Dec 31, 2019 | Constitution, Liberty Articles
Harold Pease, Ph. D
As a college professor teaching the Constitution for forty years I am disturbed when those in power demonstrate constitutional illiteracy. Such is the time in which we live.
Impeachment means accused. Three presidents Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton were impeached (accused), none were removed from office in a subsequent Senate trial. Nixon removed himself by resigning, the other two continued in office filling their terms.
The House alone formulates the charges (Art. I, Sec. 2, Cla. 5) which must be treason, bribery or high crimes and misdemeanors (Art. II, Sec. 4). Constitutionally no other charges are impeachable. The House cannot make up any offense that is not clearly one of these as in “obstruction of justice” or “obstruction of Congress.” “The Senate has the sole power to try all Impeachments” and the Chief Justice presides (Art. I Sec. 3, Cla. 6). The Senate cannot add to the list of charges. Constitutionally simple and practiced the last 231 years until now.
If House leadership chooses to discontinue the impeachment process by not passing its listed charges to the Senate—even after a positive vote on the charges was taken—it has not finished its process. Trump is, in effect, not charged because it is the only body constitutionally allowed to bring charges.. The accused cannot be said to have been impeached. The charges are effectively dropped. The moment that House leadership passes the baton to the Senate, Trump will join the others afore mentioned as having been accused (impeached) and will finish his term in office unless the Senate votes to remove him which has never happened to any president. It would be unconstitutional for the Senate to go into House chambers and, in effect, take the impeachment baton from them.
Nancy Pelosi, had no authority to turn the accusation process, normally done by the whole House, into the appearance of a trial in two House committees—which she did. It confused voters, “If tried and convicted, why is Trump still president?”
The founders wanted one body to accuse, a separate body to try. Any crime by a president is a crime against the people, thus the larger numbered House and more frequently elected, should be the one listing the accusations. This is why the House of Representative has “sole Power of Impeachment (Art. 1, Sec.2, Cla. 5), meaning initiating the accusing process.
Why was the House purposely forbidden doing more than accuse? Alexander Hamilton, the frequently cited founder of the Democratic Party, understood the greater emotion and passions of this body which made it the perfect body to originate the complaints but not to deliberate them. He wrote in The Federalist Papers #65, they would be “too often the leaders or the tools of the most cunning or the most numerous faction, and on this account, can hardly be expected to possess the requisite neutrality towards those whose conduct may be the subject of scrutiny”—think Chairmen Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler. Remember Democratic leaders were calling for the impeachment of Trump before he was inaugurated and thereafter have unsuccessfully searched for a crime.
Hamilton prophetically continued, “in such cases there will always be the greatest danger that the decision will be regulated more by the comparative strength of parties, than by the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt.” Remember in the House “trial” the president, his lawyers, and Republican colleagues were excluded due process, even calling witnesses.
Why was the Senate, with six-year terms rather than two and then elected by their state legislature, thought by the Constitutional Convention to be “the most fit depositary of this important trust?” Because, Hamilton explained, it was “least hasty in condemning” and “will be most inclined to allow due weight to the arguments which may be supposed to have produced it.”
Hamilton asked: “Where else than in the Senate could have been found a tribunal sufficiently dignified, or sufficiently independent? What other body would be likely to feel CONFIDENCE ENOUGH IN ITS OWN SITUATION, to preserve, unawed and uninfluenced, the necessary impartiality between an INDIVIDUAL accused, and the REPRESENTATIVES OF THE PEOPLE, HIS ACCUSERS?” The Senate is not so emotionally charged as is the more frequently elected House, reason can prevail. Notice the Democrats cannot wait 10 months for the people to vote again so emotionally charged are they as exemplified by Democratic Majority Whip James Clyburn reportedly saying, “Give the President a fair trial, then hang him.”
Still, Hamilton warned, “it ought not to be forgotten that the demon of faction [political party] will, at certain seasons, extend his sceptre over all numerous bodies of men.” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, not satisfied with the two House charges—neither a crime or listed in the Constitution as impeachable offenses—remains in search of a crime, forever demanding more witnesses. Even if found the Senate cannot constitutionally add to the list of accusations given it by the House.
