The American Dream

For 400 years, people have been coming to America in search of the American Dream. Millions have fled their homelands, seeking to escape oppression. They fled religious oppression. They fled economic oppression. They fled genocidal oppression. They fled tyrannies of all manner, shape and form. And they came to the United States.

In the 17th century, people left Europe and braved the dangerous journey across the Atlantic Ocean to come to a brave new world, a rugged, hearty and dangerous new world, seeking religious freedom. They wished to practice their Christian faith in a way they saw proper to Providence. One of the first colonies, the Plymouth Colony, started out with a Christian Socialism. It failed miserably, as Jerry Haas explains.

Our forefathers, the pilgrims who left England and traveled to the new world in 1620, did so with optimism. They did it to escape religious persecution and establish a colony based upon communal precepts. While they did enjoy the absence of religious persecution, they soon discovered that communalism (e.g. socialism) did not work.

The communal nature of the new Plymouth colony required all of the crops produced, game harvested, fish caught and products made by one to be shared with all. This led to laziness, lack of initiative and starvation. Half the colonists did not survive the winter of 1620-21, and starvation continued through the winter of 1622-23. William Bradford, governor of the fledgling colony, recognized it was this communal structure that took away the incentive of people to produce, and made the decision in the spring of 1623 that ultimately saved the colony.

Bradford distributed plots to each family. Whatever a family produced would be used as that family saw fit. It was a free-market model in which people would retain whatever they grew, harvested, caught or produced. They then were free to use it as trade and barter for other goods and services, as well as to feed their own family.

The yield was more than expected. Not only was starvation staved off, but the bountiful harvest enabled them to barter and exchange their crops with others. In fact, the harvest was so bountiful by 1624 that the colony began to export crops.

In arguably the best of circumstances — a devout Christian society essentially separated from the rest of the world — Socialism failed miserably. It caused many deaths and much more suffering. Without a personal stake in their productivity, even some of the most devout Christians lost interest in being productive. The Collective was not enough to cause a productivity level strong enough for survivability. As soon as the governing philosophy was switched to one of individual ownership of land and fruits of labor, the colony became so productive they exported their goods.

Even Christian Socialism required others to do for you. “From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs” was practiced at the beginning of the Plymouth Colony. And it failed. When “you have to do for me” was changed to “you keep what you can produce,” the dismal life-killing failure became a huge success. And everyone was better off for it. It was this rugged desire for Liberty and this rugged independence and self-dependence that created the success, the “better life in the New World.”

Communist countries have built up armed borders to guard against invasion, yes, but perhaps more importantly to keep their own people in. The Berlin Wall wasn’t built to keep West Berliners out of East Berlin and East Germany. It was built to keep East Germans from escaping to West Berlin. East Germans attempting to flee the oppressive Communist regime were shot and killed by East German troops.

For thousands of years, people have fled one form of oppression or another. But where people flee to is almost as important as where people flee from. And for the past 400 years, the United States (or the land that would eventually become the United States) has been the desired destination of a statistically outsized proportion of immigrants. It is due to the American Dream that this is the case. Where you get to keep the product of your labor and you are not forced to give it to someone else who did not earn it. Where you can practice your faith and not be killed by the government for it. Where if you’re industrious enough and wise enough, anyone has the opportunity for wealth.

But wealth is not the American Dream. A right to someone else’s work product is not the American Dream. The opportunity to gain wealth by your own work without governmental interference is part of it. And today’s Liberals are busily trying to kill the American Dream with their over-regulation, with Socialized Medicine (where the Left thinks they have a right to force someone to treat them), with San Fransisco looking to make circumcision (a religious requirement) illegal.

The US became the world’s greatest and wealthiest and most generous nation of all time, and it was due to the American Dream. All the socialist “entitlement” programs have been eroding that wealth for 70 years, and the time is almost upon us when all of it is gone… unless we refudiate the Left.

