The story of socialism at Plymouth Rock is one that few Americans are taught in their public (i.e., government) schools. On landing at Plymouth Rock, the Pilgrims established an economic system in which all their crops would be owned in common and whose harvest would be distributed to each family in accordance with its needs. The colonists felt that such a socialist system would be consistent with their deep religious convictions.
There was one big problem, however, with this spread-the-wealth economic system: starvation. When everything was owned by everyone, people would look for excuses to avoid working in the fields and the harvests were not sufficient to keep everyone fed.
Finally, after repeated food shortages Plymouth Rock Governor William Bradford declared an end to socialism at Plymouth Rock. He announced that every family would be responsible for planting and harvesting its own crops and would be free to keep the bounty.
The result? No more starvation! Instead, a bountiful harvest and more than enough food for everyone.
And that’s what the first Thanksgiving was all about — to give thanks for the plentiful bounty that had been brought into existence through the “miracle of the market.”
Hornberger goes on to lament the fact that Obama strongly supports socialistic programs, which does not bode well for our future. Read the whole article here.
And you can read more about the system of socialism the Pilgrims put into place (the Mayflower Compact) in this article by Chuck Muth.
As a teacher for 25 yeas in the nation’s second largest school district, Los Angeles Unified (LAUSD), I find myself increasingly isolated in defending public education to my conservative and even liberal friends. Unlike many of them, I continue to appreciate the fact that public schools in the U.S. are already in place, at a huge investment, and that they help millions of children, many more than they hurt; I must say, however, that as the years have passed, government, with the help of teachers unions, has made it increasingly difficult for me to face my critical friends, because what’s good about American education in recent years has been in spite of government, not because of it. From the U.S. Department of Education to state boards and even to many local boards and districts, teachers face dictums from imaginative dilettantes who are never asked to be responsible for their actions. A brief history of my career will make the problem clear.
My first assignment as a new teacher was in South Los Angeles, in what was then a predominantly black neighborhood. The school population was entirely low income and thus eligible for substantial Title I money, designated for schools with at least 40% low income population under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. So much Title I money flowed into the school that we had a designated office just to manage it. The school was filled with hundreds of brand new computers in fully staffed labs. Music and art programs abounded. All classrooms were air-conditioned years before any schools in the much hotter but largely affluent San Fernando Valley. It would be mean spirited indeed for me to begrudge the children at my school any of these benefits, and I did not. What I did notice, however, was that test scores at the school had not risen at all over the years of federal largess. It appeared that money, by itself, was not sufficient to help these children. It took me a few more years to learn what was missing.
A new article by Liberty Hero Thomas DiLorenzo over at LRC entitled “Tales From an Academic Looney Bin” discusses the frightening reality that so-called ‘Cultural Marxists’ have infiltrated and taken over many higher-learning institutions. We’ve heard this type of thing for years, and DiLorenzo’s examples at Baltimore’s Loyola College are no exception.
…[Cultural Marxists] took over and began acting, well, like lunatics. I learned from the local media that the former academic vice president had rejected an applicant for a top job because the applicant “wasn’t black enough.” The job was academic vice president for diversity and the interviewee was an African-American man with very impressive credentials. According to news reports, this man was told that he was well qualified, but that the College preferred an African-American with somewhat darker skin.
So here was a man who had probably been discriminated against in employment during his lifetime who had reached the peak of his professional career, and was interviewing for what was probably his dream job. And he is told he wasn’t getting the job, once again, because of his skin color. And you probably thought “lunatic” was too strong a word.
This is a very entertaining article. Highly recommended. Read it here.
Most rational people agree that in the face of the current economic meltdown, all levels of government- federal, state and local- should spend less money. What no one agrees on is how to spend less. One person’s pork is another person’s vital service, and we usually don’t have trusted third parties to figure out which is which.
A case in point is the school district where I teach, Los Angeles Unified, the second largest in the nation. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has been issuing increasingly dire assessments of the state economy, with increasingly dire implications for education. His latest assessment of likely cuts to education could swell LAUSD’s current $375 million deficit to more than a half-billion within this school year. There is no debate about spending less. Everyone in the district has become a spend-less conservative.
The disagreement, of course, is on what to cut. The teachers’ union wants to cut the bureaucracy (while demanding a raise). The school board wants to cut teacher perks like health care (while offering no raise).
Here’s what I want: All district “literacy coaches” should be sent back to classroom positions, all publishing enterprises that duplicate the expense of state approved textbooks should be discontinued, and district “literacy cadres” should be disbanded.
And here’s the rub: you the reader, well informed though you may be, have no idea what I’m talking about. It’s local, insider stuff. One can’t rally the troops with calls of “Down with literacy coaches!” as one can with teacher accountability or pay raises.
One of Liberty Maven’s (soon-to-be) Liberty Heroes, Thomas DiLorenzo, was interviewed by columnist Ilana Mercer. DiLorenzo, who recently wrote Hamilton’s Curse, discusses at length Hamilton’s strong desire for mercantilism in this country, and throws the stated desires of Obama and McCain into the mix for comparison purposes.
