A Conservative History of the American Left

0307338467 excerpt Flynn: A CONSERVATIVE HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN LEFT BOOK ONE 1 the religious left Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. matthew 6:10 Utopian and collectivist ideas are as American as Plymouth Rock. The Pilgrims, like America's secular communists of the nineteenth century, hoped to build a city upon a hill. And like other sectarian groups that later found refuge in America, the Pilgrims attempted to build their utopia upon communist principles. In contrast to nineteenth-century American communists, sectarian and secular, and akin to most twentieth-century Europeans living under communists, the Pilgrims' system was imposed on them from without. The edict to abolish private property and pool resources came from an unlikely source: Plymouth colony's capitalist investors, who unwisely, and ironically, feared that the colonists' private greed would eat away at investment profits. Under communism, which reigned in Plymouth colony from 1620 to 1623, Pilgrim bellies and investor wallets starved. Historians look back and ascribe myriad causes for these lean years. But the man whom the Plymouth colonists elected as their governor more than thirty times emphasized the role communism played in the colony's early woes. In Of Plymouth Plantation, William Bradford wrote: For the young men, that were 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 in 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 commended 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.1 Rather than "languish in misery," Bradford parceled land to families for private use, which "made all hands very industrious." An abundance of corn replaced an abundance of hunger pangs. "The women now went willingly in the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression."2 Bradford concluded: "The experience that was had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years and that amongst godly and sober men, may well evince the vanity of that conceit of Plato's and other ancients applauded by some of later times; that the taking away of property and bringing in community into a commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing; as if they were wiser than God."3 Other religious exiles followed the Pilgrims to America. Many didn't learn from Plymouth colony's mistakes. A recurring theme of socialists centered on schemes to play God. For Christian socialists, this involved charismatic figures claiming to be God, or at least God's chosen earthly representative. For atheist socialists, this involved deposing God and putting man in his place. For who else but God could be so all-knowing as to plan from afar distribution of goods and jobs to all men? Men submitted to intrusive schemes based on the loftiest of promises: heaven on earth. Sectarian communists undertook such endeavors to prepare for the end of the world; secular communists undertook such endeavors to embark upon the beginning of the world. With rhetoric that invoked both Genesis and Revelation, the religious aFlynn, Daniel J. is the author of 'A Conservative History of the American Left' with ISBN 9780307339461 and ISBN 0307339467.