Again, if House leadership chooses to discontinue the impeachment process by not passing its charges to the Senate—even after a positive vote on the charges was taken—it has not finished its process. The charges in effect are dropped by the only body constitutionally empowered to bring charges. It has stopped the process and the accused, President Trump, cannot be said to have been impeached because the charges were dropped.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. Newspapers have permission to publish this column. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Dec 22, 2019 | Liberty Articles
By Harold Pease, Ph. D
It was in the eighth grade when I moved from Santa to Christ as my main focus of Christmas. I well remember the star saturated night when the heavens overwhelmingly testified of God’s awesomeness. I could feel the words of my favorite Christmas carol “Silent Night” go down into my soul as never before as I both sang and pondered its words. Perhaps it was the scenic nativity-like setting where I found myself, hand milking my neighbor’s cow while he was away for a week, the three-sided shed that allowed my gaze into the dark but star-lit, cold, cloudless night which allowed my peek into the heavens and most of all, it was Christmas Eve. I was alone with Christ. It could not have been more impressive and it was the same every morning and night that week.
I never had that experience again in the same way but I always had an intense love for the carols that spoke of his birth: “Oh Holy Night,” “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” “Joy to the World,” and “The First Noel.” They were just different somehow—far more powerful than regular jingles. My background was not particularly unique for the time period. Santa was there for the children but he never competed with Christ for the spotlight. The transition to Christ just followed with maturity. Years followed years, I had children and now they have children and, because of home and church the songs have passed on as they had for hundreds of years before. But, unfortunately, this does not happen for everyone.
Today the earth is still bathed with happy songs but radio stations seldom play the ageless Christ-birth songs: “Far, Far Away on Judea’s Plains,” “With Wondering Awe,” “Away in the Manger,” and “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” Outdoor nativity decorations are virtually non-existent unless you make your own. Even indoor nativity scenes are hard to find. Stores have almost nothing to purchase that speaks to this Holy Night. Have we removed Christ from Christmas?
There are no television shows or movies that address Nativity themes but Hollywood never really did much in this direction anyway, the “Waltons” or “Little House on the Prairie” were the exception, but then again that was in an earlier generation. There is no Nativity symbolism on television programs today. Everything is “feel good” like, I found a new love on Christmas, or Santa related. Even the Grinch is given more attention than Christ.
All references to Christ have been removed from our schools and teachers dare not encourage the singing of traditional Christmas carols, although any tune without the mention of Jesus Christ is encouraged. A culture that did not know the words of “Silent Night,” “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear,” “Joy to the World,” or, “Oh, Come, All Ye Faithful” would have been unheard of in my day, but is the norm today. Only the churches and homes give any exposure to Christ in Christmas, as was so for me and generations before me. Sadly some churches may give more emphasis to Santa than Christ. Neither churches nor communities have Nativity plays as once they did.
The reason for the season is Jesus Christ, that is why it is called Christ-mas but few homes show any evidence that He is center placed. Most Americans consider themselves unchurched (a term for those without religious affiliation) so the incentive to read, tell or act out the “Old Story” is mostly gone. Seemingly each generation transfers to the next less of Christ in Christmas.
Today we do not wish to offend other religions so Christmas has turned into Winter Break and Easter into Spring Break. I refuse to use these terms. Some advocate changing Christmas to Winter Holiday. The undermining of Christ’s special day is endless and seemingly intentional.
Why not change to a traditional Christmas this Christmas season, like generations before you? In your home play mostly the traditional Christ centered songs. Instead of a Santa, or reindeer in your front yard make a nativity scene. Take yourself or family to a church service. Find a service that will speak of that special night and rehearse the events of that most special day. Go caroling to shut-ins or to a nursing home. Read to your friends and loved ones on Christmas Eve the story of the birth of Jesus Christ—the one believed by all Christians to be the Savior of the world. If you have children let them act it out. Give Christ a few hours of your month. You will never be sorry that you took this challenge.
