The Tea Party sees Thanksgiving as a morality tale about finding salvation in Capitalism. The Pilgrims were failed Socialists who turned to Capitalism for survival. Only after foregoing communal ownership of property and allowing private ownership did the colony prosper. (Communism could also have been used, but socialism is the bogey meme du jour.)
The actual historical details are much more interesting than the Tea Party myth.
The Pilgrims formed a start-up and the Merchants and Adventurers of London were their venture capitalists. The Merchants would put up the cash for the supplies and the trip to the New World and the colonists would put up the labor. They signed a seven-year contract in which all land, livestock, lumber, furs, and other trade goods were held in partnership. At the end of the seven year period, the company was to be dissolved and the assets distributed. The Pilgrims were more like shareholders in a corporation than socialists.
Interestingly, only one Pilgrim died on the 66-day voyage. This is attributed to the fact that the Mayflower had never carried passengers, she was a “sweet ship.” Seepage from previous wine cargos had impregnated the ship’s timbers and acted like a disinfectant.
The Mayflower landed in November of 1620 and the first Thanksgiving was held in 1621. The colony’s governor, William Bradford, abolished the communal land arrangement and gave each household a parcel of land, in 1623. It seems unlikely that a colony in the grips of a famine, caused by evils of communal property ownership, would host a three-day feast. The prospects of a famine would come the following year with a devastating summer drought and the seasonal migration of fish and fowl.
Agriculture did become more profitable in following years, in part due to improved cultivation techniques of corn, a crop for which the colonists had no experience, and in part due to the increase in each individual’s exertion on their privately held land.
Two attempts to make payments to the investors were met with pirates, who captured the ships bringing back furs and timber. The investors, fearing a total loss of their investment, settled with the Pilgrims for £1800 after an investment of nearly £7000.
H/T: NY Times, New American, Dictionary of American History.
-David Drumm (Nal)
Bob Esq:
“A duty of virtue does not involve another person.”
How so? Why do we want to be virtuous? Virtue is necessary in dealing with other people if we accept the premise that human beings are rational organisms.
We cannot be virtuous in a vacuum. If there were no human beings there would be no need of being virtuous unless you defined virtue as extending your life.
If you accept the premise of individual man extending his life though alone, then virtue would consist of following nature and obeying natures laws to remain alive.
Is that what Kant means?
“Where do the rights associated with self-determination end? With your Kant formulation (which I disagree with, I think is illogical on its face for the aforementioned reason), they don’t.”
A duty of virtue does not involve another person.
What can I say. You’re both irrational and have evil genes that wish to oppress others, Brown Shirt. The old double whammy. Sam deals with the idea of free will (or lack thereof), legalism and the punishment of bad acts. Do your own homework.
WARNING: It has actual science content, thus probably rendering it incomprehensible to you.
Skinners Baby:
So Sam Harris thinks we can determine morality from our genes? No free will? If that is so how does reason enter into his equation? If man’s morality is determined by his genes then there is no morality and we are subservient to our biology.
“Since reason is man’s basic means of survival, that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; that which negates, opposes or destroys it is the evil. Since everything man needs has to be discovered by his own mind and produced by his own effort, the two essentials of the method of survival proper to a rational being are: thinking and productive work.”
I’m not the one arguing there is no such thing as human rights. Your shirt is far browner than mine. Although I’ll stipulate that could be a stain resultant from how you store your head.
The common good can be defined by logic and reason.
On that topic, I’ll refer and defer to a man that has made all the arguments already – Sam Harris.
http://www.samharris.org/
Skinners Baby:
Who determines the common good? Who enforces the common good? How do we know what is the common good?
The common good is the majority taking precedence over the minority or the individual. So now we are talking the dictatorship of the proletariat. But typically a few individuals exploit power, so in reality the common good is the tyranny of a few select individuals over the rest of us.
You a totalitarian Gump/Skinners Baby?
“If one begins by defining the good of individual men, one will accept as proper only a society in which that good is achieved and achievable. But if one begins by accepting “the common good” as an axiom and regarding individual good as its possible but not necessary consequence (not necessary in any particular case), one ends up with such a gruesome absurdity as Soviet Russia, a country professedly dedicated to “the common good,” where, with the exception of a minuscule clique of rulers, the entire population existed in subhuman misery for over three generations.”
Reagan’s Douche,
“The counter balance to the “common” good are the DOI and Constitution.”
That’s why the Constitution mentions specifically the promotion of general welfare (aka the common good) and justice (civil, criminal and social via Amendment) as primary functions. Also, the foundation of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany weren’t about the common good except in propaganda. They were about centralized control in the hands of people with suspect agendas that had less to do with freedom and the common good than they did with personal profit and power. The Soviets failed because they didn’t take human nature and motivation into account in their draconian application of communism (not socialism). The Nazis failed because they were genocidal fascists bent on world domination. America as envisioned by Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers was neither, although thanks to Neocon GOP, we become more like the precursor to Nazi Germany every day with the erosion of both civil and human rights.
