Practical Agitation for the 21st Century

De: John Jay Chapman, John A. Boulanger

Narrado por: John A. Boulanger

Ready to drain the swamp? Are you fed up with the current state of politics in America? Do you wonder what you can do to make things better? This book will give you practical examples of how to make a real difference.

No matter your political leanings, Chapman's analyses and criticisms of the political machinery and his encouragement and advice to those seeking to reform it may sound familiar to 21st-century listeners.

Chapman was describing the nation’s entire political system - not just Washington - as a swamp. In this audiobook, you will hear his suggestions on how best to disentangle those roots, if not how actually to drain the swamp.

This new edition includes Chapman's writing on the subject of civil rights, very much ahead of its time:

• The two races in America are spiritually in contact and can only improve in unison. Therefore, when an association of this kind is formed for “the advancement of the colored race” - the NAACP was created in 1909 - it might just as well be called “for the advancement of the white race”. I suppose that you all understand this.
• This sentiment would be expressed in 2020 as "All lives cannot matter until Black lives matter."

Chapman in 1900: "The illusion that it is wise or necessary to suppress our instinctive love of truth comes from an imperfect understanding of what that instinctive love of truth represents, and of what damage happens both to ourselves and to others when we suppress it. The more closely we look at the facts, the more serious does this damage appear ...The more closely we look at the facts, the more trifling, inconsequent, and absurd do all those reasons appear which strive to make us accept, and thereby sanctify and preserve, some portion of the conceded evil in the world."

Co-author John Boulanger in 2021: "John Jay Chapman published Practical Agitation at the dawn of the 20th century, but his analyses and criticisms of the political machinery of his day, as well as his encouragement and advice to those seeking to reform it, may sound familiar to those who lament the current state of politics. Replace his references to Tammany Hall with discussions of super PACs and you could pass the book off as newly written."

Chapman: "There exists, consequently, an unformulated belief that the corruption of politics is something by itself. Yet there probably never was a civilization where the mesh of all powers and interests was so close. It is like the interlocking of roots in a swamp."

©2021 John A. Boulanger (P)2021 John A. Boulanger