Thursday, November 25, 2010

Pilgrims, Socialism and Thanksgiving


Pilgrims, Socialism and Thanksgiving

by Dr. Del Tackett

Pilgrims, Socialism and Thanksgiving....Huh?

Actually, they really do go together.

Here’s how.

The Pilgrim trip was funded by a group of investors who were hoping to get a return on their money. The Pilgrims were therefore contractually bound to the investor’s plan. That plan stated that the Pilgrims were to hold all things in common and equally share from the proceeds of their labor (socialism).

The early settlers of Jamestown were under the same kind of contract. I heard a great lecture from John Rolfe (okay, it was actually someone dressed up as John Rolfe) who explained it this way:

Basically, when one works hard all day and another simply strolls the grounds and puffs on his pipe, and yet they both get the same amount of food for dinner, eventually the one who works hard decides that tomorrow he will do his own strolling and puffing.

Because of this, the Jamestown settlers were starving. It was only when they apportioned private property and ate the fruit of their own labor that the colony began to thrive.

This was the same story in Plymouth not too many years later. Their leader, William Bradford, wrote of how they had to abandon the investor’s plan in order to survive, for when work and non-work both get the same reward, eventually no one will work.

Isn’t it interesting how we often times fail to learn the lessons from the past.
Socialism experiments continue today, with the same kind of results. They never really succeed. Why do we continue to try them? For several reasons.

One, the state has a vested interest in this happening. It is the big winner in socialism. It garners great power. So, when the state grows to the point that it can force the people to increasingly give up their rights to private property and fool the others to think that they will be better off sharing equally from the corn crib, guess where the power shifts…to the officials of the state.

Two, we misunderstand the nature of man. We have bought the Maslow lie that man is basically good. If he is good, then he will obviously love to work hard and go to years and years of medical school and specialized training so that he can work 14 hour days and get one ear of corn out of the crib while his friend follows his heart to stroll and puff. And because we are all such inherently good people, after dinner we will sit around the campfire and sing kum bay ya.

Third, we misunderstand the nature of work. We believe there is something cruel and oppressive about work and so we want someone (the state) to come up with a way to allow us not to work, yet circumvent the consequences of non-work. Or, we believe that the solution to someone not working is to give them another ear of corn.

However, the reality is this:

–The state may think that socialism will satisfy its lust for power, but, in the end, it will eventually collapse under a mountain of debt or a corn crib filled with IOUs. As Margaret Thatcher once said, “socialism works until you run out of other people’s money.” Eventually, the colony begins to starve.

–Man will not enjoy working his tail off so that someone else who is not working can reap the fruit of his labor. James Madison wrote in the Federalist Papers that they were establishing a government that had balances of powers because men were NOT angels.

–Work is not oppressive and cruel, but it is exactly what the poor need…not only to be able to produce their own corn, but because we were made by the Original Worker to work. We are happier and healthier when we do.

The Scriptures connect the dots for us regarding work and laziness. Here are a few:

Proverbs 10:4, “Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth.”

Proverbs 14:23, “All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to
poverty.”

In other words, we reap what we sow.

In socialism, we try to reverse those consequences. Reward the lazy, punish the diligent.

You sow, I reap.

That eventually fails.

One solution is found in 2 Thessalonians 3:10, “if anyone will not work, neither shall he eat”. This is a statement that many would view as cruel, but it is actually compassionate…for both the man himself and for the colony as a whole. Hunger is a great motivator to work and therefore produce.

When the Pilgrims returned to a biblical view and threw off the yoke of socialistic bindings, they began to prosper. And when they prospered, they held a day of Thanksgiving. It saddens me that our nation is slipping so quickly back into this yoke. Though we have the lessons from our past and the lessons from failed experiments all around us, we seem to be asleep or in a fog.

With the elections only a few days ahead, I’m hoping we will come to our senses soon.

Maybe around your Thanksgiving table this year, you can recount the lessons learned to your children so that they will not be doomed to repeat the failures of the past.

Put on a Pilgrim hat or your John Rolfe outfit and tell them the story with great gusto as I heard it in Jamestown.

By the way, we just filmed a show for Cross Examine on this very topic.

We are going to title it: No workey, no turkey.

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

A Gore-y Revelation

I know this is going to shock you, but former Vice President and Nobel Laureate Al Gore calls his corn-for-ethanol policies “a mistake”. He even admits supporting them to further his political ambitions.

It was Reuters Africa who reported yesterday comments our former VP made while speaking at an environmental conference in Athens.

His “mistake” was a costly one. According to the International Energy Industry ethanol subsidies totaled $7.7 billion last year alone. And it was none other than Gore who made the 1994 tie-breaking vote in the Senate mandating the use of ethanol.

And now he calls it a “mistake”.

According to Noel Sheppard in this NewsBusters column Gore even shares why he did it:

"One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president."

So more than ten years ago, Gore supported expensive, failed policy because he thought it would help him get elected president.

The liberal media still protects him, and will not even go there that Gore would manufacture the threat of global warming to get rich. Actually extremely rich would be more accurate!

The word shyster comes to mind. This is the antithesis of principled leadership. Boo Gore!

Flying Commercial

Guess who'll be flying commercial again? Yes, Nancy will relinquish all those posh military flights she secured for herself over the past four years as Speaker of the House. Poor Pelosi. In January she'll be flying commercial again.

Oh, and by the way our new Republican Speaker of the House Rep. John Boehner announced earlier this month he'll fly commercial...like the rest of us.

These winds of change are refreshing.

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Historic Republican Sweep

Jubilant GOP wins the House

By DAVID ESPO, AP

Resurgent Republicans won control of the House and cut deeply into the Democrats' majority in the Senate in momentous midterm elections shadowed by recession, ushering in a new era of divided government certain to complicate the final two years of President Barack Obama's term.

House Speaker-in-waiting John Boehner, voice breaking with emotion, declared shortly before midnight Tuesday that the results were "a repudiation of Washington, a repudiation of big government and a repudiation of politicians who refuse to listen to the people."

Read the rest of this article here