As previously announced, Jim Bennett
The book is currently in the hands of our publisher, Encounter Books and editing is underway.
There is now an Amazon pre-order page for the book
All such early orders would be very greatly appreciated.
The book is coming out in May. Promotional plans are chugging away. Any ideas anyone may have would be very much appreciated, and can be left in the comments on this post or future posts related to the book.
A friend asked for a three sentence summary. This is what I came up with:
America’s greatest days are yet to come. Just as the world of family farms and small businesses, America 1.0, gave way to the industrialized world of big cities, big business, big labor unions and big government, America 2.0, we are now moving into a new world of immense productivity, rapid technological progress, greater scope for individual and family-scale autonomy, and a leaner and strictly limited government. The cultural roots of the American people go back at least fifteen centuries, and make us individualistic, enterprising, and liberty-loving, equipping us to prosper in the upcoming America 3.0.
We will be posting frequently in the months ahead (both here and on the book’s own blog) about the America 3.0 and its arguments, and how the themes in the book relate to current events, to efforts to devise a long term strategy for the political Right in America, or to other writers or books which interest us or influenced us.
We anticipate setting up a Facebook and Twitter account for the book as well.
Stand by!
“….make us individualistic, enterprising, and liberty-loving, equipping us to prosper in the upcoming America 3.0. ”
Lex, I, for one, hate to have a discouraging word but what have you been drinking? We are already in America 3.0 and the people you describe are not anywhere near a majority in this country – witness the last presidential election. America 3.0 appears to be growing more pluralistic, less enterprising, and more willing to sacrifice any number of liberties in search of false security and government cheese. The trend is not good.
Lex: I am glad you are optimistic. My doctor adjusted my medications after the election so I am not suicidal. But, optimism? I just can’t do optimism these days.
I have adopted:
“Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate”
as my motto.
I knew I could count on Chicago Boyz readers to tell me we are already doomed, give it up, we are the walking dead, the bad guys have already won, throw in the towel, gas yourself in the garage, it has never been worse, everything is over, the end is not only near but has already happened, etc.
Boring.
Feel free to give up, go home, wait for the secret police to pull up in their vans, or for the tax man to confiscate your car, or whatever personal apocalypse you think is inevitable.
I don’t know who you intend to surrender to, but maybe someone out there is interested in accepting it.
As for me and many people I know, this game is very far from over.
The current situation is a bad patch, that’s all. The bad guys are out of ideas and their whole ramshackle Brezhnev-era machine is rattling, screeching, smoking, and juddering to a halt. The more it grabs onto as it dies the worse the transition will be, but it is dying and we are already deep into the transition.
The current politico-economic regime is disintegrating before your eyes. Pay attention.
When one phase ends, a new one begins.
Feel free to not buy the book. But I hope you will. Maybe you will even entertain the prospect that the game is on and you don’t get to relax into a warm bath of despair, but may actually have a role to play in the years ahead.
“The cultural roots of the American people go back at least fifteen centuries, and make us individualistic, enterprising, and liberty-loving”
Umm that applies to the entire world you know. It does not make America any more special than Mali in that respect.
No, your time is ending as the leader. You kinda have your head up …. … these days and anyway, who would follow?
Disappointed that it is not available on kindle. I will order the dead tree version anyways. Again, congrats. Very much looking forward to this one.
PenGun, Mali is uniquely Malian, and no one denies that.
But you are wrong to think that there is continuous development over 15 centuries, as we have experienced. The English-speaking world is unique in that regard. In particular, the features of American family life are unusual and limited to the English speaking world, and have been continuous during this period. But, you will see those details when you read the book.
I also think America’s role as a leader is going to change. We advocate not trying to make others act like Americans. But the idea of America as something the rest of the world should emulate is ending and should end. We are probably in particular in partial agreement.
Congratulations!
Pre-ordered!
“Umm that applies to the entire world you know”
No, it doesn’t. I wish that it did but wishing something rarely makes it so. While it is true that more people around the world openly express such aspirations – due in part to the globalization of parts of American culture and greater access to information technology – there’s no shortage of people (especially elites) and cultures that remain stubbornly authoritarian, traditionalist,theocratic, Marxist and oligarchic. Women will not be driving in Saudi Arabia nor will the boot of officialdom be off Russian necks any time soon and that’s just scratching the surface
Thanks, David!
Pre-ordered out here in the People’s Republic of Los Angeles. Looking forward to it Lex!
I hope you are right about the bright future, Lex.
I certainly agree that the current squealing of the Ruling Class means that on some level, at least, they realize that by succeeding so well culturally and politically, they have doomed themselves economically. Leeches survive by not weakening their host too much, but I suppose Biology and other hard sciences have never been their strong suit.
One significant objection: you’ve written a book entitled America 3.0 that is not being released in any electronic form. *TILT*
Folks, I am looking into a Kindle version. Stand by.
Pre-ordering as I write. Can’t wait to read.
Uh, and congratulations for the nice cover. I really like it.
“As for me and many people I know, this game is very far from over.”
When you get to the part where you want to fight instead of talk, let me know.
Congratulations! Just pre-ordered and looking forward to reading it.
Sejo, the cover will likely change somewhat.
Eris Guy, the plan is win without fighting. I believe, as of today, that is possible.
}}} Umm that applies to the entire world you know. It does not make America any more special than Mali in that respect.
If you really believe that, you’re amazingly deluded. If you’re just saying that because you like to dis America, well, that’s almost as bad.
America, at the VERY least, is unique in that most of the people here are descended from RISK takers. With the exception of one specific collection (which has had notably remarkable difficulty in succeeding in America), pretty much everyone else came here voluntarily because they looked around at where they lived, said to themselves, “Hey, this SUCKS! I’m going looking for something better.”