ObamaCare Waiver Fest Continues

Remember, Nancy Pelosi said they had to pass the bill to find out what’s in the bill. Remember all the Unions were busily pushing to get ObamaCare passed. There are now over 1,300 members of the Waiver list, (un)covering some 3 million individuals. Many on the Waiver list are the very same Unions that pushed to get passage of ObamaCare. Because being governed by ObamaCare is too expensive for them.

Michelle Malkin has been covering this from the start. And she has a new report on more from the Left getting their waivers after spending money to promote the bill that they just got waived for themselves.

Obamacare refugees first began beating down the exit doors in October 2010. As I’ve documented since last fall, waiver-mania started with McDonald’s and Jack in the Box; spread to Dish Networks, hair salon chain Regis Corp and resort giant Universal Orlando; took hold among every major Big Labor organization from the AFL-CIO to the CWA to the SEIU; roped in the nationalized health care promoters at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (whose board of trustees includes health care czar Nancy Ann DeParle); and is now gripping entire states (Maine, New Hampshire and Nevada all recently got in on the act).

The latest to catch the waive? West Coast liberals.

Yes, smack dab in the middle of House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi’s congressional district, a cluster of San Francisco small businesses is among the latest recipients of get-out-of-Obamacare passes. As Jamie Dupree of Cox Media Group and Matthew Boyle of The Daily Caller pointed out this week, there are at least two dozen Bay Area companies — including bars, restaurants, hotels, tourist shops, real estate and auto firms — that have secured temporary, one-year reprieves from the federal law. It’s the San Francisco Treat that voters didn’t foresee until after the bill was rammed down their throats.

Another noteworthy waiver winner: Seattle-based REI. The trendy Pacific Northwest outdoor equipment retailer’s progressive CEO and Democratic campaign donor, Sally Jewell, appeared with President Obama in 2009 to tout White House health care reform initiatives. Two years later, REI snagged a waiver to protect the health benefits of a whopping 1,180 workers from the very tentacles of the big government bureaucrats Jewell embraced at Obama’s roundtable.

And of course, Sarah Palin had something to say about this new raft of ObamaCare waivers. From Conservatives4Palin:

Today, Governor Palin shared her thoughts on this new development with the Daily Caller:

In response to the revelation that about 20 percent of the latest slew of Obamacare waivers went to luxurious restaurants, nightclubs and hotels in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s district, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin told The Daily Caller the waiver process is “corrupt.”

“Unflippingbelievable! No, wait, it is believable,” Palin said in an email to TheDC. “Seriously, this is corrupt. And anyone who still supports the Pelosi-Reid-Obama agenda of centralized government takeovers of the free market and the corresponding crony capitalism is, in my book, complicit.”

I absolutely agree. It is indeed believable that the corrupt Obama Administration would have all these corrupt ObamaCare waivers for their cronies and supporters. The whole rotten thing stunk from the beginning, but the stink is getting worse as each day passes.

In related news, evidence is that Obama-appointed Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan was indeed involved in helping to draft the legal defense of ObamaCare. Hot Air has that information. Read the whole thing, but here’s the concluding paragraph:

Just so we’re straight on the timeline here: On March 21, the day ObamaCare was passed, Katyal is inviting Kagan to strategy sessions about the new law. On April 9, John Paul Stevens resigns and speculation erupts about Kagan succeeding him. On May 17, Katyal is suddenly telling people that Kagan’s never been involved in anything — even though she is, in fact, the solicitor general of the United States and even though he explicitly invited her to a meeting about the law less than two months earlier — and Kagan is warning people via e-mail to make sure everyone has their story straight on what she knew by “coordinating.” Is that about right? I want to make sure we’re all square on this nonsense for when the mandate challenge finally reaches the Court and we’re told by her office that everything is magically copacetic.

As Allahpundit said, and I concur, “Defending their signature domestic “achievement” when it’s under mortal threat from a constitutional challenge is much, much more important to the left than observing ethical rules.”