New audiobook: Herbert Croly's The Promise of American Life

After four years of arduous work, the solo recording of Herbert Croly's The Promise of American Life is now completed. From the viewpoint of "what is progressive ideology", this book explains it better than perhaps any other I could offer. This book is entirely free, it is in the public domain. This is NOT. for sale.

The book can be downloaded from here, and using what I could find which was written by others, I wrote the following book summary:

The book is said to "offer a manifesto of Progressive beliefs" that "anticipated the transition from competitive to corporate capitalism and from limited government to the welfare state." By Croly’s death in 1930, only 7,500 copies of The Promise of American Life had been sold. Despite this, the book was immensely influential, even influencing Theodore Roosevelt to adopt the platform of The New Nationalism.

This is a pretty accurate summary of the work. Why this book is so important, is that it had implications for at least three of the very first progressive presidents in America: Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. A book that has that kind of reach MUST be more widely known among conservatives, and what better way to accomplish the necessary task, than to read it to you?

You need to read this. You need to know this. I'll read it to you, I did the hard work for you! It's that important. If you don't like audiobooks, hey that's great now you have options, you can download the PDF or the text and read it, it's all yours. You're missing an important one if you don't. You're missing a very important one here. Here's the book review that former President Theodore Roosevelt wrote in regard to this book. Writing in The New Outlook, an essay titled Nationalism and Popular Rule, he wrote: (p. 96)

In Mr. Herbert Croly's "Promise of American Life," the most profound and illuminating study of our National conditions which has appeared for many years, especial emphasis is laid on the assertion that the whole point of our governmental experiment lies in the fact that it is a genuine effort to achieve true democracy - both political and industrial.

So if nothing else, let's recognize the importance of this work. This book has it all. Progressive education, the need for wealth redistribution, the subjugation of industry to the Nation, the domination of government in the lives of individuals. It's all here. It's ALL here, in these pages. What is happening to our country? The answers are here in these pages. Now it is true that over the years progressives have changed in some ways, but they're still the same. This is not an old outdated irrelevant story from a distant day of "what was". They are still here and this is still current.

We as conservatives, we have a lot of confusion among our people as to whether or not progressivism and socialism is the same thing (which it is not) and this book can clear a lot of that noise up. It's time to part the clouds here.

In the Art of War, chapter 3, Sun Tzu wrote:

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.

We can't win if we're calling them socialists. That's not historically accurate, then or now.

My first audiobook Philip Dru was useful in that it puts into the form of a novel what the goals of progressivism are. But that's a filter. This book is unfiltered. It's just, let's dominate everything, that's what progressives want.

This book is scary. For those of us who want government limitations and free markets, this is a very chilling work. I hope you enjoy. When you are finished with the book, for those of you who take it up, you will come away having learned something and realizing what we're actually up against. These people, are, I'll tell you what. I'll put it to you this way. Progressives are not kidding around. They mean what they say and they mean what they write. They really actually believe this stuff.

It's been over 100 years since this book was published, and we know the progressives actually believe this stuff because so much of it has been implemented. It's horrific to live with.