Condemning communism

[surada]

What?
Small towns?
I said communities... these little groups of people that live on private land.
One near here is called Pandanaram Utopia evolved: How Indiana commune survived

These little groups of people are all over the states.

So it was a Christian religious comunity.

excerpt:

Thanks to the mix of communalism and capitalism, Padanaram was able to purchase nearby farms and build new lodges they nicknamed “Parthenon” and “High Lodge,” including a bachelor’s dormitory. They purchased trucks and equipment — and eventually installed flush toilets.

A controversial patriarch
Padanaram’s center of gravity was Daniel Wright, known for his distinctive brimmed hat and overalls.

Often miscast as being Amish or a Quaker, Wright adhered to homegrown religious practice rooted in the Bible that he later called “Kingdomism,” which imagined a global system of communes known as "kinglets" led by patriarchs. He preached a handful of guiding principles: “One that won't work, shall not eat,” “As one would others do, do unto them,” “Hold all things in common, count nothing one’s own,” and, “Of one who has much, much is required.”

Pitzer said Wright was purported to be a “kind of seer” who could predict weather and births.

“He had a lot of sayings, like ‘Wisdom is our leader, truth is our guide.’ He would say that inequity wasn’t right, that ‘If we have money for steak, we all eat steak. If not, we all eat hamburger,’ ” Pitzer said.

At unplanned Sunday night worship services, “at a certain time you’d show up, sit in squares. You didn’t know when it would begin, how or when or when it might end — it might be 40 minutes or four hours of testimonies, reflections or songs,” Rosenthal said.

Focusing on the golden rule, Aram Wright said, “eliminated the need for a lot of laws and rules.” In 1985, Daniel Wright told a reporter that his was “the only city in America where there is no crime, no unemployment, no rich and no poor,” though that wasn’t always true.

A young boy swung upside down on a rope swing at Padanaram/God's Valley, while others waited their turn, during a picnic at the community. June 25, 2016.

 

[surada]

continued

A National Geographic story from the 1970s noted that in the commune's early days, young men from surrounding areas would gather at the gate, “spoiling for a fight” with commune residents, and it said county officials initially refused to service the road because of logging traffic.

One early Indiana newspaper story titled “Commune Ruled by Valley Messiah” quoted Wright saying that “we exchange wives frequently.” The story, which Wright's children decried as “lies,” upset area farmers. Wright-Summerton said that residents considered a lawsuit but instead let it drop.

Padanaram was “misrepresented all along,” said Jim Wright, one of Wright’s sons, including with rumors that the residents were violent or that the mill was a front for a drug operation.

Those suspicions were fueled during several incidents, including in 1976 when a woman was shot and killed in the village, and a resident was convicted of manslaughter. At another point, several white supremacists who stayed there briefly were alleged to have set fire to a Jewish center.

Criticism was often centered on Wright’s patriarchal principles – which placed women in traditional roles. Many “felt they were operating against feminist ideas,” Pitzer said. Daniel Wright told a reporter in the 1980s that Padanaram was “ruled by men” and said that “domineering women” had “made men into wimps.” He also had said that “no practicing homosexual is welcome in our village.”

Scrutiny returned to Padanaram at times when other communal movements went wrong, including in 1978, when more than 900 died from cyanide poisoning in “Jonestown,” or the People’s Temple Agricultural Project in Guyana, led by Indiana preacher and cult leader Jim Jones. The commune got calls again in 1993 when the FBI raided the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas.

“Along the way you had these cult leaders doing things that gave us a bad name, and we had to live all that down,” Wright-Summerton said. “But my dad would turn it right back on society. He’d say America was the biggest cult he’d ever seen.”

Commune in peril
In 2001, then 82-year-old Wright, his eyesight failing as he battled a heart condition, spent the day with his son Aram, eating an egg dinner at a Bob Evans in a nearby town.

They talked about the mill business, and then visited the commune’s evening “rap.”

“He went up to go to bed, took one of two steps” and died, said another son, Camelot Wright. “He always said I want to go with my boots on.”

Wright’s passing came two years after a shifting economy had slowed work at the mill.

The mill had outgrown the commune and moved to a larger site near Bloomington in 1977 to make grade lumber, veneer logs, pallet wood and oak railroad ties, operated by commune-owned companies including Empire Wood Co. and Imperial Lumber Kilns Inc.

By the mid-1990s, it was bringing in $7 million a year but struggling to support a community that in a typical week needed 60 gallons of milk, 300 pounds of flour, 500 to 600 diapers and 600 trash bags. It also had to pay for cars and gas, electric and heating and college tuition for students. Then, demand for milled lumber started to dry up and prices and profits fell.

By 2001, the mill was operating only intermittently. Although there were several other businesses by then, including a compost company, the decision was made a couple of years later to shutter the mill, even though the move threatened Padanaram’s economic underpinnings.

“The sawmill did great when we had simple needs,” Aram Wright said. “But as every family wanted two cars and their own house … it didn’t generate that kind of money.”

It meant big changes.

After years of drawing from a “common purse” for everything from clothes to medical care, many were now responsible for more of their own expenses.

