Socialism as Sects

On this Day:

1099
First Crusade: Christian soldiers take the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem after the final assault of a difficult siege
1381
John Ball, a leader in the Peasants’ Revolt, is hanged, drawn and quartered in the presence of King Richard II of England.
1685
Monmouth Rebellion: James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth, is executed at Tower Hill, England, after his defeat at the Battle of Sedgemoor on 6 July 1685.
1799
The Rosetta Stone is found in the Egyptian village of Rosetta by French Captain Pierre-François Bouchard during Napoleon’s Egyptian Campaign.
1806
Pike expedition: United States Army Lieutenant Zebulon Pike begins an expedition from Fort Bellefontaine near St. Louis, Missouri, to explore the west.
1815
Napoleonic Wars: Napoléon Bonaparte surrenders aboard HMS Bellerophon
1838
Ralph Waldo Emerson delivers the Divinity School Address at Harvard Divinity School, discounting Biblical miracles and declaring Jesus a great man, but not God. The Protestant community reacts with outrage.

1975
Space Race: Apollo–Soyuz Test Project features the dual launch of an Apollo spacecraft and a Soyuz spacecraft on the first joint Soviet-United States human-crewed flight. It was both the last launch of an Apollo spacecraft and the last launch of a Saturn family rocket.

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The Greek word symbolon meant half of a broken object, for example, a seal presented as a token of recognition. The broken parts were placed together to verify the bearer’s identity. Symbolon also means a gathering, collection or summary.
The sense of evolution in Greek is from "throwing things together" to "contrasting" to "comparing" to "token used in comparisons to determine if something is genuine." The Greek word was applied c. 250 by Cyprian of Carthage to the Apostles' Creed, on the notion of the "mark" or "outward sign" that distinguishes Christians from pagans.
Hence also "something which stands for something else," especially "object standing for or representing something sacred, moral, or intellectual" (1580s); "a written character, mark, or sign which stands for something" (1610s).

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Socialism is "the result of an unrelenting negativity, carping spirit, and lack of appreciation for achievement and greatness." (cowan)

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The Keres people, who occupy seven pueblos (villages) in New Mexico, speak a language totally unrelated to that of their neighbors, and their origins have been frequently disputed.
Aliens.

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During the American Revolution, the rebel farmers were 2" taller than British Regulars.

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Socialism as Sects

The astonishing delegation of dignity and freedom to the individual, as written in the American Constitution, is a revolution of thought to a degree undreamed of by modern revolutionaries. The modern revolutionary's contribution to the condition of man is expropriation. He sees a field of uneven human achievement, and he mows it. 

Taking what belongs to others has been around for as long as Cain. Giving people freedom and value has been around for 250 years. Yet somehow, people continue to believe the envy, repression, and violence of socialism and its ilk to be innovative and optimistic. They continue to be willing to kill and die for achievement brought low.

This is from Bastiat:

"If I had to point out the characteristic that differentiates socialism from economic science, I would find it in this. Socialism encompasses a countless host of sects. Each of these has its own utopia and it can be said that they are so far from agreeing with one another that they are in bitter conflict with each other. Between the organized social workshop of Mr. Blanc and the anarchy of Mr. Proudhon, between the association of Fourier and the communism of Mr. Cabet, the difference is night and day. This being so, how do these leaders of (different) schools (of thought) band together under the common denomination of “socialists,” and what is the link that unites them against natural or Providential society? It cannot be other than this: They do not want a natural form of society. What they want is an artificial form of society that emerges fully formed from the brain of the inventor. It is true that each of them wants to be the Jupiter of this Minerva, that each nurtures his own form of artifice and dreams of his own form of social order. But there is one thing that they have in common: they do not acknowledge that the human race possesses either a driving force that impels it toward good or a curative force that delivers it from evil. They quarrel over who will knead the human clay, but agree that it is a clay that requires kneading. In their eyes, the human race is not a living and harmonious being; it is an inert material waiting for them to give it feeling and life. It is not a subject for study but a material on which to experiment."

Perhaps this sect-like quality explains the occasional new outbreaks of socialism, giving socialism a fresh appeal—and, of course, a new vulnerable, immunologically unprepared host population.