PROGRAM NOTES

My friends, it’s been an exciting couple of months for me. My new job at Pajamas TV came hot on the heels of being invited (!) to write for freakin’ NATIONAL REVIEW, and both of these amazing opportunities have simply blown my mind.

But here’s a thought for you: I’ve been hinting for a long time that something big was in the works… and neither Pajamas nor National Review is what I meant! Both of those fell into my lap, and I am very grateful for both of them. But there are even bigger things in the works. The Secret Item will have to stay under wraps for a little while longer, but there are a few things I can talk about that will happen in the near future.

First, I hope to have the next book, SEEING THE UNSEEN, finished to have for sale by Christmas. No advance sales this time; I’ve been burned (and burned you) with that in the past.

I want to get that book finished, because there is a third book I need to write. Whatever happens on November 4th, this election has left me absolutely appalled – appalled — at the breadth and depth of bias in the media, movies, music, on late night television, in the schools and universities – all of that. Turning that around is an enormous undertaking, a generational undertaking, and that is the subject of my third book, which will not be a collection of essays but rather a complete work with a specific goal.

That means I need to clear the decks regarding essays I’ve had floating around, so that I can start with a clean sheet of paper regarding the Herculean task we will face recovering the message and the mythology of this great experiment in liberty and human potential we call America.

So here’s the plan: two new essays into the book on critical thinking, called SEEING THE UNSEEN: one is WINDOW, a long-threatened account of what actually happens on a flight from LA to New York. There’s a million unseen people and systems and procedures that keep you safe as you hurtle through the stratosphere at the speed of a musket ball. That will probably close the book. The other one is the even-more-awaited THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT, which will be the global warming essay. Please don’t expect me to actually solve an issue that remains so deeply contested. What interests me is the intersection of politics and science, and that is something I feel I might be able to shed a little light on, having been paid to do both.

Now there have been some other topics I have been thinking about, that more properly belong in the next book (which I intend to finish in a few months, rather than years).

I plan to call the third book TWO REPUBLICS. In debate, you attempt to win an argument first by making the CASE: showing what is wrong, and defending your position with facts, reason and historical precedent. The second part is the PLAN: what you mean to do about it, and how.

TWO REPUBLICS will first present the case: THE REPUBLIC OF EMOTION. That will consist of several chapters showing where we have gone off the rails regarding the kind of place the Founders had in mind. Then, in part two, I’ll try to look at specific examples of how we can get back there and present a cohesive plan in THE REPUBLIC OF REASON.

The kinds of things I am talking about are not the kinds of things that will bear fruit in four years. They are the kinds of issues that will bear fruit in forty years; and I will be delighted if I live long enough to see them begin to come to pass.

I’ll tease you with this: the Left, coming out of the Frankfurt School, have been able to absolutely control both the heart (Hollywood) and the brain (Universities) of this country by slowly – over the course of forty years – infiltrating these institutions and gradually turning them from pro-American cultures into loudspeakers for the kind of socialist thinking that, when implemented, have left us with 100 million bodies in various unmarked graves and a heritage of misery, poverty and despair wherever they have been tried. America has always been their enemy, and now they have convinced half the country that America has to change.

What started as a handful of dedicated radicals have accomplished this through relentless and disciplined action. That’s the bad news. The good news is we’re not starting with a handful of people and an ideology of repression and failure. We are starting with 150 million free and successful people, who have history and logic and human nature on our side.

The message is sound. In point of fact, the message is the most profoundly transformational miracle in human history. What we need are messengers worthy of that message, and a medium that delivers the message untainted.

All of this is coming. Be of good cheer! One way or another, we are about to turn a corner.