From:
http://townhall.com/columnists/johnnant ... e-n1922257If we are not all equal before the law, maintaining the fundamental notion of innocence until guilt is proven, then we have in an instant devolved to the wretched state of subjects, vulnerable to the whims of a petulant oligarchy.
They almost starved.
So William Bradford and the Pilgrims instituted one historic change that was to ensure the flourishing success of the colony and change American history forever.
Here's what they did...
They abandoned socialist agriculture and private planting was established the following year. Here is Governor Bradford's own account from the original source documents:
"This was very successful. It made all hands very industrious, so that much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the Governor or any other could devise, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better satisfaction. The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to plant corn, while before they would allege weakness and inability; and to have compelled them would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.
The failure of this experiment of communal service, which was tried for several years, and by good and honest men, proves the emptiness of the theory of Plato and other ancients, applauded by some of later times--that the taking away of private property, and the possession of it in community, by a commonwealth, would make a state happy and flourishing; as if they were wiser than God. For in this instance, community of property (so far as it went) was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment which would have been to the general benefit and comfort."
Of Plymouth Plantation: Bradford's History of the Plymouth Settlement 1608-1650 should be required reading for every American. But chances are, you've never seen it in the public school curriculum. And the fact is, even most private, Christian schools don't use this incredible, original source document when teaching American history.
Source unknown:
Real freedom is not the ability to do whatever you want, but the ability to do what you should.
Real freedom allows some people to become good examples, and others to become horrible examples.
Start with yourself, it is the simplest and pays the best results. A government or culture may support freedom, but it cannot produce it.
Remember AE Van Vogt's Null-A series? He postulated a society where a method of training people to think before acting and to thoughtfully adapt to changes in the environment was the key element. Wistful
Fiction is our cultural imagination. Science fiction is our cultural imagination about futures. The best science fiction helps us think through things that we may encounter later. Panic occurs when there is no idea what to do, thinking ahead, even as fiction, can help prevent it.
If you haven't read Orwell's "1984" or "Animal Farm," do so.
BTW, in the Honorverse, it looks like Manticore is designed to have a large measure of freedom because the monarchy needs to support the commons as a counterweight to the aristocracy. Aristocracy tends to go for power. The commons often can be satisfied with true justice, since they don't always get it. Therefore someone at the top can find it useful to aim for justice and mercy for the masses. Also, mercy should be a tempering of justice to individual cases, not a political tool.
The NT biblical view is that mercy met satisfied justice at the cross, where God, in Jesus Christ, took the death we earned by our sins. Check out Psalm 22, which is the first non obvious thing I spotted for myself in the Bible.
