It’s hard to believe that Obama could possibly lose in 2012. But he could. And that’s crazy.
Michele Bachmann said:
Takeaway: “If anyone will not work, neither should he eat.”
So here’s Dave Noon reminding Michele Bachmann that Captain John Smith, of Jamestown “fame,” shared her affinity for a certain Biblically-derived work ethic to “work or starve,” and that it didn’t turn out so well the first time.
When his patience with the idlers expired, Smith had a public hissy fit, announcing his famous policy that “he that gathereth not every day as much as I do, the next day shall be set beyond the river, and be banished from the fort as a drone, till he amend his conditions or starve.”
It’s worth noting, I suppose, that Smith’s orders were conceived with idling gentlemen as much in mind as the scrofulous poor. It’s also worth noting that Smith’s efforts did little to alleviate the long-term Hobbesian conditions that prevailed in Virginia for years after he left the colony forever. But I think it’s even more interesting that in trying to inspire her fellow citizens to great feats of self-reliance, Bachmann — who presumably remains a somewhat viable Presidential candidate for a major political party — would turn to a slogan befitting an experimental, disorganized, resource-strapped, unskilled menagerie of landless gentlemen, unemployed soldiers and indentured servants living in a 17th century malarial swamp. And the Republicans criticize Obama for not being sufficiently optimistic?
Zing!
