Posted on 08/22/2022 6:07:14 AM PDT by ProgressingAmerica
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!
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