Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Today's Tea Party History Lesson

Today's lesson comes from Marilinda Garcia, a Tea Party candidate for Congress from New Hampshire:

When she said that the United States "experiment in collectivism died before the country was founded" I thought she was going to reference the Plymouth Colony. She didn't go there.  Instead she referenced Jamestown.  Oh boy!

A few comments:

The people of Jamestown did not starve to death because they lacked private property.  They starved to death from disease and because they did not grow food.  They were so busy trying to strike it rich in the mercantile economy by growing exotic crops like silk and dates that they did not grow anything to eat. 

Moreover, if the move toward private property (I am assuming that Garcia is making some vague reference to the Headright System here) brought economic success to the colony, such success was based on the ability of some colonists to get rich on tobacco.  And in order to get rich on tobacco, one needed a lot of servants and slaves.

So here is my revision to Garcia's history lesson:  the "defining characteristic of America was born" in Jamestown.  All those "innate" geniuses created an American dream for themselves by "experimenting" with indentured servanthood and later slavery.  I think a famous historian once wrote a book about this called American Slavery-American Freedom.