Thirteen English colonies on the East Coast of North America, most settled by groups seeking religious freedom, came together to form the United States. In his new alternative history, The 14th Colony, author Michael Silverstein describes a fictional additional colony, New Israelia, founded by Jews in northern Florida in the 1650s—300 years before the actual founding of the State of Israel in 1948.
“Before beginning serious research for this project,” said Silverstein, “I viewed a book about such a colony as a tongue-in-cheek way to explore one of history’s most vibrant and quirky eras, the mid-17th century. The more I researched, however, the more obvious it became to me that this wasn’t just an alternative history with a far-fetched premise, but something that could easily have happened.
“In a number of ways,” Silverstein continued, “this period also bore some chilling resemblances to our own times. There were international conflicts over markets and resources. There were heinous deeds committed by religious fanatics. Millions of people in different parts of the world were being brutally exploited and enslaved. False messiahs were garnering huge followings. There were even examples of irrational exuberance—the entire economy of Holland was almost taken down by a tulip buying bubble.”
The story of The 14th Colony plays out in both the New and Old Worlds—in an England governed as a republic under Oliver Cromwell; in the Spanish-controlled Americas; in the ghettos of Southern Italy and the surprisingly tolerant Lithuanian-Polish Commonwealth in Eastern Europe; and in the Holland of Rembrandt, and its Jewish-friendly colony in northeastern Brazil.
A fuller description of The 14th Colony, and the era in which the book is set, along with notes about its author and book ordering information, can be found on the book’s Web site.
Just for the sake of levity, I’d like to post links to some of the 50-odd stories WORLDMEETS.US has posted about the U.S. election from around the world in the past 72 hours:
November 2nd, 2008 By DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, Assistant Editor, TMV Columnist
In our galaxy, there is a place known as Brool-Yi, sometimes spelled Broolyi, also called The Isle of Peace.
There, they have automated priests and ministers made of wax, ala Madame Tussaud, who whir out of church portals built somewhat like cuckoo clocks.
These reverend-puppets perform all sanctioned services for the masses, including sanctioned marriage.
This came about in Broolyi, in part, because multiple interpretations and exegeses of church law and writings by various priests and ministers caused disagreement amongst the ranks of clergy and church hierarchies….so the Broolyians decided to do away with heroic human thought and feeling, and automate religion instead.
Thus, in Broolyi, Isle of Peace, all the churches, temples and other places of Godness, are run by humanoid machines dressed in vestments… all manufactured at an authorized ‘automated religion factory.’
Meanwhile, on planet Earth, one wonders, are some who are concerned with these matters of clerical uniformity of thought, considering the same?… importing from the ‘automated religion factory,’ standardized wax clerics who will only follow the diagrams soldered into their copper and wire innards….
PoliSci(Fi) Girl cannot claim to understand all these matters, perhaps because she’s just passed the van Allen Belt, but perhaps more so, from lack of large enough mind to comprehend all the complex customs of earth beings… yet, just as one small mind whirling through the galaxy, I wonder as I wander…
Wouldn’t such services, such as marriages by rote, not dehumanize all and any who marry under such automated rather than living, ever expanding philosophy?
Wouldn’t it be more Imitatio Cristi, for instance, to base the blessing of marriage on the inclusions of the earthlings’ God of Love, rather than on the minds of mere men? Or lack of minds in automatons?
Just asking.
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CODA
1. The Broolyians are written about by Sweven Godfrey in 1901 after one of the obviously clearest circumnavigations of odd outposts in our galaxy. His story was entitled Riallaro, The Archipelago of Exiles.
3. My views on Prop 8 in Calif, were shaped by being an activist on resisting Amendment 2 here in the Rockies, which passed and was declared finally, unconstitutional. Amendment 2 was also sponsored by a religious group. It attempted to exclude GLBT people from equal rights under the law.
If you’d like to know more about how I was involved with helping to fight Amendment 2 in the 1990s, (along with thousands of other good souls) you can go here and read the story… “Not a witch hunt — a treasure hunt: GLTB persons”
“The American is not always a cretin, it must be said. Having covered Bush’s reelection campaign four years ago, I saw how that debilitating cocktail of ‘gay marriage-abortion-family-religion-terrorism,’ mixed into the cauldron labeled ‘moral values broth,’ moved entire states into W’s column.
“The ‘true’ American, according to conservative mythology, is White, with family, patriotic, extremely religious, hates socialism, communism, foreigners and paying taxes. He is so naive that he believes he can save America by attacking Iraq and, at any rate, he has invested himself in a mission: to export his model to other people (without asking their opinion). This American, if he ever existed, no longer exists. This is the terrible discovery that McCain and the Republicans have just made. And it’s super-good news for America and the rest of the world. ”
“The White American - whom McCain calls Joe the Plumber or Palin calls Joe Sixpack - is no longer blinded by lies. He has seen the war in Iraq and is suffering through a crisis, while Republicans spouting about abortion, taxes or an American victory in Iraq no longer move him. The latest poll shows that half of White men are going to vote Democrat. For the first time in thirty years!