Obama is a slick politician, so I expect him to continue to administer the neo-mercantilist, Hamiltonian empire that has been built up by both parties over the decades, with all of its schemes for corporate welfare for defense contractors, investment bankers and myriad other politically active businesses which, in turn, provide financial support for the regime. But Obama is also a hardcore leftist who spent his earlier career working with some of the craziest socialists in America, groups like ACORN, who advocated such things as kicking doctors off the boards of hospitals and replacing them with “the poor,” and Soviet-style nationalization of the energy and health care industries.
In the course of political discussions with friends and family (most of whom are firmly in the grasp of the inanity of the two-party system), the subject of education and “public schools” arises. I make the case that so-called public schooling (i.e. schools provided by government) is really bad idea for a variety of reasons, mainly because government has failed in its efforts. In a recent article at The Future of Freedom Foundation, Jacob G. Hornberger accurately portrays government schools for what they are: an example of socialism.
While the nation is on the subject of socialism, we really ought to talk about public schooling. With the possible exception of the military, it’s the best example of a socialist institution one could ever find. It’s not a coincidence that public schooling is one of Fidel Castro’s favorite government programs.
Actually, “public schooling” is a misnomer. It would be more accurate to call it “government schooling” because it’s a government operation from start to finish. That’s different from, say, public movie theaters or public restaurants. Those are private businesses that are open to the public.
Like the military, public schooling operates in a top-down, command-and-control manner. It’s a perfect model of socialistic central planning, a system in which government officials plan and direct the activities of the citizenry rather than simply leaving the citizenry free to plan and direct their own affairs.
Whether the control comes from the state government, through the state department of education, or the local government, through a school board, the principle is the same — a group of appointed or elected government officials is directing the educational decisions of multitudes of students. That’s different from the private sector, where consumers, through their spending decisions, determine the direction of entrepreneurial and business activity.
Government officials decide the textbooks and the curricula in government schools. Thus, they decide the substance of what is to be taught to the students. In socialist countries like Cuba, we usually call that process indoctrination.
One of Liberty Maven’s Heroes of Liberty, Judge Andrew Napolitano appeared on Fox News’ The Verdict to ask the question, “Is the government we have today what the founders had in mind?” He discusses the issues of the day: Obama, McCain, the $700B bailout, Congressmen and presidents overstepping their Constitutional bounds, etc. Great video. Watch it now.
Quote of the Day: “Bad ideas can only bear the weight of reality for so long.” — Greg Jesson
Today we’ll compare the cases of Alan Greenspan, Ron Paul, and John Stossel, beginning with this . . .
If you oppose fiat currency and centralized government banking, and would like to abolish the Federal Reserve and legal tender laws in favor of free market banking and free market money . . .
And you think the best way to achieve these things is to put the right people — people who believe as you do — in positions of power, then . . .
It would have been reasonable to assume, prior to seeing him in action, that Alan Greenspan was the “right person” to head the Federal Reserve.
You could have justifiably assumed, based on Greenspan’s previous writings and statements, that he would use his position to not only control the damage done by the Fed, but also to argue for its abolition.
None of these things happened. Instead, the opposite happened. Greenspan betrayed every economic principle he had previously professed. Putting a presumed “right person” in a position of power did not have the right result.
To contrast with this example we can compare the case of Ron Paul. Ron Paul has always said the right things, and done the right things too.
Two different “right people” have produced two different results. What are we to conclude from this?
On ABC’s 20/20 Friday night John Stossel fired a cannon for liberty. He put together an hour long report using the current political climate to promote the philosophy of liberty and libertarianism. I can’t not recommend this enough. I also recommend you spread it to everyone you know.
This should be required viewing for all voters. It is in 6 parts.
On Chris Martenson’s blog (free registration required), Chris picks apart the Joint Statement by the Treasury, Federal Reserve and FDIC published today. He manages to cut through the blah blah blah and point out the Orwellian events taking place: further maniplation of interest rates, and changes in regulation that expand the FDIC and further distort the marketplace:
This is another gross marketplace distortion of the highest order. It means that sharp investors will now scramble for the highest yielding junk debt of the most troubled institutions so as to grab all that extra free yield. Suffice it to say that moral hazard has just been kicked up a notch. Instead of poorly performing banks being shunned, as they should be, they are now advanced to the front of the pack by virtue of offering a higher “risk free” yield than their more cautious competitors.
But the real kicker was that tag line of “and their holding companies”. *Gulp*. Unless there’s some hidden details saying otherwise, this means that the senior debt of any holding company of an insured bank is now covered by the FDIC. Look for crappy banks to suddenly be highly desirable acquisition targets of non-related companies seeking a government subsidy for their own senior debt offerings.
As mentioned previously, Chris Martenson’s Crash Course is an excellent way to get a much deeper understand of how our monetary system works in about three hours. Broken up into twenty short videos, Martenson explains things in easy-to-understand terms. We cannot recommend it enough.
Liberty Maven
