The Road Ahead; America's Creeping Revolution

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The Road Ahead; America's Creeping Revolution is John T. Flynn's treatise on the infiltration of Socialism into the politics of the United States. First published in 1949, it had at least three printings totaling over 500,000 copies. Many of these were distributed by the Fighters For Freedom, a division of The Committee for Constitutional Government, Inc., based in New York City.

This book has no formal introduction, save one paragraph appearing at the bottom of the book jacket bearing Flynn's signature. It states, "I wrote this book to answer a question that practically everybody is asking: Where are we heading? I thought it was about time for someone to answer it, candidly and with blunt facts."

Indeed, bluntness is not in short supply as Flynn, as the very first sentence of Chapter One clearly states that "...this country is traveling to its destruction." Flynn continues in that same ominous vein to describe events and political attitudes prevalent in post-World War II America that pointed, according to Flynn, to a shift toward Socialism. This shift was being steered by the very political leaders of the day who were decrying Communism in Europe on the one hand, and expanding the tax burden on the American people to fight the emerging Cold War with Russia.

Providing some interesting history of the rise of European Socialism, beginning with the Marxist influence of the Fabian Society in England, Flynn points out both obvious and quite subtle steps being taken or proposed in American politics. Flynn proposed that these steps were intended to take the country in the same Socialist direction as Europe. He provided a veritable "checklist" of indicators of the progression of Socialism in America that will amaze the modern reader because his predictions have actually come about in the fifty plus years since.

After the expansion of government to regulate almost every aspect of American life, elimination of the gold standard in favor of a fiat currency, the rise in tax rates to levels seemingly absurd to readers in the late 1940's, and the burden on the Federal budget of a bloated Welfare system, one of the final remaining steps of Flynn's "checklist" is what he refers to as "the offer of free health care." With a "National Health Care System" being the subject of recent and current American politics, Flynn's depiction of America being steered in the direction of Socialism will convince some readers that he had some rather special insight for a writer in 1949.