They want someone who speaks concretely, calmly, moderately: in the center. They refuse to scorn the intellectual, the notorious “elite” that the McCain camp denounces - Obama graduated from Harvard. They refuse to be afraid (of bin Laden, of the enemies of America, etc.) The White American male has closed himself off from old-fashioned ideology and has entered the rational era.”
October 31st, 2008 By DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, Assistant Editor, TMV Columnist
I can’t say I understand the phenomena of a large and usually vehement voters’ group going oddly silent during this election cycle, but then, human beings have often been a puzzlement to those who observe from outer space; it’s their quixotic-ness, humans’ extreme inventiveness, their cleverness, but sometimes an odd dullness, all in one, that are such seeming contradictions.
For instance, Earth groups in the USA which are normally vociferous and unrelentingly so during their election cycles on Planet Earth, at this time have become mysteriously silent.
One such group, called variously, The Religious Right, and Evangelical Thunder has, in the past, been normally quoted and requoted time and again ad infinitum and some say, ad nauseum, during election cycles. But now this group made of conservative Christians and conservative Catholics numbering more than 60 million persons, has been mysteriously mum.
The leaders of the groups have seemingly never met an MSM microphone they didn’t like, but somehow seem to have shied away this time. Noticeably so. Remarkably so.
Prudence? Shyness? Reticence on the groups’ parts?
Or something more covert; not showing one’s hand til the last moment/voting day? Don’t shoot ’til you see the whites of their eyes? Say nothing because one’s time-honored prejudices run deep and it wouldn’t be fitting to air such antediluvian ideas in public?
Perhaps altogether these groups possess a voting strategy similar to a phenomenon developed by the inhabitants of Jansenia, a far off confederation at the juncture of Libertinia, Despairia, and Calvinia…. the Jansenians developed a form of gunpowder that makes no sound even as it explodes across the land… thereby unleashing more power than the opponent ever imagined, and at the last minute, making its devastating incursions… causing those in the know to mark the Jansenians as formidable– and hidden opponents– who spring out at the 11:59 hour.
Because of this current idiosyncratic and ongoing silence of a formerly fierce and verbal set of tribal groups, from near or far, one might wonder: Is there a silent devastating power lurking underground that no one is paying attention to… one that will be unleashed on Election Day on Earth?
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CODA
1. There are other groups which are noted to be silent at this time, during a time of normally rather loud public exchange during a democratic process… such as the Neo-Nazi groups, the anti-immigration groups, the John Birch Society members, the David Duke followers, and so on.
2. Jansenia, a place turned over by a bout with the Black Plague, and thus afterward, developed odd defensive and offensive weaponry to attempt to keep death– and ideological and actual enemies– at bay. Written by Pere Zacherie de Lisieux, 1660.
[T]he red-state [abstinence] model is clearly failing on its own terms—producing high rates of teen pregnancy, divorce, sexually transmitted disease, and other dysfunctional outcomes that social conservatives say they abhor. […]
For too long, the conventional wisdom has been that social conservatives are the upholders of family values, whereas liberals are the proponents of a polymorphous selfishness. This isn’t true, and, every once in a while, liberals might point that out.
America’s dominant political divide:
Social liberals in the country’s “blue states” tend to support sex education and are not particularly troubled by the idea that many teen-agers have sex before marriage, but would regard a teen-age daughter’s pregnancy as devastating news. And the social conservatives in “red states” generally advocate abstinence-only education and denounce sex before marriage, but are relatively unruffled if a teen-ager becomes pregnant, as long as she doesn’t choose to have an abortion.
October 27th, 2008 By JOE WINDISH, Technology Editor
Sadie Fields of the Georgia Christian Alliance is in charge of turning out conservative Christians for the McCain/Palin ticket in Georgia. Over the weekend she put out this message which she urged conservative Christians to print out and distribute at church.
A short excerpt:
While we have failed in many ways to preserve the vision of our Founders, if Obama is elected their vision of this wonderful “experiment in ordered liberty” will truly disappear. He will be aided and abetted in his pursuit of socialism by the likes of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, William Ayers - an unrepentant terrorist - and Pastor Jeremiah Wright - a blatant racist who said from his pulpit “God d_ America.” […]
If Obama wins the Democrats will be in control of all three chambers. There will be no “check and balance” as the Founders intended. Obama and others he will put in positions of power will bring about a liberal tsunami that will sweep this nation clean of any pretense of a free and sovereign nation. The dream of many Americans to make their lives better through hard work and perseverance will be just that - a dream.
The damage done under an Obama regime will be undoable in years to come.
Combine a President Obama, a Democrat-controlled Congress, and appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court — the country I grew up in will be no more.
Redistribution of the wealth, same sex marriage, universal health care, gun control, and every other off-the-wall, socialistic idea will become reality.
Tom in comments, aware that Sadie is estranged from her lesbian daughter, “Yes, if only we would all adopt Sadie’s world view we could all have the same happy, loving, close knit families that she has.”
