When the
pilgrims began to come to the American Colonies in the 1600s, many were groups
of strict, isolationist, fundamentalist Protestants from emerging denominations
that splintered off from the larger Lutheran and Anglican churches. They were
not appreciated by the Europeans and their Monarchies. They came to the
colonies to establish their own cocoons.
They were
scrupulously religious daily bible readers, who insisted that their children
adhere to all the rules dictated by the denomination. Everybody was wound too
tight and developed communities where everybody needed to work and peer
pressure was the order of the day.
Thankfully,
they had leaders who knew enough about trade and commerce to guide their
efforts into profitable fields of endeavor, so they could succeed. To their own
credit, these settlers learned to innovate to overcome their obstacles.
Their
pastors were not quiet about their political views and the principles of the
founding fathers who would eventually create the United States in 1879 were
pounded from the pulpit throughout the 1700s.
These
pilgrims had a rough start and I believe the combination of strict
self-discipline and their difficulties to survive combined to create
communities tough enough to earn the right to proclaim the American work ethic.
Religious
practices were exclusionary; all the denominations were intolerant of each
other except the Quakers. The rules of behavior for the exclusionary
denominations were severely enforced. The kind of control exerted is like the control
exerted by cults but rather than following a “profit” they obeyed an oligarchy
of elders, who served as judge and jury.
Their
family-enforced religious discipline taught them self-discipline and not much
else. Living in these communities had to be tough. Social norms were tight and
enforced by peer pressure and reporting truant behavior to the religious
community dictators. That encourages a cattiness not seen again until Germany
under Hitler. The Pilgrims burned women who were reported to be “witches”. They
were ignorant and superstitious, but eventually reason prevailed and these
practices were abandoned.
The big
opportunity the early settlers had was to buy and own their own land and become
self-sufficient; it was immense. Many of these settlers were farmers whose
parents had worked on farms owned by the “royals” in Europe. Everybody came to the American Colonies to
find that “American Dream”. The government in the colonies made sure that trade
was made possible and needed skills were recruited as needed. Without them, the
pilgrims might not have made it.
Everybody
knew that they were responsible for their own success. Their need to survive
started the process, but their need to succeed became the driver of the
American Work Ethic. See articles below:
The
Starving Time, Wikipedia
The Starving Time at Jamestown in the Colony of Virginia was a period of starvation during the winter of 1609–1610.
There were about 500 Jamestown residents at the beginning of the winter.
However, there were only 60 people still alive when the spring arrived
The
colonists, the first group of whom had originally arrived at Jamestown on May
13, 1607, had never planned to grow all of their own food. Their plans depended
upon trade with the local Powhatan to supply them with
food between the arrivals of periodic supply ships from England. Lack of access
to water and a relatively dry rain season crippled the agricultural production
of the colonists. Also, the water that the colonists drank was brackish and potable for only
half of the year. A fleet from England, damaged by a hurricane, arrived months
behind schedule with new colonists, but without expected food supplies.
On
June 7, 1610, the survivors boarded ships, abandoned the colony site, and
sailed towards the Chesapeake Bay, where another supply
convoy with new supplies and headed by a newly appointed governor Francis West, intercepted them on the
lower James River and returned them to Jamestown. Within a few years, the
commercialization of tobacco by John Rolfe secured the
settlement's long-term economic prosperity.
How a Failed Commune Gave Us What Is Now Thanksgiving, by Jerry
Bowyer,
It's
wrong to say that American was founded by capitalists. In fact, America was
founded by socialists who had the humility to learn from their initial mistakes
and embrace freedom.
One of
the earliest and arguably most historically significant North American colonies
was Plymouth Colony, founded in 1620 in what is now known as Plymouth,
Massachusetts.
As
I've outlined in greater detail here before (Lessons From a
Capitalist Thanksgiving),
the original colony had written into its charter a system of communal property
and labor. As William Bradford recorded in his Of Plymouth Plantation, a people who had
formerly been known for their virtue and hard work became lazy and
unproductive. Resources were squandered, vegetables were allowed to rot on the
ground and mass starvation was the result. And where there is starvation, there
is plague. After 2 1/2 years, the leaders of the colony decided to abandon
their socialist mandate and create a system which honored private property. The
colony survived and thrived and the abundance which resulted was what was
celebrated at that iconic Thanksgiving feast.
As my
friend Reuven Brenner has taught me, history is a series
of experiments: The Human Gamble. Some gambles work and are adopted by history
and some do not and should be abandoned by it. The problem is that the human
gamble only works if there is a record of experimental outcomes and if decision
makers consult that record. For many years, the story of the first failed
commune of Plymouth Bay was part of the collective memory of American students.
But Progressive Education found that story unhelpful and it has fallen into
obscurity, which explains why (as I alluded to before) a well-educated
establishment figure like Jared Bernstein would be unaware of it.
I'm
often asked why our current leadership class forgets the lessons of the past so
often. They are, after all, very smart men and women. Don't they know that
collectivism will fail?
No,
they don't. Not anymore. For much of our history, our leaders were educated in
the principles which were to help them avoid errors once they have joined the ruling
class. They studied to learn how to not misuse power. Now our leaders learn
nothing of the dangers of abusing power: their education is entirely geared to
its acquisition. All of their neurons are trained on that one objective -
to get to the top. What they do when they get there is a matter for later. And
what happens to the country when they're done with their experiments is beside
the point: after all, their experiments will not really affect them personally.
History is the story of the limitations of human power. But the limits of power
is a topic for people who doubt themselves and their right to rule, not the
self-anointed.
That's
how it is now, and that's how it was in 1620. The charter of the Plymouth
Colony reflected the most up-to-date economic, philosophical and religious
thinking of the early 17th century. Plato was in vogue then, and Plato believed
in central planning by intellectuals in the context of communal property,
centralized state education, state centralized cultural offerings and communal
family structure. For Plato, it literally did take a village to raise a child.
This collectivist impulse reflected itself in various heretical offshoots of
Protestant Christianity with names like The True Levelers, and the Diggers,
mass movements of people who believed that property and income distinctions
should be eliminated, that the wealthy should have their property expropriated
and given to what we now call the 99%. This kind of thinking was rife in the
1600s and is perhaps why the Pilgrim settlers settled for a charter which did
not create a private property system.
But
the Pilgrims learned and prospered. And what they learned, we have forgotten
and we fade. Now, new waves of ignorant masses flood into parks and
public squares. New Platonists demand control of other people’s property. New
True Levelers legally occupy the prestige pulpits of our nation, secular and
sacred. And now, as then, the productive class of our now gigantic,
colony-turned-superpower, learn and teach again, the painful lessons of
history. Collectivism violates the iron laws of human nature. It has always
failed. It is always failing, and it will always fail. I thank God that it is
failing now. Providence is teaching us once again.
The
notion of having a personal relationship with God developed in the 1800s in the
US in revivals.
What’s
odd now is the same fringe denominations that were a mess in the 1600s are the
same independent Christian churches who support the conservative free market
principles they converted to in the 1700s. The mainstream Catholic, Anglican
and Lutheran churches are now in the tank for the Marxists.
Norb
Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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