Schweikart: America's Socialist Origins (a Thanksgiving history lesson)

YouTube ^ | March 2016 | Aaron Bandler with LS on Youtube

[poconopundit]

History professor, author Larry Schweikart (and Free Republic commentator LS ) narrates his story on a Prager University video.

It explains how the colonists in the 1600's established a system he describes as an "ideal socialist commune" in Jamestown and Plymouth.

This history video (YouTube... 5 minutes.. 1 million hits) is pure plain talk: every Deplorable and liberal can understand it. Great for high school and college students — anyone actually. Best short defense of capitalism I've ever seen.

I found this video on Larry's active Twitter page where I'm finding great material. Check it out FReepers.

https://twitter.com/LarrySchweikart

[poconopundit]

Great LS video.

[loveliberty2]

Thank you, poconopundit! Great!

The following contains more on the subject from another site for resource material on the Founders and their ideas of liberty.

Americans, in the beginning, tried socialism. Like every other people who tried such a non-starter for providing individual incentives, individual freedom, and prosperous economy, they failed. Here is the story:

The Economic Dimension Of Liberty Protected By The Constitution

"Agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and navigation, the four pillars of our prosperity, are the most thriving when left most free to individual enterprise."

- Thomas Jefferson

"The enviable condition of the people of the United States is often too much ascribed to the physical advantages of their soil & climate .... But a just estimate of the happiness of our country will never overlook what belongs to the fertile activity of a free people and the benign influence of a responsible government."

- James Madison

America's Constitution did not mention freedom of enterprise per se, but it did set up a system of laws to secure individual liberty and freedom of choice in keeping with Creator-endowed natural rights. Out of these, free enterprise flourished naturally. Even though the words "free enterprise' are not in the Constitution, the concept was uppermost in the minds of the Founders, typified by the remarks of Jefferson and Madison as quoted above.

Already, in 1787, Americans were enjoying the rewards of individual enterprise and free markets. Their dedication was to securing that freedom for posterity. The learned men drafting America's Constitution understood history - mankind's struggle against poverty and government oppression. And they had studied the ideas of the great thinkers and philosophers.

They were familiar with the near starvation of the early Jamestown settlers under a communal production and distribution system and Governor Bradford's diary account of how all benefited after agreement that each family could do as it wished with the fruits of its own labors.

Later, in 1776, Adam Smith's INQUIRY INTO THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF THE WEALTH OF NATIONS and Say's POLITICAL ECONOMY had come at just the right time and were perfectly compatible with the Founders' own passion for individual liberty. Jefferson said these were the best books to be had for forming governments based on principles of freedom.

They saw a free market economy as the natural result of their ideal of liberty. They feared concentrations of power and the coercion that planners can use in planning other peoples lives; and they valued freedom of choice and acceptance of responsibility of the consequences of such choice as being the very essence of liberty. They envisioned a large and prosperous republic of free people, unhampered by government interference. The Founders believed the American people, possessors of deeply rooted character and values, could prosper if left free to:

acquire and own property have access to free markets produce what they wanted

work for whom and at what they wanted travel and live where they would choose acquire goods and services which they desired

Such a free market economy was, to them, the natural result of liberty, carried out in the economic dimension of life. Their philosophy tend­ed to enlarge individual freedom - not to restrict or diminish the individual's right to make choices and to succeed or fail based on those choices. The economic role of their Constitutional government was simply to secure rights and encourage commerce. Through the Constitution, they granted their government some very limited powers to:

• assure that the ground rules were fair (a fixed standard of weights and measures)
• encourage initiative and inventiveness (copyright and patent protection laws)
• provide a system of sound currency with an established value (gold and silver coin)
• enforce free trade (free from interfering special interests)
• protect individuals from the harmful acts of others

Adam Smith called it "the system of natural liberty." James Madison referred to it as "the benign influence of a responsible government." Others have called it the free enterprise system. By whatever name it is called, the economic system envisioned by the Founders and encouraged by the Constitution allowed individual enterprise to flourish and triggered the greatest explosion of economic progress in all of history. Americans became the first people truly to realize the economic dimension of liberty.

---

Footnote: Our Ageless Constitution, W. David Stedman & La Vaughn G. Lewis, Editors (Asheboro, NC, W. David Stedman Associates, 1987) Part III: ISBN 0-937047-01-5

[FreedomPoster]

LS needs a ping.

[Behind the Blue Wall]

Well done LS!

[rlmorel]

Big LS fan here, and I love the PragerU videos...I recommend them to a lot of people!

[frog in a pot]

Thank you for this.

[ichabod1]

I’ve been noticing, Thanksgiving is really not a leftist holiday, they hate it because they aren’t grateful for nuthin’. If they get something they want, doesn’t matter there’s always some other cause, some other problem. Nothing is ever good enough.

[100American]

Hey, if you knew this then ok, a LOT of others do not realize Socialism was tried and discarded from the beginning

Get over yourself

Sic Semper Tyrranis

[PIF]

Only by forgoing the “socialist” big government rule (ending the ‘collective), did the pilgrims overcome starvation when they instituted individuals’ right to grow food to resell to others.

[poconopundit]

Americans became the first people truly to realize the economic dimension of liberty.

* * *

Very good, loveliberty.

And there’s no better indicator that economic freedom works than the steep rise in employment and the economy when Trump cut taxes and cut regulations.

All that economic energy was able to burst forth after being locked down for so many years.

Better days are on the way.

[LS]

Thanks. This was a good one. Prager U did a great job on this.

[LS]

This person is back? I thought JimRob gave him/her the heave ho cuz he/she never posts ANYTHING positive about anything.

[higgmeister]

bttt for Pro-sign Lucky Strike

[FreedomPoster]

I love Prager U, they do great work.

[100American]

Jim Robinson is a righteous man, I think he gave him another chance and he yet again went back to his old ways

As the eminent philosopher Forrest Gump said “stupid is as stupid does”

[loveliberty2]

Thank you!! "Better days are on the way." - If enough of us, one by one, spread the word, in whatever way is possible to each of us, that freedom works--whether in individuals in local communities, or in the national body politic.

From the Liberty Bell's Biblical inscription: "Proclaim liberty throughout the land" to the words of America, the patriotic song, Americans always knew that liberty and freedom were the great prize available to Americans--that is, until the Liberal/Progressive ideology began to invade and take over the minds of a sufficient number of citizens to take attention off the great philosophy of our Declaration of Independence--a Declaration which asserted that Creator-endowed life, rights, and the liberty to enjoy them were unalienable.

[poconopundit]

Yes, Freedom as an economic philosophy is sadly misunderstood.

Frédéric Bastiat wrote the famous pamphlet,The Law, back in 1850.  It remains one of the most crystal clear cases for the power of Freedom and the justification for a free capitalist vs. socialist system.

What I love about Bastiat's work is it gets down to first principles: the logic is quite satisfying.

In an off-and-on project, I have been editing the English translation of Bastiat's Law.  The goal is to get The Law in as plain English text as possible.  I also saw fit to remove several sections of the pamphlet that talk about Universal Sufferage, but kind of distract from the more powerful main theme.

Download the MS Word file here.

Would be interested to hear what you think of it and any ideas you may have to best present this to a larger audience.