Friday, March 3, 2023

New audiobook release: Children's book of patriotic stories: The spirit of '76 by Dickinson and Dickinson

Just released: Children's book of patriotic stories: The spirit of '76 by Dickinson and Dickinson is a book that should be helpful for those of you working in the field of homeschooling. text

Note: I was not involved in any aspect of the nomination nor creation of this audiobook. I just know who benefits most from it's creation.

Monday, January 2, 2023

New audiobook release: Anti-slavery in America from the Introduction of African Slaves to the Prohibition of the Slave Trade (1619-1808)

This is super simple. In our ongoing struggle against the New York Times' 1619 Project, how valuable is a free/open source audiobook that highlights American abolitionism, going back to 1619, with 1619 in the title?

Enjoy! Text in the link for those who prefer to read the words than to listen to an audio book presentation.

Anti-slavery in America from the Introduction of African Slaves to the Prohibition of the Slave Trade (1619-1808)

I've done the heavy lifting. The only question now is - will conservatives actually listen?(or read) American history gives us the upper hand against the progressives. Our Founding Fathers were on the correct side of history here. But the information is only valuable if we pick it up and use it. If we leave it on the ground, well, then, the progressives will continue their attacking. It doesn't have to be this way. If there was more I could do from this point, I would do it, I don't know what that "more" would be though. At at the end of the day, I'm only one guy. But I do think that getting the full audiobook completed means that I've done more than most, and I'll have to accept that.

Sunday, November 27, 2022

New audiobook release: What is Industrial Democracy?

As 2022 comes to a close, several audiobooks are all coming together around the same time. The latest is a little pamphlet written by Norman Thomas titled ""What is Industrial Democracy?

Now why did I record this book? Norman Thomas is a socialist, not a progressive - and even, in this little work, he takes the time to swipe at the progressives. So what gives? Let's start with two things we all know and can easily prove in 15 seconds, and let's look at how those things are connected.

First, nobody would dare call Theodore Roosevelt a socialist. But we have to admit, Roosevelt was in fact America's first Progressive President.

Second, by the time we get to the 1960's, progressivism and socialism (and to some extent communism even) had all kind-of-but-not-really merged.

How did this merger take place? How did we get from anti-socialist progressives like TR(and Wilson as well) to the merger that we saw in the 1960's that still exists to today? To that I respond:

What is Industrial Democracy?

I'm really not kidding about that. The phrase "Industrial Democracy" - I believe this is the keystone. So too is social justice, but that phrase is too vague. It is true that Theodore Roosevelt was a SJW, a Social Justice Warrior. We have his audio, I don't even have to work to re-produce it. It's the whole deal too. In this original audio, he plainly states he wants social justice, and in addition, it's a gripe about how bad ultra conservatives are. All you reactionaries, you and I, who would be in opposition to TR's statist machinations. It's exactly the kind of screed you'd expect from a rotten progressive, it's just 120 years old.

But why Industrial Democracy? What is so important about that phrase? It's because this phrase links so many things together. It's the glue that binds. Industrial Democracy is much more specific than the phrase social justice, to begin with.

One of the most visible groups of the 1960's radicalism is the group SDS, or Students for a Democratic Society. Most people don't take their time to research it, but this group didn't just spring from nowhere. It was renamed. Renamed from what? The SLID, or, the Student League for Industrial Democracy. So what was the LID? The League for Industrial Democracy, the main group, is the group that published this very Norman Thomas pamphlet.

The LID was also where another person can be found, who is not as well known as he should've been, that being Stuart Chase. Chase is important because he was an advisor to Franklin Roosevelt, and FDR is known to have borrowed the phrase "New Deal" from Chase. Perhaps you've heard of that. And I'm only scratching the surface here of how influential this group the LID was. But let's not get too far confusing the group for the phrase. The phrase is the real nugget, the phrase is everything.