In other words, they took a risk, and it paid off.
So yes, America IS unique in at least one respect, and it’s easy to make arguments that that, along with a confluence of other factors, has been quite relevant in WHY America, and Americans, have been so successful.
Beautifully said, Bupkis.
“In other words, they took a risk, and it paid off.”
Well yes, early on folks came from a superior culture with shared traditional Christian Protestant values …. with a taste for responsible individualism shared by a largely cohesive group these risk takers and their descendants ruled. During the last century, and especially the last 60 or so years, this has changed.
The U. S. has extended the general franchise to include groups whose individuals haven’t traditionally shared in responsibility (being for better or worse to some extents wards of the able in the past). These folks do not generally descend from the risk-taker tradition (I’d suggest that even Anglo-women do not descend from entirely from that tradition). During the last 50 years Ted Kennedy/Democrats have unilaterally extended immigration to folks from countries (and dare I say religions) that, traditionally, have been top-down, authoritarian cultures. It would be nice to think that these groups would assimilate to what had been superior culture but, alas, it seems that assimilation is going the other way.
Any current expression of optimism makes me think of the Bolsheviks. They didn’t want to share power and did everything the could not to. How many naive red peasants entered the leftist movement thinking a better life awaited them? It resulted in crazy 5-year plans, confiscation of property, and programmed starvation.
Tyouth…”with shared traditional Christian Protestant values”
An awful lot of the immigration from, say, 1850–1940 was by Catholics: Italian and Irish, especially, also more than a few Germans and East Europeans…Jews…some culturally German but others East European..
I think what has changed in immigration is 2 main things:
1)The risks are much lower: a 1940 ocean liner or a 1970 airplane was a much safer mode of conveyance than an 1850 “famine ship.” And with the telecommunications revolution and lower air fares, the disconnection with the home culture is not nearly as strong as it once was.
2)The message by immigrants received from American cultural elites is not longer “we’re a great country; you want to assimilate with our language and culture” but “we pretty much suck, and you’ll do better not picking up all our evil ways and bad habits.”
I agree with you David Foster. The point I would emphasize is that the original culture was the major influence from the founding of the country, overwhelmingly adopted by non-Anglos (essentially becoming Anglos themselves) through the nineteenth century well into the ealry twentieth century (for whatever reasaon). The current cultural floundering …. well, I guess you can’t go home.
Ordered and looking forward to it.
“America, at the VERY least, is unique in that most of the people here are descended from RISK takers. With the exception of one specific collection (which has had notably remarkable difficulty in succeeding in America), pretty much everyone else came here voluntarily because they looked around at where they lived, said to themselves, “Hey, this SUCKS! I’m going looking for something better.”
A popular delusion, the unique part. You are descended from immigrants who arrived at an unspoiled and almost unused continent. I doubt there has been a greater gift to any group in recorded history. As a Canadian I share in that bounty although our bit is colder and less productive than yours.
Every immigrant is a RISK taker, it defines the group.
PenGun, I agree with you and it also has something to do with the tendency for Americans to move around. My great grandfather was born in New York in 1835. He moved to Illinois as young man, around 1855, to work on the new Illinois-Michigan canal. He went back to New York to marry my great grandmother, had two boys there, then came back with them to Illinois. My other great grandfather came to Canada from Ireland with his wife and oldest son. They started a farm in Ontario. He eventually died in Chicago. My other Canadian great grandfather moved from eastern Ontario to north west Ontario when the railroad opened that area. All moved around at a time when travel was not easy.
The Mayo family, who started the clinic in Rochester moved even more, all along the south shore of the great lakes to St Louis, then to Rochester to avoid malaria which was endemic in Missouri in those days.
Anyone who has read the life of Daniel Boone knows the wanderlust of the early Americans. The Canadians were similar, beginning with those who fled the revolution in the colonies.
The wanderlust of the English speaking peoples goes back, as far as we can trace, to the Saxon settlement of England in 459, as we explain in the book.
Take a look at “The English People in its Three Homes” which is included in Lectures to American Audiences (1882) by Edward Augustus Freeman. We discuss this in the book.
PenGun is partially right. The incredible wealth of North America was a one-time gift. Yet, the Spanish and French had access to it first, but did not make much of it. Why? We explain why the English and the Americans after them were able to develop the continent, to seize it and hold it and keep it, as they did. It is a mix of geography and cultural and institutional inheritances. Webs of causation, remember. There is no monocausality for large, complex phenomena. Read the book to find out more.
“Any current expression of optimism makes me think of the Bolsheviks.”
Tyouth, I don’t understand this.
Should people who hold our political values give up? Move abroad?
If we have any prospect of doing anything we have to have some realistic hope that the actions, whatever they are, will work.
Does that make conservative and libertarian people who are politically active … Bolsheviks?
You lost me here babe.
Lex, What I was referring to (admittedly, none too succinctly) was the waking nightmare I have: The Reds are in power in this country and the majority of the population support them. I imagine that the mindsets of the leading leftists in this country now are not that far removed from those of the leading leftists in Russia a hundred years ago. And, it seems, that the mindsets of the followers of those respective leaders are not that far removed from one another either.
The last time I looked (last spring?), those under 30 only believe in American Exceptionalism by about 49%. And declining rapidly. Overall belief in American Exceptionalism has declined around 20% in the last decade – among the young, moreso. (These stats need references, naturally.)
Thus, American’s no longer believe in America and its values, people. It is THAT simple.
As much as I wish our authors well on this book, and as much as I look forward to reading the book, I have to be a realist.
First, this fundamental set of values declined, then Obama is elected, twice, and then comes decline in people’s optimism (check), and then a general decline in happiness towards European levels – something Arthur Brooks has well-documented.