You may never have a special moment in a shed milking a cow on a cold starry night, as I did as a 14 year-old boy, but this same special feeling can find a way of filling your soul just as intensely in its own way. Then you will not be an accomplice in removing Christ from Christmas and will join those who wonder why anyone would want to.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. Newspapers have permission to publish this column. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Dec 17, 2019 | Globalism, Liberty Articles, Take Action
By Harold Pease, Ph. D
With my new computer I receive unsolicited on screen messages from the Washington Post and New York Times, alerting me to news flashes they think credible and important for me to view immediately. The computer appears programed to do this automatically. But such represent an agreement with McIntosh that I should get very left leaning news first. Is this one of the subliminal message techniques Dr. Robert Epstein was speaking of in his July 16, 2019 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution?
In this hearing, evidence was provided that Big Tech, notably Google, and subliminal messaging techniques moved between 2.6 and 10.4 million votes to Hillary Clinton in 2016. Epstein predicted that in 2020 “if all these companies are supporting the same candidate [as they did in 2016] there are 15 million votes on the line that can be shifted without peoples’ knowledge and without leaving a paper trail for authorities to trace.”
The previous April the Subcommittee had questioned witnesses from FaceBook and Twitter. But any serious examination of Big Tech censorship would have to include Google. Subcommittee chair Ted Cruz summarized the depth of the problem. “Google’s control over what people hear, watch, read, and say is unprecedented. Almost 90% of internet searches today use Google. Google’s domination of the search engine market is so complete that ‘to Google’ is now a common place verb. With that market power Google can, and often does, control our discourse… Every time we search on Google we see only the Web pages that Google decides we should see; in the order that Google decides we should see them. Type a few letters into the search bar and Google will tell you what you should be looking for.”
He continued: “The same is true of Google’s subsidiary YouTube—the second most visited web page in existence…. And when you submit a video people at YouTube determine whether you’ve engaged in so called hate speech; an ever changing and vague stance meant to give censorship an air of legitimacy. This is a staggering amount of power to ban speech, to manipulate search results, to destroy rivals, and to shape culture.”
Not surprising Google’s parent organization, Alphabet, was the number one financial supporter of Hillary Clinton in 2016.
But Google power is world wide, Dr. Epstein told the committee. Google has a “massive surveillance operation, censorship capabilities and unprecedented ability to manipulate the thinking of 2.5 billion people, soon to be 4 plus billion.” We add, if unchecked it could come to control every human on earth. Presently Google’s closest competitor is Microsoft’s Bing at 2.5% of the market (Robert Epstein, “To Break Googles’s Monopoly on Search, Make its Index Public,” Business Week, July 15, 2019).
Dr. Epstein told the Committee, “I know how to stop Big Tech in its tracks.” He recommended two big changes. The first, because these companies support the same presidential candidate and can shift up to 15 million votes in their candidates direction, Big Tech must be monitored. Since 2015 he has been developing technology “to capture on-line ‘esemeral experiences’” which he tested successfully the next year and which has increased in sophistication each year since. He expects to be ready for the 2020 presidential race fully capable of catching “Big Tech in the act, to instantly spot when FaceBook is bias in newsfeeds or when Twitter is suppressing tweets sent by Ann Colter or Elizabeth Warren.” He added: “To let Big Tech get away with subliminal manipulation on this scale would be to make the free and fair election meaningless.”
Second, “Congress can quickly end Google’s world-wide monopoly on search by declaring Google’s massive search index, the data base the company uses to generate search results, to be a public commodity accessible by all. Just as a 1956 consent decree forced AT&T to share all its patents. There is precedent in both law and Googles business practices to justify taking this step which will make on-line search competitive again and dramatically diminish Google’s power or rise.”
Google already shares this massive index with the Netherlands based company Startpage this “in return for fees generated by ads placed near Startpage search results.” This makes Startpage an acceptable replacement for Google primarily because you get “great search results, but with a difference. Google tracks your searches and also monitors you in other ways, so it gives you personalized results. Startpage doesn’t track you—it respects and guarantees your privacy—so it gives you generic results.” Dr. Epstein also recommended DuckDuckGo “which aggregates information obtained from 400 other non-Google sources, including its own modest crawler” (To Break Googles’s Monopoly).
But Epstein uses the Startpage model to show what would happen if Google’s massive index becomes public property. Perhaps hundreds of other startups would in time surface restoring competition to the information arena.
Google has 16 data centers so Congress could only make public domain of the eight in the United States. Other countries where centers exist would have to do the same to break the monopoly. The European Union has five. Since they had to levy $8 billion in fines against Google in 2017, they might be tempted to be first to make the index public domain (Ibid.).