There are other reasons also why I chose this book. For one, I'm actively looking for things that would make good audiobooks that also might catch some conservative eyes and increase the conservative mindshare in regards to free open source audiobooks, and Norman Thomas's name will forever be immortalized in Reagan's "A Time for Choosing". So that's good. There's what I mentioned at the outset. Thomas takes a swipe at the progressives. It's good to highlight every now and then the differences between the two(socialism/progresssivism) and this pamphlet does just that.

Finally, there's also the fact that at the time I began recording Thomas's pamphlet, I needed a small work instead of a full sized book with several hundred pages. So that was good for me personally. At just the time when I needed it, I now have the free hand I needed to get started on my next major audiobook and really give it a good focus. Every other audiobook I'm currently working on, they're all closing and becoming ready for use at around this same time. Just what I needed. My next solo is going to be so much fun and it explains just about everything I've wrote about for the last decade.

Wednesday, October 5, 2022

The damage we did, and how we fixed it, and a bright conclusion

In pursuing goals, sometimes you step on landmines. I'd like to give you a little back story.

I recently announced the completion of a new audiobook, The History of the Fabian Society, but this time this audiobook was not completed by myself, but by a friend of mine who has also taken to recording audiobooks with a more conservative-interested focus. One of the biggest, if not the biggest problem of all that we face is information availability. Everywhere you turn, information is withheld and omitted. By making these works into audio, what we are doing is making the information into a sort of a pill that people can simply swallow. Reading a book takes a lot of time. You can listen to audio at the gym. So it goes. Audiobooks save time.

But there's a flip side to this. When we first started having conversations about 'what book should we pick', our original goal was a book offered by the Mises Institute. I for sure thought that this was safe, since Mises has some reservations about copyrights and these are made known fairly publicly.

The book we initially planned on seeing a recording made was Fabian Freeway: High Road to Socialism in the U.S.A. As you can see, now, that page says Access Denied. When we emailed Mises, Mises emailed the publisher. The end result is that this book is no longer accessible through that gateway. I personally find it strange that anybody (I'm referring to the publisher here) would refuse it when someone says "we will do free work for you". But hey, to each his own.

Now the thought occurs to me, how many people really, are going to Mises so they can download the PDF or EPUB versions of Fabian Freeway? I don't know, but as already eluded to, we fixed it to some extent with a trade off by the general availablity of Pease's history book. The two are not completely equivalent, of course, however, give it a little bit of time to work its way out into the world and the Fabian audiobook will get much more traction. So that's the story, the damage we did and the end-result trade off that we did not plan going in to be making. We didn't even know we were putting in an order for some lemons, but after that's what we were handed, we made some lemonade.

Now as an addendum, since I started typing this a few days ago, I have since discovered that Mises did not go very far in locking down access to these files. That, coupled with the Wayback Machine, these files cannot be lost. For now, here are the two sub-gateways to the files, respectively:

Fabian Freeway High Road to Socialism in the USA.epub

Fabian Freeway High Road to Socialism in the USA.pdf

And here are the Internet Archive backups. These include the actual file and not just the gateways. So you can still read these works.

Archive: Fabian Freeway High Road to Socialism in the USA.epub

Archive: Fabian Freeway High Road to Socialism in the USA.pdf

So now, you have all of the files you had before without any loss whatsoever. But you also gain a full audiobook that is well executed and worth putting your time into.

Wednesday, September 28, 2022

New audiobook release: The History of the Fabian Society

The audiobook for the 1916 book The History of the Fabian Society is now complete.

Full disclosure - this isn't my voice. Yes! those of you who know, I've been recording free open source public domain audiobooks for years now in order to bring content to a conservative audience who realizes the natural advantage that history brings for us. So why not leverage it? Why let an advantage go to waste?

To that end, I had a conversation with a gentleman some time ago, we discussed potential works, and long story short he put in the work and produced this fantastic audio recording! My preferred focal point has always been American progressivism, and for those who know a little bit on the subject the British Fabians had a lot of crossover with the progressives. Without going in depth, Margaret Sanger is a place you can look, you'll see what I mean.

