America, Compromised Audiobook (Free)

‘There isn’t an individual American awake to the world who is comfortable with just how things are.’ So starts Lawrence Lessig’s sweeping indictment of modern American institutions as well as the problem that besets them. We can all observe it-from the selling of Congress to special interests to the organization capture from the academy. Something is normally wrong. It’s getting worse.

What Lessig displays, brilliantly and persuasively, is that we can’t blame the issues of modern American existence on bad people, about America, Compromised as our discourse all too often tends to carry out. Rather, he points out, ‘We have allowed core organizations of America’s economic, social, and political life to become corrupted. Not by evil souls, but by good souls. Not through criminal offense, but through compromise.’ Through case studies of Congress, finance, the academy, the mass media, and the law, Lessig displays how establishments are drawn away from higher reasons and toward money, power, quick rewards-the first steps to corruption.

America is on the incorrect path. If we don’t acknowledge our own part in that, and work now to change it, we will hand our kids a less perfect union than we were given. It’ll be a long struggle. This book represents the 1st steps.