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15 comments

1 Romantic Heretic  Thu, Nov 25, 2010 9:49:16am

Oy vay iz mir!

These people do not have a history. They have a mythology, and a piss poor one at that.

2 Velvet Elvis  Thu, Nov 25, 2010 10:00:48am

That just made my eyeballs bang together.

Shouldn't it be a requirement to be a politician to have studied the history of political theory somewhere along the lines?

3 Our Precious Bodily Fluids  Thu, Nov 25, 2010 10:36:13am

re: #2 Conservative Moonbat

Shouldn't it be a requirement to be a politician to have studied the history of political theory somewhere along the lines?

Are you out of your mind?

That's almost like suggesting that one ought to have a background in education or at least some vague knowledge of developmental psychology in order to serve on a state school board.

4 Steve Dutch  Thu, Nov 25, 2010 11:19:13am

We've got two dueling myths. One is that the Pilgrims and Puritans came here for religious freedom and quickly turned hypocritical by denying it to others. The other is this one, that they separated church and civil government.

The reality is they came here to create a theocracy that would eventually grow strong enough to export back to England. They never had the slightest intent of creating a place where everyone could follow his own conscience. They were being entirely consistent with their principles by excluding other beliefs. In fact, when Roger Williams did set up such a colony, they disdainfully nicknamed it "Rogues' Island."

They came here and created the model of a written constitution...

Yeah, if you don't count the Magna Carta from 1215. A mere 405 years earlier.

They came here with the idea that after trying socialism that it wasn’t going to work. They realized that it was unbiblical, that it was a form of theft, so they pitched socialism out. They learned that in the early 1620’s.

Meh, sorta. They had some loafers who were told that if they didn't pitch in, they wouldn't eat. And they gave up quickly on communal living for that reason. It's a few light years between giving handouts to people who abuse the system, and helping people in genuine hard straits.

5 nines09  Thu, Nov 25, 2010 12:09:29pm

Another dull tool in the GOP tool box. Ask him if the Native Americans were socialist. Might clear up a lot of misconceptions.

6 Romantic Heretic  Thu, Nov 25, 2010 1:46:22pm

re: #5 nines09

Of course they were. Commies the lot of them. It's why we had to kill most of them and place the rest on reservations. No cost is too high when America is at stake!

////

7 Lidane  Thu, Nov 25, 2010 2:05:51pm

re: #4 SteveDutch

They had some loafers who were told that if they didn't pitch in, they wouldn't eat. And they gave up quickly on communal living for that reason.

I was listening to Michael Medved just now as I was coming home from Thanksgiving dinner with some friends and he was reading a bunch of stuff that was making this argument, and he tried to turn it into some sort of proof that the Pilgrims saw the evils of socialism early on, and they turned away from things like commonwealths (his word, not mine) because they were collectivist, and therefore evil and bad and wrong.

If I hadn't been in someone else's car and with friends, I would have started ranting and raving about this idiocy. I decided to be the better woman and not spoil the holiday mood. =P

8 Shiplord Kirel  Thu, Nov 25, 2010 9:19:03pm

The "socialist" regime from which they fled was headed by none other than King James I, who gave his name to the theocrats' favorite book, the King James Bible. He also persecuted Catholics, hunted witches, and prescribed the death penalty for homosexuality. I don't know where he stood on the gold standard, other than to get as much of it as he could, or global warming.

9 lostlakehiker  Thu, Nov 25, 2010 9:35:01pm

re: #4 SteveDutch

We've got two dueling myths. One is that the Pilgrims and Puritans came here for religious freedom and quickly turned hypocritical by denying it to others. The other is this one, that they separated church and civil government.

The reality is they came here to create a theocracy that would eventually grow strong enough to export back to England. They never had the slightest intent of creating a place where everyone could follow his own conscience. They were being entirely consistent with their principles by excluding other beliefs. In fact, when Roger Williams did set up such a colony, they disdainfully nicknamed it "Rogues' Island."

Yeah, if you don't count the Magna Carta from 1215. A mere 405 years earlier.

Meh, sorta. They had some loafers who were told that if they didn't pitch in, they wouldn't eat. And they gave up quickly on communal living for that reason. It's a few light years between giving handouts to people who abuse the system, and helping people in genuine hard straits.


But socialism is exactly what they were practicing. Each person was to work his best, and each person was to receive the exact same rations, whether or not he or she worked much.

Since most people were sick, and were entitled to sick leave, almost no work got done. Faced with crop failure and starvation, they decided that instead, each person would eat what he or she could grow, or what others would freely give them.

The upshot was that even those running a high fever would stumble out into the fields and hoe some weeds. Desperate times demand desperate measures. There simply wasn't any social surplus to spare, and the prospect of general famine was insufficient to move people up out of their sickbeds and into the fields. The work investment was simply not worth the individual farmer's share of the extra food that might grow.

10 lostlakehiker  Thu, Nov 25, 2010 9:40:00pm

re: #7 Lidane

I was listening to Michael Medved just now as I was coming home from Thanksgiving dinner with some friends and he was reading a bunch of stuff that was making this argument, and he tried to turn it into some sort of proof that the Pilgrims saw the evils of socialism early on, and they turned away from things like commonwealths (his word, not mine) because they were collectivist, and therefore evil and bad and wrong.

If I hadn't been in someone else's car and with friends, I would have started ranting and raving about this idiocy. I decided to be the better woman and not spoil the holiday mood. =P

But it's not idiocy. It is a correct understanding of their experience with collective ownership of food and farm plots, and the consequences of that experiment. Whether you wish to call a policy that would have led to all the Pilgrims dying evil, or just stupid, or for the best, is your call. But whether they themselves deemed it an evil is not your call. It's just history. Medved was right: under the circumstances, collectivism had proved itself tantamount to self-genocide. Kool-Aid.

They turned away from "commonwealths", not because it was collectivist and therefore wrong, but because it was going to get them all dead, and they didn't want that to happen.

11 webevintage  Thu, Nov 25, 2010 9:43:29pm

I'm gobsmacked that there is someone on this thread supporting the idiotic remaking of American history of folks like Todd Akin and John Stossel.

And yeah it would have been better for the native Americans if the Pilgrims had just died already.....

12 Mad Prophet Ludwig  Thu, Nov 25, 2010 9:51:57pm

Congratulations America. The home school movement has borne its fruit. These people do not know any better. They are that entrenched in their ignorance. In terms of social experiments that are self defeating, this is what we get when we insure the "right" of rubes to deny education to their children.

13 Lidane  Thu, Nov 25, 2010 10:40:49pm

re: #10 lostlakehiker

But it's not idiocy.

Sure it is, just like defending Medved and Akin is absurd.

Socialism didn't exist as a political theory or concept until centuries after the Pilgrims were dead and gone. Ascribing modern political ideas to life hundreds of years before then is stupid, and serves no purpose except for demagogues to try and make a pathetically ill-informed argument.

14 Sinistershade  Fri, Nov 26, 2010 12:23:56am

A New York Time reporter traced a bit of the history of this chestnut of conservative fiction and asked a few historians for their opinions:

[Link: www.nytimes.com...]

15 Obdicut  Fri, Nov 26, 2010 2:53:17am

re: #10 lostlakehiker

Stop misusing the word genocide, please.


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