This audiobook is a rendition of Edward Pease's History of how the organization came to be. It probably doesn't go too far into any American contexts. However, this organization is highly poisonous, and this book will go a long way toward allowing us to have a much better understanding of the organization for those who have taken an interest in it.

Enjoy your listen, and a big thanks again for all the hard work that created this audio production. Raw url:

https://librivox.org/the-history-of-the-fabian-society-by-edward-r-pease/

Saturday, September 17, 2022

Pointing to the math, Clay Travis pontificates that perhaps England should be paying reparations to African Americans

I know this is a contentious issue for many, yet the fact that the United States did not exist prior to a certain date, is really hard to ignore. On the Tuesday broadcast, toward the end of the second hour, Clay said the following:
I've always been fascisnated, Buck, by the reparations argument in the United States in particular, because you know slavery was only legal in the United States for 80 years. A lot of people never actually do the math on it. United States was a country from 1783 until 1863 that allowed slavery to be permitted as an independent nation, 80 years. Most reparations for slavery would actually have to be paid by England because England was in charge of the United States colonies for the vast majority of our history.

....

You never hear anybody who advocates for reparations say ok, England is on the hook for 1619 to 1783, which is whatever the math is on that.

The podcast link is here, here, and the direct downloadable option is here. If you do download or listen to the podcast - and I really think you should, start listening around 35:25. Buck of course agreed to some extent, pointing out that in those years, Transatlantic slave trading was an English program and that it was spread by them and other European powers. Historically speaking, all of this commentary is correct. There's a lot more to it and as a citizen historian I would love to give you eighty thousand words on it, but I'm really intent on just saying "Here's what they said on the radio show, let's focus on the math, this is it" and a little knock against the progressives is probably sufficient too.

Now, for the record, I think that Clay is calling out the hypocrisy of progressives on this. I do not think he supports reparations, and so its said I don't support reparations either. But to say that the United States should pay reparations for when The Empire controlled the land and the plantations would make about as much sense to say that the United States should pay reparations to Jamaica in accordance to their leaders' wishes to receive reparation payments. Jamaica is another nation who is also calling for reparations.

Why would the United States pay reparations to Jamaica when the U.S. was not in control? That land was controlled by the Empire. Why should the United States pay reparations for anything prior to 1783? The Empire still claimed the land. That means they also claim the slavery. Even more clear-cut is prior to the Declaration. Everybody was a proud citizen of the British Empire. How is that slavery America's fault when the U.S. doesn't even exist in any way, shape, or form?

Progressives can't have it both ways on this.

Jamaica was wholly-owned by the British Empire. Prior to 1783, the 13 colonies were wholly-owned by the British Empire despite that war that was going on. I don't support reparations, but let's be real with ourselves. This responsibility falls on the Empire. This is very simple math. The United States is just not that old.

While progressives are liars, the math doesn't lie to you on this, just subtract the years and see what you come up with.

Sunday, August 21, 2022

Which Founding Father is the most popular who isn't George Washington, isn't Benamin Franklin, isn't Thomas Jefferson, and isn't George Washington?

Something amazing has happened. Many posts ago, I told people that Yes, I am open to taking requests for free open source audiobook production and I meant it. I would be curious to know any directions people would like to go - of course, I have my own goals and a much greater lack of manpower than anybody can know. But there's plenty of room for overlap, and that post will never have an expiration date.

But there has been a change recently, and most importantly, the reverse has come true. I've been in contact with someone, and after many discussions, this person helped me with one audiobook related to progressivism as a collaboration and now has taken on an audiobook all on their own, and they're ripping through it like a magician with a flame sword trying to melt butter. It's like watching fireworks in slow motion. Even better than that.

The audiobook we collaborated on is rooted in media bias, and when that book is fully complete, you can be sure it will be announced here for your listening pleasure.

