Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
Bruce D. Thatcher is founder of History Speaks Today, a project dedicated to sharing elemental truths learned from accomplishments and failures of those in our past, to help us avoid making the same mistakes again and again. He is also author of that project’s first three books – Adamant Aggressors: How to Recognize and Deal with Them and Immigration: How to Avoid its Perils and Make it Work and Rise and Decline: Where We Are and What We Can Do About It.
Thatcher has had a passion for history throughout his varied career. Check out Bruce Thatcher’s bio. In each business he conducted, he gathered facts and insights on how past problems and issues had been addressed. He truly believes that much can be learned and applied from successes and failures of our past. On his web site and in his talks he clarifies what we should learn and adopt from the handling and mishandling of issues within national security, national solidarity, national continuity, social progress, immigration and other crucial areas of stumbling by nations’ leaders.
Early on he recognized a reality confronting many of the world’s government leaders, a reality that affects their national securities … even existentially! That reality is ‘adamant aggressors’ exist, and some of them are in positions of significant power. Adamant Aggressors: How to Recognize and Deal with Them , released in 2011, is a collection of historical cases that demonstrate unassailable do’s and don’ts for dealing with today’s international threats. In 2018, these five cases were distilled into separate e-book digests for busy readers.
While researching that first book, Thatcher came across cases of mishandled immigration that led to disastrous consequences. Because immigration impacts practically every government and business in the world today – their economy, their social systems, their national security, etc., it became a natural subject for the second HST book, Immigration: How to Avoid its Perils and Make it Work , released in 2012.
The third HST book was published in 2017. Rise and Decline: Where We Are and What We Can Do About It examines the history of four expired nations to validate the premise that rejection of the basic values on which a nation is founded leads inexorably to decline and extinction. Rise and Decline then applies those lessons to two existing nations that are in decline – the United Kingdom and the United States of America.
Thatcher grew up in the mid-west, and graduated from Iowa State College and the University of Chicago. He worked in marketing and management with General Electric and The Vendo Company, then founded and led a telecommunications consulting firm, TelCon Associates, for 30 years until his retirement.
While living in the Chicago area, he became involved in politics and was elected to a local high school Board of Education, serving a term as its President. Later, he served on the national Board of Directors of Literacy Volunteers of America and taught classes at Avila University, William Jewel College and the University of Missouri at Kansas City.
Now retired from business, Thatcher and his wife, Carol, live near New Braunfels, Texas.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
“Rise and Decline: Where We Are and What We Can Do About It” shows that the United States of America has passed its peak in world prominence and is on the decline. It identifies the core values that drove its ascendance. And it shows that the reasons we’re now in decline are not those so often offered up – corruption, national debt, weakening military, racial divide, poverty, etc., etc. These are merely symptoms of the root problems – growing indifference and disdain for America’s founding values.
Citizen acceptance and support of specific principles is basic to the founding of every nation and drives its ascendance. Dishonoring and disdaining those principles leads inexorably to national decline and, ultimately, extinction. America’s raison d’être is liberty, as articulated in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights. These values are being usurped by our government and eschewed or disdained by citizens. Unless this erosion is halted or reversed, the end of the United States will arrive sooner, rather than later.
Reaffirmation and commitment to our raison d’être can become a renaissance in America and usher in a new and prolonged period of rising national prominence. But not spontaneously. Prolonging the essence and values of the United States will take thoughtful actions over many years or generations.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
Probably not
What authors, or books have influenced you?
History and well-researched historical fiction
What are you working on now?
A book on guns. Working title is “Guns in America: Why They Are and What We Should Do About It”
Do you have any advice for new authors?
write every day
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
write every day
Author Websites and Profiles
Bruce Thatcher Amazon Profile