Idiot.
Bob,
I take issue with an infinite. Where do the rights associated with self-determination end? With your Kant formulation (which I disagree with, I think is illogical on its face for the aforementioned reason), they don’t. The Constitution (and the DOI) are clearly about more than the pursuit of happiness. They are also about limiting tyranny, both by the individual and by the state. If there are to be no limits to what people claim as property but their labor, it cannot be defined let alone defended. No limits guarantees tyranny. You may be right in your reading of Kant (even when I was fresh on Kant, you’ve still done a lot more work with him than I have as I know from what you’ve told me in offline discussions), but that infinite formulation of property rights tied only to personal interest leads to anarchy. It has to end at the usurpation of the rights of others to themselves: at the end of their nose. Once it crosses into usurpation, it’s a foul ball. If the pursuit of happiness is a legitimate goal, it is only so in the informative sense that the entire Declaration is. The DOI only informs the Constitution and I know that this is a point you’ll stipulate, so we are left with the Constitution as primary authority. That means that establishing justice (which requires equity), insuring domestic tranquility, providing for the common defence and promote the general welfare (all of which can and do require sacrifice in the real world) are prime over the pursuit of happiness as that is aspirational at best and the others are the concrete functions of the Constitution.
Skinners Baby:
What is the common good? So what you are saying is the common good is more important than the individual?
The counter balance to the “common” good are the DOI and Constitution. The Soviet Union was set up for the “common” good. Nazi Germany was set up for the “common” good.
“Only on the basis of individual rights can any good—private or public—be defined and achieved. Only when each man is free to exist for his own sake—neither sacrificing others to himself nor being sacrificed to others—only then is every man free to work for the greatest good he can achieve for himself by his own choice and by his own effort. And the sum total of such individual efforts is the only kind of general, social good possible.”
I can call you Gump or Skinners Baby but you still don’t understand in any incarnation. One last post and then I quit beating my head against invincible ignorance.
Buddha: “Then pray tell, Bob, where do your property rights end according to Kant?”
Let’s first review what I said initially…
Buddha: “Ownership of self (self determination) and ownership of chattel are not the same thing.”
Me: Under the Lockean theory of property, the latter necessitates the former.
Do you see how my statement was a patently obvious restatement of ‘the pursuit of happiness?’
That aside, Kant’s duties of virtue can be said to comprise the ‘sticks in the bundle of self-ownership rights’ (self-determination) that cannot be legislated by the state.
Now, if we combine that with my initial statement, i.e. that ownership of chattels necessitates the pre-existence of self-ownership in a Lockean theory of property, exactly what is it that you take issue with?
Oooo.
More personal attacks.
How positively quaint.
And wildly ineffective.
I’m not the one who can’t comprehend that Jefferson knew that there were counter-balancing considerations and that the common good was such a counter-balance.
That’d be you.
Gump:
“I’ve read more books than you’ve ever seen.”
“Green Eggs and Ham” and “Are you my mother” and other books of that genre don’t count.
Reading is one thing, comprehension is another. The proper question is how many decent books have you read and how much of those decent books do you understand?
B.F. Skinner must love you, he couldn’t have “designed” you in his wildest dreams. His perfect man. Maybe that is better than calling you Gump, how do you like B.F. Skinner’s Baby?
3:1 and you trolls still can’t get traction.
Sad.
Blah blah blah, Ms Home Schooled Happy Meal.
When you say something that merits an actual response?
I’ll be really surprised.
bdaman,
You clearly don’t understand tipping points in complex systems either. To what degree is irrelevant when the resultant instability from that unknown can result in mass extinctions.
Reagan’s Bitch,
I’ve read more books than you’ve ever seen.
That’s why you have to resort to attacking me.
You can’t beat the truth of what I say. Neither can badtroll. He hasn’t won a damn thing here ever except when his mysterious troll supporters like you show up for an attempted gangbang and chime in about how right he is and yet are just as unable to make arguments as he.
What part do you not understand when i say,
I agree
Anthropogenic carbon production changes the state.
The question becomes to what degree or degrees.
If a Volcanoe spews ash and Carbon dependant on the volume to what degree does it affect the temperature. Short term or long term.
It is a question that can not be answered. We know it has an effect but to WHAT DEGREE.
buddha the idea that our rights come from the constitution is laughable on its face. If rights derive from the constitution then what right did the colonists have to revolt before it was written? No constitution means they had no rights. They were slaves to the “common good” of england and had no such rights to devest themselves of those chains as that would be depriving the good people of england their rights to “common good” and “stability”.
The word troll was in wide use a few years ago but like the tide in went out. Buddha just has a little lag time. He’s stuck in the past on a few current issues.
bdaman,
So you’re championing the rise of scientific ignorance and misinformation as propaganda when you’ve already admitted the chemistry is valid.
At least you’re consistent to your troll values.