Free elections in any country mandates the free availability of all information.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. Newspapers have permission to publish this column. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Dec 10, 2019 | Liberty Articles
Harold Pease, Ph. D
LibertyUnderFire warned in June 2018, “If Big Tech can control the information flow then they can also influence the outcome of the midterms and even future presidential elections should they succumb to a collective political view.” Big Tech is defined as Internet giants, Facebook, Google, Twitter and YouTube. They have. New evidence shows them poised to influence the 2020 presidential election potentially shifting 15 million votes to their favored candidate without leaving a paper trail.
So says Robert Epstein, Ph. D, a research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavior Research and Technology, probably Americas leading authority on Artificial Intelligence (AI) programs, having published widely in the area since 1981. What makes him especially credible is that he is left on the political spectrum, a Democrat, and a “published supporter” of Hillary Clinton in 2016. Why did he testify before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, July 16, 2019, revealing this threat to our national security, likely to hurt his own political party? He explained, “I value my country and democracy more than I value any party or candidate.”
He offered three disturbing findings from his extensive research. First, “in 2016 Google’s search algorithms likely impacted undecided voters in a way that shifted at least 2.6 million votes to Hillary Clinton, whom I supported. I know this because I preserved more than 13,000 election related searches prior to election day and Google’s search results were significantly biased in favor of Secretary Clinton. I know the number of votes had sifted because I conducted dozens of controlled experiments that measure how opinions shift when search results are biased.”
Dr. Epstein continued, “I call this shift SEME, the (Search Engine Manipulation Effect) which I first published in the proceedings of the National Council of Sciences in 2015. Biased search results can easily produce shifts in the opinions and voting preferences of undecided voters by up to 80% in some demographic groups because people blindly trust high ranking search results over lower ones. SEME is an especially dangerous form of influence because it is, in effect, subliminal. It also leaves no paper trail for authorities to trace. It’s an example of a short lived or esemeral experience. That’s a phrase you’ll find in internal emails that have leaked recently from Google. I now am studying seven such manipulations like SEME and, unlike Billboards, or those Russian placed adds, these manipulations are invisible and non-competitive. They’re controlled entirely by Big Tech companies and there is no way to counteract them.”
Second, “on election day in 2018, the Go Vote reminder that Google displayed on its home page gave one political party at least 800,000 more votes than it gave the other party. That reminder was not a public service, it was a vote manipulation.”
Third “in the week leading up to the 2018 election bias in Google search results may have shifted upwards of 78.2 million votes, spread across many races, to the candidates of one political party. This number is based on bias in data captured by my 2018 monitoring system which preserved more than 47,000 election related searched conducted by a diverse group of American voters.”
Dr. Epstein shared how Go Vote, just one of several Big Tech’s subliminal messaging techniques, was used in the 2010 and 2018 elections. Google published the results of its 2010 election interference in 2012. “It had 60 million Facebook users involved. They sent out a Go Vote reminder and they got something like 360,000 more people to get off their sofas and go vote, who otherwise, would have stayed home.” The Go Vote technique was not used in 2016 because these companies were over confident that Hillary would win without it. But it was used again in the 2018 election. “We have lots of data to support that….” Epstein estimates that had Mark Zuckerberg used this technique in 2016 it would have given Hillary Clinton an additional 450,000 votes.
Although Go Vote was not used in 2016 other messaging techniques were, resulting in a manipulative range of “2.6 million rock bottom” and possibly up to 10.4 million votes moved in favor of Hillary Clinton. The fact that Hillary Clinton with Big Tech election interference did not overwhelm Trump, documents how fearful voters were of her.
Dr. Epstein warns that “in 2020 you can bet that all of these companies are going to go all out. And the messages that they are using are invincible, they are subliminal. They are more powerful than most any effects I have ever seen in the behavioral sciences and I have been in the behavior sciences for almost 40 years.” Adding later, that they are likely to be aggressive in the other subliminal techniques as well, naming “the search engine manipulation effects, the search suggestion effects, the answer broad effects, [and] a number of others. They control these and no one can counteract them. These are not competitive. These are tools that they have at their disposal exclusively.”
