Thanks so much to the folks who showed up to discuss The Hidden History of American Healthcare. The video of the hour we spent discussing it, along with some really brilliant contributions from readers/viewers/participants is above.
Starting next Sunday, November 1, our Well-Read Troublemakers Book Club will delve into The Hidden History of Guns and the Second Amendment, which I wrote in 2019 as the first in the Hidden History series of 10 books.
One of the book’s biggest revelations is that the Second Amendment wasn’t written to protect hunters, homeowners, citizens resisting tyranny, or even the National Guard. The “militias” it speaks of as the necessary element to safety and security were the slave patrols, and it was Virginian (and the largest slaveholder in the state) Patrick Henry (who’s most famous and most ironic line was “Give me liberty or give me death!”) who demanded the Amendment, as parts of the state had far more enslaved Black people than free whites (as Henry pointed out in his famous speech when Virginia was debating ratifying the Constitution).
Over the five Sundays of November we’ll travel from Christopher Columbus’ slave business to the slave patrols across the Old South to the Klan, the Black Panthers, and Ronald Reagan’s “sudden” enthusiasm for gun control. Finally, we’ll expose the massive “fraud on the American public” (a quote from a conservative Supreme Court Chief Justice) that was the 2008 Heller decision that blatantly and cynically rewrote American history to “discover” a “right” that’s even, in its presentation and implementation, more of a right than our right to vote. Each week will be an excerpt from the book with a short commentary.
If you’ve ever wondered why America has the highest homicide rate in the developed world and more guns than people, this book is for you.
November’s Well-Read Troublemakers Book of the Month:
