Victoria Woodhull as drawn by Thomas Nast, America's first political cartoonist.  Woodhull ran for president in 1872 on a platform we would call women's rights, or human rights.  The virtuous young woman in the background bending under the burden of children and a drunkard husband is saying, "I 'd rather travel the hardest path of matrimony than follow your Fornication."         “Do you think your generation invented sex?” my 80 year old grandmother asked when I was in my twenties.  I nearly ran her Oldsmobile off the road.  At the time I was sure I had seen undiscovered vistas with the enthusiastic co operation of fellow explorers.  Much older now, I realize my grandparents did not invent sex in the 1920s either.       Whoever invented it—and there have been a number of claimants—“free love” or “open marriage,” communes have blessed modern Americans with microwaves and table settings .    ...

  "Socialism in Arkansas"  1858         As you can read in the two excerpts from newspapers below, socialism was once acceptable in Arkansas as long as it did not promote abolitionists and "...other isms, germinating in the north."           Utopian communities of all sorts were promoted in  the twenty years before the Civil War and the two decades following.  The most enduring of these was the Amana group in Iowa, founded in 1840.  Amana morphed from an agricultural commune into a manufacturing commune. Eventually, it was sold to corporate America and endures today as a brand of microwaves sold in the US.         Over the next several weeks, I'll take a look at some of the more interesting and/or exemplary specimens  of ante bellum utopians.            There were "free love" communities with varying definitions of "free love." Most of the defi...