Given Big Tech’s election interference in three past elections and the refinement of additional subliminal techniques giving them the power to shift 15 million votes to a favored party, it is easy to see who will chose future presidents without our knowing votes were shifted. Outside retaining elections to persuade us that we participated, elections would become meaningless.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. Newspapers have permission to publish this column. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Dec 3, 2019 | Constitution, Economy, Globalism, Liberty Articles
By Harold Pease, Ph. D
No one has been more outspoken against globalism than President Donald Trump. His “America First” platform is the antithesis of their plans for world government. This is the reason all globalists, Democrat and Republican, and all globalist mediums, especially The New York Times and Washington Post, oppose him at all costs. Hence the shock when globalists now praise Trump’s USMCA (United States/Mexico/Canada) sovereignty destroying replacement of NAFTA—seemingly a merged agreement of the worst parts of NAFTA and TPP.
Most Americans viewed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreements for what they were, sovereignty sucking packs to undermine and destroy the independence of nation states, as previous agreements had done in Europe resulting in the European Union. Globalists, funded by the financial global elites (from the Rockefeller’s to George Soros) had failed previous tries at world government, notably the League of Nations and the United Nations, and concluded that loyalty to nation states is the enemy to world government, hence their decades-old strategy of consolidating regions of the globe, first economically, then politically into regional government. These then consolidated later into world government.
Trump had billed the TPP as “the worst agreement ever negotiated” and three days after his inauguration withdrew the United States as a signatory and refused further TPP negotiations. He promised to renegotiate NAFTA as well. In the Rose Garden, October 1, 2018 USMCA rollout, Trump said, “Throughout the campaign I promised to renegotiate NAFTA, and today we have kept that promise,”
So why are the globalists so happy with USMCA? It looks to be a blend of the worst parts of NAFTA and TPP. According to the online Huffington Post, “At least half of the men and women standing behind Trump during his Rose Garden ceremony praising the new deal were the same career service staff who negotiated nearly identical provisions in TPP, which Trump had railed against.” One of these, Trevor Kincaid, the lead negotiator for TPP, said, “It’s really the same with a new name. It’s basically the ‘22 Jump Street’ of trade deals.”
Richard N. Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the lead organization for world government and the most influential organization on foreign policy, in both major political parties the last hundred years, tweeted his praise for the agreement, “The USMCA looks to be the trade pact formerly known as NAFTA plus 10-20%. Hope it becomes a precedent for TPP.” Adding later, “What matters is that the US joins it.…” Haass, so enthused by the agreement, added the next day, “USMCA is NAFTA plus TPP plus a few tweaks. Whatever … TPP by another name.” No wonder. The lead negotiator of the agreement was CFR member Robert Lighthizer, who candidly admitted that the USMCA is “built on” many aspects of the TPP.
Christian Gomez, who spent considerable time with the 1,809 paged document wrote, “A side-by-side comparison of the USMCA and the TPP shows extensive overlap. Virtually all of the problems inherent in the TPP are likewise contained in the USMCA, such as the erosion of national sovereignty, submission to a new global governance authority, the unrestricted movement of foreign nationals, workers’ rights to collective bargaining, and regional measures to combat climate change” (What’s Wrong with the USMCA? New American, Nov. 2018).
So the globalist are happy. They thought under Trump their decades old efforts to unite the United States, Mexico and Canada into a regional government, economically first then politically, as they had the European Union, would be unraveled. Instead, globalists regained all their lost ground plus leapt forward into the areas of labor, immigration, and environment regulation, which agreement would handcuff the legislatures of these countries to regional law passed by unelected bureaucrats.
Gomez added, “The pact is even worse than NAFTA regarding undermining American sovereignty and self-determination, in favor of North American integration extending beyond trade to include labor and environmental policies. It is, in fact, so bad that the globalists who had lambasted Trump for renegotiating NAFTA praised him afterward” (Ibid).
So much for the Constitution or national sovereignty holding them back. And Trump fell for it.
The massive size of the agreement screams control. Liberty is defined by the limits of the government on the individual. The management of an entire country is housed in a Constitution of only four or five pages and a Bill of Rights of a single page—not 1,809.