To briefly describe this solo work he's taken, it's a historical account of the British Fabian Society written around 1906. We as conservatives are sorely lacking in knowledge about the Fabians. I've always wanted to do a book about the Fabians myself since they started having crossover with American Progressives in some of the crucial years,(like the 1920s) but I can't take my eye off of the ball. The core of my work must be Progressivism, so Fabians have never risen high enough as a priority. Look at my side bar. That side bar has never changed in over a decade, and it will never, ever change. It is more than anything, my guiding principle.

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)

The more I read the Founders directly and old historians from the mid and late 1800s, the more I realize that, wow, I didn't know squat about the Founders. And this is because of how complete the control over history is, that the progressives have achieved. If you have a history book written about the Founders that's after 1920, you might as well throw that junk in the garbage. No, really. All historians are guilty until proven innocent. Unless you have one of maybe a handful - 20 or so historians who truely are worth more than a salt shaker. Maybe you're lucky and you have one of their works and a sincerely well written non-omitting treasure of a book. But the vast bulk of all history written by historians since 1920 about the founders - It's really smelly fake trash. It just is. Historians are in many ways worse than journalists.

But even in trash, there is some modicum of facts and that's why they get away with it. Progressive historians can omit much, but they cannot outright lie. They couldn't say that Washington was born in 1302 could they? Nah. So their strength is in omission. But it is omission that has led all of us to know so little of the Founders. Most people only really have knowledge of the Federalist Papers directly, and one, or perhaps two Founding Fathers that they've chosen as their figure. We need to know more than this. We just do. We need to know and specialize in knowing what the historians have erased and make it easy for others around us to develop the same specialty.

But, just to round out the converse and hit the complete point that Sun Tzu was making, while some conservatives do have knowledge about the Founders; as to the progressives - the enemy? No. Progressives have owned history and have completely and totally buried their history in ways that even after doing this for a decade, it STILL confounds me how complete the full package that it is. It is so complete. It is so ironclad. I recognize how utterly devious and deceitful it all is, but I cannot help but marvel at how thorough and how completely successful they've been. It just is. You have to marvel at the success. And Fabians are the same way. That's what makes the work that my friend is doing such an amazing thing and such a ray of light and I cannot state in words how excited I am that this book is being recorded at the rate its happening. It does help me point the way in the future though, I can be more pointed toward the Founding Fathers.

That's how all of this relates to the headline question of this posting. Because, of the one or two Founders that people do know, in most instances, it's George Washington. Now, Washington was a pillar of a human being and I'll even go so far as to say he was one of the greatest humans to ever walk the planet. But I still get a little frustrated that, come on, can we really not limit ourselves to anything but three of the Founders?

Can we expand here? Please? I'm begging you. Please?

And that's the crux of my question. I would love to be shown how wrong I am and have a hundred people or more come out of the woodwork and tell me how great John Hancock was - and you're going to tell me this story, and that story, and you'll have all these details about his governorship, and a link to this book and that book. But I'm certain that won't be happening in response. Very few of you know anything about John Hancock. Or how about a Founder like General Joseph Warren and all he did for us? If the only thing you can tell me about is the Battle of Bunker Hill, then, I don't mean this to be brazen, but if you can only talk to me about the Battle of Bunker Hill then you know I'm right and you're just proving it to yourself. You shouldn't feel bad, the Progressives have stolen Joseph Warren from us. We didn't surrender him. We didn't "forget" him. They own history. They erased Warren. And let me tell you, Joseph Warren didn't deserve erasure. He was too important. To heck with the progressives.

They did this to you, the progressives, and they did it to me too. Or how about Rufus King? Will twenty or more of you come up around here and tell me this or that about him? And yes, I mean, without trying to do a quick homework on Wikipedia. You already know it without me saying it - you don't know anything about Rufus king. I'll be honest, I don't either. Look, I'm not omitting myself here, no one man can know all things, and that is fair, and my taking time to record audiobooks does in fact slow down my ability to learn more about the Founders. Here's another, how many of you even know we have a Founding Father named Steven? How few are familiar enough to even know that I misspelled it?(yes, it was on purpose) But the fact that I could easily go down a list and just one after the other, nobody knows the founders - except for Franklin, Washington, and Jefferson. Doesn't that strike you as a problem? How does nobody see this problem? It's an elephant. Right here in the living room! Nobody sees it!!! How can you miss it? An elephant. Right there!

