Big Government– Before socialism failed in the Soviet Union, East Germany, and Albania, it flopped in Plymouth Colony.
The Pilgrims encountered, according to the contemporaneous history Mourt’s Relation published in 1622, “the greatest store of fowl that we ever saw,” strawberries, corn, beans, clean water, sassafras, arable if stony soil, and a variety of timber shortly after landing at Plymouth Rock. Yet, after the first Thanksgiving in 1621, Mourt’s Relation notes that the land’s bounty proved “not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us.”
Why did a place offering such a feast threaten a famine? The project’s backers and its leaders contractually agreed for the colonists to “have their meat, drink, apparel, and all provisions out of the common stock and goods.”
William Bradford, governor of Plymouth Colony on and off for about three decades, does not say the “S” word—a term popularized 200 years later by Robert Owen, the architect of another ambitious project, New Harmony. Bradford instead used the phrase “common course.” The separatist from the Church of England writes of that “common course” in the posthumously published Of Plymouth Plantation:
For this community (so far as it was) was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For the young men, that were the most able and fit for labour and service, did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense. The strong, or man of parts, had no more division of victuals and clothes than he that was weak and not able to do a quarter the other could; this was thought injustice. The aged and graver men to be ranked and equalized in labours and victuals, clothes, etc., with the meaner and younger sort, thought it some indignity and disrespect unto them. And for men’s wives to be commanded to do service for other men, as dressing their meat, washing their clothes, etc., they deemed it a kind of slavery, neither could many husbands well brook it.
In the years after that first Thanksgiving feast, the Pilgrims faced famine. They blamed the unnatural economic system foisted upon them by financial backers. As those backers did not fulfill their obligations, the settlers opted out of theirs.
Churchill:
“Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy.”
“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”
Poor Lazlo:
Socialism is the velvet glove on the iron fist of communism
A productive, wealthy, generous society can offer support those who cannot provide for themselves, but it cannot survive the lazy jumping on the “victim” bandwagon.
Communism survives because someone HAS to work, but it does not succeed or excel as there is no real motivation. It simply depends on basic survival instincts.
Communism makes everyone work they just don’t work very hard or very well!
The Greeks discovered this 600 years before Christ.
They didn’t call it “socialism,” of course; it was usually referred to as the “Demonrat” system (as opposed to the oligarchical).
Knowing that “socialism” is a proven failure, IN EVERY CASE, has never been an impediment to its institution among the ignorant. There are great masses of people who are really – REALLY – fucking stupid and believe that you can get something from nothing – sort of a weird perpetual motion of money and labor – whereby “I do nothing but get paid just as much as those who do something.”
We re-learn the lesson about every half-generation. Venezuela’s gone through this (I think) 4 times in my lifetime. They never learn.
Cuba’s been at it since ’59 with no end in sight.
China’s been at it since ’48 (?) but attempts to tweak it from time to time.
Our Demonrats use it as a lure to entangle the credulous and help establish a totalitarian state. Our Republicrats use it as the de facto state of the Republic while pointing to it as a scare tactic but doing nothing to rid the country of the disease.
izlamo delenda est …
Socialism is great until you run out of other people’s money 💰!
It’s comical to think that leftist progressives only want socialism, because it hasn’t been tried their way, yet.
Right on goof! What kind of tweaks are you going to make? Free Thtarbuck’th for everyone?
I love people who think they’re smarter than history. Bu-bu-bu-bu-but, if we have socialism and truly recognize 57 genders it will work!
Go fack off!
Yep. Here’s the version I’d read earlier:
http://libertyunderfire.org/2011/11/1430/
So, if a group of religious people, in a small group, could not make it work; what makes the democrats think they can make it work nation wide in a nation filled with dope users, well fair people, thieves, illegal immigrants, con-men, ect.?
My father, ever the sarcastic dad, said we had no Democracy in our house, it was a benevolent dictatorship. When I took 10 grade civics from Mr. Dekel, he thought I was a genius.
I wasn’t, my father had explained everything in more detail then the textbook, while I pulled the dumb end of a two man saw. He could recite the Gettysburg Address and Poe.
Still have that saw.
We had a chainsaw, used it cut the tree down and into manageable pieces.
I asked why we didn’t use it to saw the logs up?
He said: “Can’t talk over a chainsaw.”
Captive audience and all that.
Benevolent Dictatorship
Yet it’s a curios thing that the citizens of Mass. today mostly vote to return to the original system that was a failure in 1622.