Add “bestselling author” to Ron DeSantis’s résumé. The Florida governor’s new book, The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival, has already topped the sales charts at Amazon.com
The book details his fights against everything from COVID-19 restrictions to major corporations to what the Harvard and Yale graduate refers to as “elites” that have consolidated power over American society for the past 50 years.
“These elites are ‘progressives’ who believe our country should be managed by an exclusive cadre of ‘experts’ who wield authority through an unaccountable and massive administrative state,” he writes. “They tend to view the average American with contempt, believe in the need for wholesale social engineering of American society, and consider themselves entitled to wield power over others.”
He deliberately notes that he does not believe U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to be part of this group, nor “some who acquire great wealth.”
Those views have made DeSantis a divisive figure in American politics. While some are fans of his anti-woke, take-no-prisoners approach, some of his actions as governor, including the so-called Don’t Say Gay bill, which forbids instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade, and limitations on how workplaces and schools teach about race and identity, have provoked a considerable amount of outrage.
His culture-war-oriented governing has a considerable impact on some businesses, most famously Disney, which he moved to strip of its self-governing status around Orlando, explicitly because it opposed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. “Today the corporate kingdom finally comes to an end,” he said on Monday as he signed a bill into law making the Disney-stripping permanent. “There’s a new sheriff in town, and accountability will be the order of the day.”
The new book is widely seen as the unofficial launch of DeSantis’s campaign for the U.S. presidency. He’s expected to make that bid formal some time after the Florida legislative session ends in May.
In the book, DeSantis also has some comments about former president and current presidential candidate Donald Trump, who has already launched a series of attacks on DeSantis. The governor largely shies away from criticizing Trump, says the Wall Street Journal, instead choosing to acknowledge his policies and how he changed the formula on both running for office and running the country.
Broadside Books, a division of HarperCollins, has printed 250,000 copies of the book, which it says is “one of the largest printings we’ve ever done.” DeSantis will promote the book—and his political vision—on an upcoming tour, which will take him to Texas, California, and Alabama.
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