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Posted: November 27, 2008 - 09:16 CT
Time now, ladies and gentlemen, for The Real Story of
Thanksgiving, as written by I -- by me -- in my second
book, See, I Told You So. It's page 70 in the
hardcover version. "On August 1, 1620, the Mayflower
set sail. It carried a total of 102 passengers,
including forty Pilgrims led by William Bradford. On
the journey, Bradford set up an agreement, a contract, that
established just and equal laws for all members of the new
community, irrespective of their religious beliefs.
Where did the revolutionary ideas expressed in the Mayflower
Compact come from? From the Bible. The Pilgrims were a
people completely steeped in the lessons of the Old and New
Testaments. They looked to the ancient Israelites for
their example. And, because of the biblical precedents
set forth in Scripture, they never doubted that their
experiment would work."
Now, you know the usual story of Thanksgiving: They landed.
They had no clue where they were, no idea how to feed
themselves. The Indians came out, showed 'em how to
pop popcorn, fed 'em turkey, saved 'em basically -- and then
white European settlers after that basically wiped out the
Indian population. It's a horrible example. Not
only is that not true, here is the part that's been omitted
from what is still today taught as the traditional
Thanksgiving story in many schools. "The original
contract the Pilgrims had entered into with their
merchant-sponsors in London called for everything they
produced to go into a common store,' when they got here,
'and each member of the community was entitled to one common
share. All of the land they cleared and the houses
they built belong to the community as well.
"They were going to distribute it equally. All of the
land they cleared and the houses they built belonged to the
community as well... [William] Bradford, who had
become the new governor of the colony, recognized that this
form of collectivism was as costly and destructive to the
Pilgrims as that first harsh winter, which had taken so many
lives. He decided to take bold action. Bradford
assigned a plot of land to each family to work and manage,
thus turning loose the power of the marketplace...
Long before Karl Marx was even born, the Pilgrims had
discovered and experimented with what could only be
described as socialism,' and it had failed" miserably
because when every put things in the common store, some
people didn't have to put things in for there to be, people
that didn't produce anything were taking things out, and it
caused resentment just as it does today. So Bradford
had to change it.
"What Bradford and his community found was that the most
creative and industrious people had no incentive to work any
harder than anyone else, unless they could utilize the power
of personal motivation! But while most of the rest of the
world has been experimenting with socialism for well over a
hundred years – trying to refine it, perfect it, and
re-invent it – the Pilgrims decided early on to scrap it
permanently. What Bradford wrote about this social
experiment should be in every schoolchild's history lesson.
If it were, we might prevent much needless suffering," that
happens today and will happen "in the future. 'The
experience that we had in this common course and condition,
tried sundry years...that by taking away property, and
bringing community into a common wealth, would make them
happy and flourishing – as if they were wiser than God,'
Bradford wrote.
"'For this community (so far as it was) was found to breed
much confusion and discontent, and retard much employment
that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For
young men that were most able and fit for labor and service
did repine that they should spend their time and strength to
work for other men's wives and children without [being paid]
that was thought injustice.' ... The Pilgrims found
that people could not be expected to do their best work
without incentive. So what did Bradford's community
try next? They unharnessed the power of good old free
enterprise by invoking the undergirding capitalistic
principle of private property. Every family was
assigned its own plot of land to work and permitted to
market its own crops and products. And what was the
result?"
Here's what Bradford wrote, the governor of the
Massachusetts colony. "'This had very good success,'
wrote Bradford, 'for it made all hands industrious, so as
much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been.'
Bradford doesn't sound like much of a Clintonite, does he?"
or an Obamaite, if I can update it. "Is it possible
that supply-side economics could have existed before the
1980s? Anyway, the pilgrims found "In no time, the
Pilgrims found they had more food than they could eat
themselves... So they set up trading posts and
exchanged goods with the Indians. The profits allowed
them to pay off their debts to the merchants in London.
And the success and prosperity of the Plymouth settlement
attracted more Europeans and began what came to be known as
the 'Great Puritan Migration.'"
Very few people have heard this story or have had it taught
to them -- and the "thanks" was to God for showing them the
way. In later parts of the chapter, I quote John Adams
and George Washington on their reminisces and their thoughts
on the first Thanksgiving and the notion it was thanks to
God. It was an entirely different story than is being
taught in the schools. It's been muddied down, watered
down all these years -- and now it's been hijacked by the
multicultural community -- to the point that the story of
Thanksgiving is the Pilgrims were a bunch of incompetents
and were saved only by the goodness of the Indians, who then
were wiped out. And that's what kids are being taught
today -- 'cause, of course, you can't mention the Bible in
school, and that's fundamental to the real story of
Thanksgiving.
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