Have you ever fantasized about living in some sort of utopia?

Some ideal, almost magical place, free from the bullshit politics of the day,

one where you didn't have to follow someone else's rules, but got to live by your own.

Think a cult compound, but make it bigger, and remove any notions of religion.

Imagine a place where everyone is equal.

There is no keeping up with the Joneses because the Joneses have the same stuff that you do,

the same amount of money. They live in the same size of house, where the same type of clothes,

eat the same food. They don't have any more than you do and neither does anyone else.

Frenchmen Etienne Cabé did more than just dream of such a place. He wrote his fantasy down. He said it in a

fictional novel and he made it sound so damn good that people wished it was real so they could

actually live there. And that led him to write more about it.

And then to ask people, would you really live there if you had the chance?

And people said yes, they really, really would.

And that led him to looking for investors and colonists and a country where he could conduct

a grand experiment and find out if the fictional community of Icaria could

exist not just on the written page, but in the real world.

And then he found those investors, and he found those colonists, and he found his country,

the United States of America, and soon some of the first communists ever had set sail in the mid-19th century to help

settle the American frontier. Words and ideas can change the world. I hated her, but I wanted

to love my mother. I have a dream. I'll plead not guilty right now. Your only chance is to leave

with us.

Welcome to another edition of TimeSuck Short Sucks. I'm Dan Cummins, and today I will be sharing the very interesting story of Icaria, a communist colony, actually several of them,

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