision, of the American electorate, to recognize the existing corporate economic organization; and we have been inquiring into the implications of this decision. Those implications include, according to the results of the foregoing discussion, not only a repeal of the Sherman Anti-Trust Law, but the tempering of the recognition with certain statutory regulations. It by no means follows that such regulation satisfies all the objects of a constructive national economic policy. In fact it does not satisfy the needs of a national economic policy at all, just in so far as such a policy is concerned not merely with the organization of industry, but with the distribution of wealth. But inasmuch as the decision has already been reached in preceding chapters that the national interest of a democratic state is essentially concerned with the distribution of wealth, the corporation problem must be considered quite as much in its relation to the social problem as to the problem of economic efficiency.

That's always the bottom line with progressivism. Did you pay a 4% tax or a 39% tax? No, you did not. What really happened is that the progressives allowed you to keep 55% of your pay or they allowed you to keep 82% of your pay, or whatever percentage you were deemed worthy of keeping. Because the elitism and arrogance of progressives makes them believe that they know better than you including how much of your own paycheck you should keep. And all this is built upon the back of the idea of corporate recognition.

Abolishing the government's ability to even recognize corporate entities would be putting progressivism through the wood chipper. That is, for those of you interested in such prospects.

Shouldn't conservatives stop ignoring The British Empire's role in slavery?

So now they're going to conduct a reparations commission in congress. Where is everybody pointing out that Britain's Empire was the one who brought the slaves here?

The Founders didn't ignore their role across the ocean. Why do we? Shouldn't we do what our Founders did? That's all.

Southern Confederate Hegelians and Marxists

There is a cancer among most conservative websites that devalues and glosses over the importance of history. This glossing leaves a conservative in a position to assert that x is true, because they heard it or saw it or read it somewhere. But then we look foolish, I look foolish because while yes, x is in fact true, what I read didn't carry the necessary follow through. That's how truth becomes a lie while lies remain true. Case in point is this article from The Federalist which glosses over what is arguably the most important fact of the article. The article points out:

Southern intellectuals found the argument they were looking for in the thinking of the German philosopher George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.

Wait, what? Full stop. What did you say? Is this true? If so, how did you even complete the article with a straight face without detailing this? Thats a huge deal! This busts so many myths that dozens of books could be written about it if one chose to do so.

Now, the Civil War isn't my fight. If I've talked with one person who finds the era fascinating, I've talked with two dozen of them. They're "everywhere", in the sense that "they" actually have an established title: "Civil War Buff". You know of any "Progressive Era Buffs"? Yeah, I'm the only one and I know it, and I'm fine with that. I only have a tangential interest in this instance because of the lies that progressives tell. Progressivism is my main area of interest. But here's the problem and why it gets my attention. We're led to believe by Civil War buffs and professional historians alike that the Confederacy was this pinnacle of conservative thought or at least deeply conservative in its outlook.

There's just one problem. There's no room for Hegel nor Marx in conservatism.

This is too big of a contradiction and there's too much of it that can be referenced to ignore it. Now, to get back to the Federalist article I did go looking around in some of the sources I have access to, but the copyright firewall was strong with this one. Many historians have glossed over the fact that Hegel did in fact hold quite a big sway with southern slaveholders, and I get the distinct feeling that these historians want that fact erased from the books. It doesn't fit the narrative. The south MUST be remembered in connection with conservatism and this Hegel thing is just a distraction from what the historians know to be true. It was extremely difficult to get names, speech titles, books, and more to independently verify this fact, but I did find one. The usual web of footnotes pointing to another historian who points to another historian was momentously annoying. But historians do this as a tactic in order to shroud history they dislike while using direct footnotes to promote history they prefer.

This is of course why I have such a beef with ideological historians, which is pretty much all of them, but I'll save that for another day. Were there Hegelians in the South? Yes there were. And Marxists too, which during the course of researching this I remembered that I had once posted about Fitzhugh in a similar one-off post at the time. Fitzhugh wrote that "A Southern farm is the beau ideal of Communism." Now doesn't that conservative to you? /sarcasm

Looking back that post makes a little more sense to me in its actual historical context. The natural course of Hegel is ------> Marx. When asking the question of how George Fitzhugh could come to a place of being pro-communism, it's because the intellectual generation that preceded him were reading Hegel. This viewpoint of idealizing Hegel even made it into the United States Congress. In a speech in 1860, Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar II said the following:

I propose, just here, to read from Hegel's Philosophy of History, an imperishable monument of human genius, in which the author holds "freedom to be the essence of humanity, and slavery the condition of injustice." And what does he say?

"The negro, as already observed, exhibits the natural man in his completely wild and untamed state. We must lay aside all thought of reverence and morality, all that we call feeling, if we would rightly comprehend him. There is nothing harmonious with humanity to be found in this type of character." (Page 97.)