Well, to me, I like challenges. I see this problem, and I say what can I do toward I fixing this problem? Because I can make a difference here.

I want to do an audiobook about a specific Founder, one who isn't Jefferson, Franklin, or Washington. And yes, I did mean to write Washington's name twice in the title. It illustrates the point.

If I had to take a guess, I would suspect that the most popular Founding Father who isn't Washington, Jefferson, or Franklin, is Patrick Henry. That's just a guess! But when I see discussions or hear people I know, I think I hear and see Patrick Henry more than any others. Perhaps George Mason. I would never suspect Nathaniel Gorham of being one of the more popular founders, I just wouldn't. I bet you wouldn't either.

Now, I wish I could do an audiobook of one of the founders that's so random, because I do want to fill this gap. But I also want to make something that people will actually take the time and have an interest to consume, so I am quite certain that I won't be doing anything about David Brearly. And yes, I'm dropping names to catch your attention.

I want to do an audiobook that will be free in the public domain, a biography of one man that's just his story so we can learn just that and then that story can start being a little more prominent. More media is good media. I don't know when it will happen, but soon. But my goals are this:

First: How can I avoid "the formula"?

Universities can't really avoid Jefferson, Washington, and Franklin - while they can certainly lie by omission about these men, that's the formula. We only have three Founding Fathers by the culture of some universities. We're only allowed to learn about or discuss Franklin, Jefferson, and Washington. And oh let's not forget about how racist they all were. -- It's so boring. Because the universities are lying. Historians are frauds.

Second: How can I introduce a new Founding Father to people who want the Founding Fathers, in a way that is creative and engaging?

Audiobooks. This one isn't complicated. I got this.

Third: What will people actually care enough about?

Even with the importance of a Roger Sherman or a John Dickinson, who may be popular enough to be good choices, am I still just kinda playing to "the formula"? Would I really be doing much good if any if I don't break out and truely teach people something that's quite amazing? Even with as prominent as Madison was, is he really all that popular? How about Richard Stockton? Stockton sounds like a fairly good choice to me.

My time does have value. I mean, not that yours doesn't. I'm just saying, I really think an audiobook about Jacob Broom could be reaching into the territory of I'm wasting my time here, there's not many who would listen to this.

So that's why I'm asking. What's the best value for my time and to be clear, for your your time as well? What isn't repeat work? I can tell you this. We don't need yet another book or audiobook about George Washington as amazing as he was.

And so it's said, I do hope that at some point in the future, others do join me. I hope my new friend doesn't turn out to be my only new friend who sees the value in this endeavor and helps. And yes, he has done one solo audio.(still ongoing) One book is enough!!! Know that - one solo is enough. A full two or three dozen audiobooks about specific founders that we could pass around like candy would be such an amazing thing. So amazing. Free and open source in the public domain, that I could just give to you, and you just could give to someone else, and they could freely give to me, and it keeps repeating and making us all more knowledgable and better voters. But the human lifespan only lasts so long. And even fully focused only on the Founders, I could not do that. I just won't last that long. One person with one commitment can go a very long way. My new friend is proof of that. Ten people with one single committment is a very big problem for progressives - I want to go and create that problem.

Look, I'm going to do this with or without you. The only questions left to ask are when, and who.

Oh, and P.S. What about the Founding Mothers? I couldn't even do a book there. Well, I suppose I could. But I truely think that a woman's voice would fit the bill so much more nicely and be a significant upgrade in quality that for the sake of quality, it should be read by a woman and not a man. So there's that. As much as I want it done, for the reason of quality I won't do it. Perhaps someone needs to convince me otherwise.

In any case, which Founding Father is the most popular who isn't George Washington, isn't Benamin Franklin, isn't Thomas Jefferson, and isn't George Washington? I really would like to know so that I can set an optimum goal for myself.