A real free trade agreement could probably fit a single page and be noted for its absence of rules on trade—as it was in the early days of this republic. Let us instead disallow the rich from funding organizations designed to end our Republic, destroy the Constitution, or create a world government, all of which they presently do. Such used to be called treason.
Now there exists no evidence Trump really supports globalism except his USMC Agreement—everything else he has done demonstrates otherwise. He has clearly been duped. Getting him to disavow what he called “incredible” will not be easy but he must if he sincerely decries world government and supports America First. If not, he will be credited with instigating “the worst agreement ever negotiated”—a government over our own. And in time will be linked with the Rockefeller’s and George Soros as having helped bring about world government.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. Newspapers have permission to publish this column. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Nov 26, 2019 | Economy, Liberty Articles
By Harold Pease, Ph. D
Few realize that New England’s first form of government under the Pilgrims was communalism (socialism) where “each produced according to his ability and each received according to his needs,” applied in practice more than two centuries before Karl Marx first penned the above quote. The result, “share the wealth,” then and now was, and always will be, shared poverty.
William Bradford, Plymouth colony’s governor its first 30 years, wrote of the agreement between the 102 Pilgrim Mayflower passengers and the financial “Adventurers” in his book Of Plymouth Plantation. He noted that the seven-year contract signed July 1, 1620, before leaving Plymouth England, stipulated that the Pilgrims were to pool, for common benefit, “all profits and benefits that are got by trade, traffic, trucking, working, fishing, or any other means of any person or persons…” It further noted “that at the end of the seven years, the capital and profits, viz. the houses, lands, goods and chattels, be equally divided betwixt the Adventurers and Planters…”
During this time the colonists were to “have their meat, drink, apparel, and all provisions out of the common stock and goods of the said colony.” It doesn’t get more socialistic than this because the government divvied out the goods and loafers received the same as those who worked.
The first two years the result was shortages and starvation. Half the colonists died. No one did more than the minimal because the incentive to excel was destroyed by the contract. The industrious were neutralized. Bradford wrote of the scarcity of food “no supply was heard of, neither knew they when they might expect any.” The contract, Bradford added, “was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to the benefit and comfort. For the young men, that were most able and fit for labour and service, did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense….”
In other words, socialism made strong men lazy. Bradford spoke of another problem because of the government created famine—thievery. Even in this Christian community, “much was stolen both by night and day….” to alleviate the prevailing condition of hunger.
The “feast” of the first Thanksgiving did fill their bellies briefly, and they were grateful, but abundance was anything but common. Harvests were not bountiful in that year nor the next. Why did this happen? Because they had fallen victim to the socialistic philosophy of “share the wealth.” This dis-incentivized the productive base of society.
After two years of such, with the survival of the colony at stake, they contemplated upon “how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery.” They opted to abandon the incentive killing socialist contract in favor of the free market. And so they “assigned to every family a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number, for that end….”
The effects were almost immediate. A delighted Governor Bradford wrote: “This had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the Governor … could use, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better content. The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.”
Then suddenly, as though night changed to day, the crop of 1623 was bounteous, and those thereafter as well, and it had nothing to do with the weather. Bradford wrote, “Instead of famine now God gave them plenty and the face of things was changed, to the rejoicing of the hearts of many, for which they blessed God.” He concluded later, “any general want or famine hath not been amongst them since to this day.”
One variable alone made the difference and ended the three-year famine. They abandoned the notion of government (or corporation) owning the means of production and distribution in favor of the individual having property and being responsible to take care of himself. Before, no one benefited by working because he received the same compensation as those who did not. After the change everyone kept the benefits of his labor. Those who chose not to work basically chose also to be poor and the government (corporation) no longer confiscated from those who produced to give to those who did not.
In other words, the free market (capitalism) is a much greater stimulus than governmental force. The Pilgrims now wished to work because they got to keep the benefits of their labor.
Secure property rights are the key to prosperity for all who wish to work. When this right is threatened by confiscatory taxation or outright confiscation of property, or by excessive government rules and regulations governing such, whether planned as in a contract enforced by the government at Plymouth, or gradual as in our day, work and production slow and can eventually stop. The answer for them was to extract socialism immediately from their midst, as it is for us today as well. May we have the wisdom to do so?
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. Newspapers have permission to publish this column. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