"The undervaluing of humanity among them reaches an incredible degree of intensity. Tyranny is regarded as no wrong, and cannibalism is looked upon as quite customary and proper.... The devouring of human flesh is altogether consonant with the general principles of the African race. To the sensual negro, human flesh is but an object of sense, mere flesh." (Pages 99, 100)

After describing many other characteristics, the author concludes "slavery to have been the occasion of the increase of human feeling among the negroes. The doctrine which we deduce from this condition of slavery among the negroes, and which constitutes he only side of the question that has an interest for our inquiry, is that which we deduce from the idea, viz: that the 'natural condition' itself is one of absolute and thorough injustice, contravention of the right and just. Every intermediate grade between this and the realization of a rational state retains, as might be expected, elements and aspects of injustice; Therefore, we find slavery even in the Greek and Roman States, as we do serfdom, down to the latest times. But thus existing in a State, slavery is itself a phase of advance from the merely isolated sensual existence, a phase t of education, a mode of becoming participant in a higher morality and the culture connected with it." (Page 104)

Now, it is fairly common knowledge that Karl Marx was a racist as was Che and many other hardcore communists. But I will admit I never thought to examine if Hegel was also on that list. It's quite clear though that he too is there.

But the real issue isn't yet another quote that won't go anywhere if obsessively used in twitter tweets. The issue is how on earth do we arrive at a place where the southern confederacy is constantly cast as a bastion of conservatism when deep examinations of their ideological works unearths collectivism, Marxism, and Hegelianism?

Other than historical malpractice, of course.

Here's another fair question: Just how deep did the rejection of the Founding Fathers go with those in the south in the 1800s?

Why is Progressive Nationalism so misunderstood?

What is in a word definition? For example, when you say you love your country, what's embedded in that? What does that mean? For me, the 51 constitutions of the states and the U.S. Constitution come to mind. That's not at all what comes to mind to a progressive. If you actually listen to the progressives, they'll tell you. In May of 1918, Theodore Roosevelt wrote the following:

Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the President or any other public official

You've seen this quote before. You may have even used it yourself. What does it mean though? It's an undying prayer in faith for pure unadulterated big government. That's what it means. I'll show you. He explains it in this very same essay. Have you read the full essay? Here, he gives the answer:

The Wisconsin Legislature has just set forth the proper American doctrine, as follows:

“The people of the State of Wisconsin always have stood and always will stand squarely behind the National Government in all things which are essential to bring the present war to a successful end, and we condemn Senator Robert LaFollette and all others who have failed to see the righteousness of our Nation's cause, who have failed to support our Government in matters vital to the winning of the war, and we denounce any attitude or utterance of theirs which has tended to incite sedition among the people of our country."

Why did Theodore Roosevelt support global government? Because it was government. Why did Roosevelt give birth to the deep state? Because it was government. Why did Roosevelt spend his 7.5 years as president using every day with a singularly laser-focused goal of shredding the constitution? Because shredding the constitution means love of government. That's love of country.

Anything that upholds government must be pursued. Anything that obstructs government must be obliterated. That's patriotism. That's love of country.

For a progressive, "the nation" = "the government". "The country" = "the government". In a very real sense, it would make perfect sense to call a progressive a "government-thumper", that is if you've ever been called a "Bible-thumper". Yes, it has THAT kind of deep meaning. He gave the answer in the second block quote, and he meant it so deeply and with such conviction he said it twice. This is the "proper American doctrine":

The people of the State of Wisconsin always have stood and always will stand squarely behind the National Government

.... and again:

all others who have failed to see the righteousness of our Nation's cause, who have failed to support our Government

You don't support the government? Then you're a sinner. You are not a nationalist, not in his eyes and not in any progressive's eyes. Love of country means love of government. You must profess your undying heartfelt adoration for the "hallowed halls of congress". You ever heard that phrase before? Yes, it means exactly what it sounds like. Government-thumping. Praying to the all powerful for more goodies at the ballot box. Worshipping at the high altar of the state. Statism.

In the 21st century we are told that we must import 50 million, 100 million new people regardless of their legal status. Why must we do this? Because it serves big government FIRST. It serves "the country (which means the government). We are told we must surrender the entirety of our healthcare to government. We must surrender our 401ks to government. Surrender your weapons. Why? What does government need and you'll know why it's love of country government. TR gave us long-standing bureaucracies such as the FDA, Commerce Department, the FBI, the national park system - none of it sanctioned by the Constitution. You think progressives care? Of course not. What's a pesky constitution anyways but a means to an end?

I didn't create this definition of the word. This definition of the word was created 120 years ago. I'm just trying to explain to you that that's really what this word means to them.

"Patriotism" is a euphemism for government.

"The nation" is a euphemism for government.

"The country" is a euphemism for government.

That's progressivism.