help

collapse

Press one of the expand buttons to see the full text of an article. Later press collapse to revert to the original form. The buttons below expand or collapse all articles.

expand

collapse

Bring Back Communism

April 9, 2013 permalink

MS-NBC has posted a promotion featuring Melissa Harris-Perry lambasting parental authority and advocating treating children as members of the whole community. Watch All Your Kids Belong To Us on YouTube or a local copy (mp4). This is not a new idea, but a centuries-old one. Historian Richard K Stephens collected material on the Shakers summarized in the paragraph below.

The Shaker cult was founded in England in 1747 by Ann Lee and spread to the United States where it flourished for a century and a half, reaching 6000 members at its high point. They practiced celibacy, but had many children acquired through adoption of orphans and as wards of adult recruits. The incoming children were taught loyalty only the the Shakers as a whole, as all property and children were held in common. Marx and Engels became admirers of the Shakers, making them models for the development of communism. The outside parent was permanently alienated, leading to controversy over parental alienation two centuries before Richard A Gardner popularized the term. The last recorded case of Shaker child abduction took place in 1923. Increasing state control of adoption made it impossible for the cult to continue.

Shaker song teaching children to abhor relatives of the flesh

Source: Family Destruction History

To fully implement community control of children, the Shakers usually found it necessary to separate the child permanently from at least one parent and to teach hatred of biological relatives. A check on wikipedia shows that Harris-Perry herself is separated from the father of her preteen daughter Parker Lacewell.

Dear MSNBC, if our kids belong to you, do your kids belong to us too? If so, can we take them hunting after church in our big pickup truck?

— Sarah Palin (@SarahPalinUSA) April 9, 2013

I am running for kid catcher

sequential