Synopses & Reviews
Americas greatest days are yet to come.
We are in a painful transition period. Our government is crushingly expensive, failing at its basic functions, and unable to keep its promises. It does not work and it cannot continue as it is. But the inevitable end of big government does not mean the end of America. It only means the end of one phase of American life.
America is poised to enter a new era of freedom and prosperity. The cultural roots of the American people go back at least fifteen centuries, and make us individualistic, enterprising, and liberty-loving. The Founding generation of the United States lived in a world of family farms and small businesses, America 1.0. This world faded away and was replaced by an industrialized world of big cities, big business, big labor unions and big government, America 2.0. Now America 2.0 is outdated and crumbling, while America 3.0 is struggling to be born. This new world will bring immense productivity, rapid technological progress, greater scope for individual and family-scale autonomy, and a leaner and strictly limited government.
America has made one major transition already, and industrial America became an economic colossus. We are now making a new transition, which will surprise many Americans, and astonish the world.
Synopsis
America 1.0 was the combination of America's English cultural and institutional roots with American frontier conditions. It was a world of animal and muscle power, difficult transportation over continental distances, family farms and small businesses with limited market participation, and governance that was limited, local, and face-to-face. America 1.0 set the trajectory for American life, and it has never lost its grip on the American imagination.
America 2.0 was the transformation of American life by powered machinery. The shift toward corporate labor, and away from individual and family autonomy, led to economic insecurity for families and tradespeople. Americans demanded protections they had not needed in the past. At the same time, face-to-face local governance was replaced with increasingly distant and unaccountable bureaucracies, difficult-to-manage large cities, and the entanglement of government power with private business. The costs and burdens of this powerful, centralized state are becoming ever clearer. We are living in a period of crisis, as America 2.0 collapses around us.
Yet America 3.0 is already emerging. We have already begun to adapt our institutions and to forge new arrangements that are appropriate for a post-industrial, networked, decentralized society. The transition will not be smooth, but it is the only path forward. This book provides a roadmap to the American future, illuminated by fundamental insights into our deeply-rooted underlying culture of freedom and liberty.
About the Author
James C. Bennett is a writer and entrepreneur. He was co-founder of two private space transportation companies and other technology ventures. He has written extensively on technology, culture, and society. He is best known for his writing on the concept of the Anglosphere, the emerging global community of English-speaking peoples. He is the author of
The Anglosphere Challenge (Rowman and Littlefield, 2004),
The Third Anglosphere Century (Heritage Foundation, 2007), a former columnist for
United Press International, and has contributed to
The New Criterion,
National Review,
The National Interest,
The New Atlantis,
National Post (Canada), and
The Daily Telegraph (London).
Michael J. Lotus writes as Lexington Green” for the Chicago Boyz blog, on history, politics and books. He is the editor and lead contributor to The Clausewitz Roundtable (Ever Victorious Press, 2013). He is the 2012 winner of the Explorers Foundation Cobden-Bright award for his contribution to the Anglosphere. He has a BA in economics from the University of Chicago, and a JD from Indiana University, Bloomington. He practices law in Chicago.