“Everybody had to go get a job or start a business. Some of us went and started logging businesses because that’s what we knew. Some went back to school,” Aram Wright said. “It was a hard time for people, who’d worked in the valley and never paid an electric bill. Suddenly they had a meter bill due.”

Padanaram had to close the nursery and cafeteria. The commune’s cattle herd was sold to pay taxes, and land was rented to sharecroppers. Some of the communal living spaces were broken into apartments, with individual kitchens.

It finally sunk in for Wright-Summerton when she watched a man from the electric utility install individual meters in the once-communal lodges.

“That’s when it really hit,” she said.

continued

 

[danielpalos]

A commune of heaven on earth merely requires sufficient morals to accomplish.

 

[Moonglow]

...said the blind man

Do you pray to invisible entities via an icon also?

 

[Moonglow]

A commune of heaven on earth merely requires sufficient morals to accomplish.

Humans are too greedy and selfish to complete the task.

 

[Frankeneinstein]

Do you pray to invisible entities via an icon also?

Don't all atheists?

 

[Moonglow]

Don't all atheists?

I have no idea since I refrain from the sci-fi religion base.

 

[Frankeneinstein]

I have no idea since I refrain from the sci-fi religion base.

nothing but the real thing for you eh!

 

[Moonglow]

nothing but the real thing for you eh!

No, I refrain from all bouts of extremism concerning any idea of a religion

 

[Frankeneinstein]

No, I refrain from all bouts of extremism concerning any idea of a religion

Really? cuz sometimes ya come across a PC altar boy. [insert altar boy joke now]...
Communism is every bit the religion that all major religions are and socialism is just a sect offshoot of it like all major religions have.

 

[Moonglow]

Really? cuz sometimes ya come across a PC altar boy. [insert altar boy joke now]...
Communism is every bit the religion that all major religions are and socialism is just a sect offshoot of it like all major religions have.

Hardly, but you'd like to believe that. A fanatic is a fanatic no mater what the occasion is for fanaticism.

 

[Unkotare]

All this jibber jabber about communism, but how many of those commenting here on any side have ever lived under it or anything approximating it?

.

 

[surada]

A commune of heaven on earth merely requires sufficient morals to accomplish.

You should read the article linked.

 

[Frankeneinstein]

Hardly, but you'd like to believe that. A fanatic is a fanatic no mater what the occasion is for fanaticism.

Hardly? well I wasn't anticipating that level of proof to dis-spell my claim...so unlike all the other beliefs in the world communism/socialism is the true one? the way, the truth, the life!

 

[surada]

Hardly? well I wasn't anticipating that level of proof to dis-spell my claim...so unlike all the other beliefs in the world communism/socialism is the true one? the way, the truth, the life!

Is that what you believe?

 

[iamwhatiseem]

So it was a Christian religious comunity.

Haha... yeah for the article... sure.
Everyone around here knows about the community... the Wild wild west'ness of it. I went there twice in my youth.
It is anything but Christian. Let's just say the alcohol and drugs flow freely.
But as far as the governance of the place... no one owns their property, Most of them work at the lumber mill the community operates. They give a large percentage of their pay to the community to help pay for the large houses, community buildings etc. etc.
Cops will not go there. Authorities don't really even know who all is there. The only think authorities make sure of is children are accounted for and their education must pass state minimums etc.

Photos of communal buildings/cafeteria etc.

 

[Frankeneinstein]

Is that what you believe?

so you think atheists believe in religion? or are you trying to divert attention so the question doesn't get answered? an understanding of what you've read here so far would have answered that for you

 

[EvMetro]

You have been told over and over again that you will not 'earn' a reply to your post until you first reply to this one:

Watch the Tonight show tonight!

Hey, Janeen, Kevin Smith is doing a sketch on the tonight show tonight in his store in Red Bank, the one we went to. Might be cool to check it out.

www.usmessageboard.com

Your reply must be at least 1500 words in length, double-spaced, Times New Roman with footnotes and citations. You know what to do, now do it! DO IT!!!!!!!

Your next post will be evasion as well. It's all you have. Go on now, post your next evasion.

 

[EvMetro]

Opening post remains, and lefties will only be able to defend communism:

"Naturally, on a political discussion site, there is a lot of discussion about communism. The pattern that I see over and over is condemnation of communism from righties, and support and defense of communism from lefties. Why don't we see lefties condemning communism? Even in this very thread, we will see lefties trying to protect communism with attempts to derail the thread instead of condemning communism. Why don't lefties condemn it?"

 

[ThunderKiss1965]

The perpetual Leftist "apology" for socialism/communism is that "It has never been done right." Point to North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, point out the horrific excesses, the corruption of the elite, and so on, and it always comes back to the same thing. They will never acknowledge the fundamental Achilles Heel of communism - that HUMANS cannot be treated equally, ignoring excellence and merit, ignoring sloth and slovenly work, and expect anything other than devolution to the "lowest common denominator."

THIS TIME, they say, we know enough to do it right! So WE will actually produce the Workers' Paradise!

They are right. For socialism to work they just have to kill even more people.