Posted on 08/22/2022 6:07:14 AM PDT by ProgressingAmerica
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.
I think that is one of the reasons our downward spiral is so painful to me.
I have always felt that the birth of this nation was so unlikely that, if you wrote a fictional story about it, people would pooh-pooh it as being too far fetched.
Funny thing about the Bill of Rights; we revere it and yet it was thought by the Federalists to be unnecessary and ill-advised. And with reason.Who doesn’t love freedom of speech and freedom of the press? Anyone who has been libeled, that’s who. We love the First Amendment, but the Warren Court used it against us in its 1964 New York Times Co. v. Sullivan decision. Which effectively read the law of libel out of our law. Sullivan was a unanimous decision with enthusiastic concurrences, but it depends on the claim that 1A modified libel law. It never did, was never intended to, but all of a sudden the whole of SCOTUS was declaring that it did.
Andrew Jackson
Henry Knox
Sent you a follow up pm about Wilbur Gordy’s book.
The whole set: 
Here's the front cover:
I'd recommend the set to anyone's library. I think I'm going to contact Project Gutenberg to see if they'd be interested in scanning and publishing the set. It would definitely be something worth saving digitally.
That’s a very handsome set. Is that Edward S. Ellis’ work?
As for the Gutenberg initiative, I would say that is a good start. I’ve done transcriptions myself. But I think you might want to consider the power of the spoken word for truly changing the rules.
rlmorel’s audio work has been downloaded now over 30,000 times. Many of mine have the same.
Ours is a world of convenience. Just scanning in the pages and having a ready transcript is only a moderate increase of convenience compared to the original work. I can easily buy a copy, both Walmart and Amazon seem to have it. But finding the time to read, that’s rare. Who has time. Nobody has time.
But an audiobook?
That is a game changer. An audiobook is turbo convenience.
This is an interesting thread-I like seeing the thoughts people have had on this subject.
I am gratified that I see so many responses about John Adams, and I suspect (probably wrongly!) that the HBO special about him a few years back may have bumped interest in him. I really enjoyed it, enough to buy it.
I have always found him an interesting personality even before that-living in the region, I have had the opportunity to vist the Adams Homestead in Quincy, MA a few times, and the feeling of history there is palpable.
I enjoyed seeing the “preachers pants” ornament they display outside the tomb (If I remember correctly) that has a bullet hole in it. Apparently, it had been a metal ornament on top of a church weathervane, called “Preacher’s Pants” because it vaguely resembles a pair of pants blowing in the wind, and when the militia were drilling nearby, they would take pot shots at it to see who could hit it!
I finally got my setup working-I am recording in Logic Pro, and have a new microphone, but boy, it is a professional level application and the learning curve is a bit steep, but I was able to re-dictate the preface and first chapter, so I am back to where I was.
I am enjoying the book so far on Joseph Warren, so thank you for suggesting it.
I think my next book after that might be, if I can find it, a book called “From Major Jordan’s Diary”, and it is about the US Army officer who was in charge of coordinating Lend Lease shipments to the Soviet Union in WWII. From passages I have seen, his story is astonishing. And completely unknown, shedding light on Soviet espionage to an ally we were helping at the time. And the things he observed seriously implicated Harry Hopkins, who I have long viewed as a Soviet Rat.
Dewey Bunnell, Dan Peek, and Gerry Buckley were all played a critical role in the founding of America.
Ah. Maybe I can’t do that book, darn it. Looks like it might still be too new.
Indeed it is.
That is a game changer. An audiobook is turbo convenience.
For some, perhaps. Audiobooks really don't do it for me. I like to read. I have at least 2000 books on my ebook reader. I pretty much take it with me everywhere but the shower. :-)
I tend to listen to music while I read.
However, if audiobooks will expose some of these works to people, I'm all for it.
One additional consideration is file size. a book that is one megabyte as text, might well be a gig or more as an audio file of any reasonsanble quality.
Hey!
I think its cool you have a new mic. What kind of mic did you get? I have been using a Blue Yeti for years now. Hangs upside down at my desk on a boom arm.
Whatever happened to working with a friend of yours on a book? I forget the details, that didn’t pan out?
As for John Adams, the go-to biography is probably Charles Francis Adams’ 1874 work “The Life of John Adams”, which is a massive book weighting in with two volumes. I would think that “Novanglus, and Massachusettensis” would be a better option not being so large. It contains some amazing thoughts, but that’s because I generally find biographies to be boring.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/45205/45205-h/45205-h.htm
“From passages I have seen, his story is astonishing. And completely unknown, shedding light on Soviet espionage to an ally we were helping at the time. And the things he observed seriously implicated Harry Hopkins, who I have long viewed as a Soviet Rat.”
Unfortunately, Major Jordan’s Diary is not in the public domain.
However I did not know this existed. These are the kinds of things that can be really elevated and brought back to life. It’s a shame that its still behind the copyright firewall.
I might know of a few things sorta like this, let me think about it.
You bring up some good thoughts, and it takes all kinds.
File size is a real consideration. The Federalist Papers is just under 700mb as audio.
https://librivox.org/the-federalist-papers-by-alexander-hamilton-john-jay-and-james-madison-2
I am using a Blue Yeti as well! It is heavy, so...it must be valuable, right...:)
My friend has a contract, so I can’t help him with that book of his, but...if I ever can, I told him I would for no charge!
I am enjoying this-it is a challenge, and I get to learn and read things I might not otherwise have read. Your post was a good one, that we as conservatives are not as knowledgable about some things as we should be, and this makes them more accessible.
Here are 2 files of the entire Bible. As just plain ascii text, it is almost 5MB. Naturally it is a bit smaller as an epub, since those files are compressed.
-rw-rw-r-- 1 amp amp 1.4M Jun 2 2015 /var/www/html/books/The_Bible-KJV.epub -rw-r--r-- 1 amp amp 4.8M Jul 7 2006 /var/www/html/books/The_Bible-KJV.txt
I use the Bible as a way of describing how big a MB is. Most folk have a good feel for how big the Bible is. Once they know that it is approximately 5 MB, the can get a better idea of what a megabyte is.
They made a play about Hamilton.
Samuel Adams has his own beer.
I choose Adams!
In my work with the Claremont Institute I have found many very smart people who claim that James Wilson was a genius. I learned to study his writings.
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