Not that the liberals running our public education system would ever ponder, or discuss, the economics behind the first Thanksgiving - a combination of financial illiteracy and the need to distort history to fit their ideology contribute to that - but it is a part of the story that needs to be told, as it relates directly to the success of this nature, and to the crucial choices we face today.
Caroline Baum uncovers the "secret history of Thanksgiving"
The Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620 and established the Plymouth Bay Colony. The first winters were harsh, and crop yields were poor. In spite of their deep religious convictions, the Pilgrims took to stealing from one another.
Half the Pilgrims died or returned to England in the first year. Those who remained went hungry. Even so, the 53 remaining pilgrims celebrated the harvest, as was the custom in England, in the autumn of 1621.
Finally, in the spring of 1623, Governor Bradford and the others “begane to thinke how they might raise as much corne as they could, and obtaine a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery,” according to Bradford’s history.
One of the traditions the Pilgrims had brought with them from England was a practice known as “farming in common.” Everything they produced was put into a common pool; the harvest was rationed according to need.
They had thought “that the taking away of property, and bringing in community into a common wealth, would make them happy and flourishing,” Bradford recounts.
They were wrong. “For this community (so far as it was) was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much imployment that would have been to their benefite and comforte,” Bradford writes.
Young, able-bodied men resented working for others without compensation. They thought it an “injuestice” to receive the same allotment of food and clothing as those who didn’t pull their weight. What they lacked were appropriate incentives.
After the Pilgrims had endured near-starvation for three winters, Bradford decided to experiment when it came time for spring planting in 1623. He allocated a plot of land to each family, that “they should set corne every man for his owne perticuler, and in that regard trust to themselves.”
The results were nothing short of miraculous.
Bradford writes: “This had very good success; for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corne was planted than other waise would have bene by any means the Govr or any other could use, and saved him a great deall of trouble, and gave far better content.”
The women now went willingly into the field, carrying their young children on their backs. Those who previously claimed they were too old or ill to work embraced the idea of private property once they could enjoy the fruits of their own labor. Eventually they produced enough corn to trade the excess for furs and other desired commodities.
Given the proper incentives, the Pilgrims enjoyed a bountiful harvest in the fall of 1623, and set aside “a day of thanksgiving” to thank God for their good fortune.
“Any generall wante or famine hath not been amongst them since to this day,” Bradford writes in an entry from 1647, the last year covered by his history.
Their good fortune had little to do with God. In 1623, they were responding to the same incentives that, almost four centuries later, form the basis for free and prosperous economies.
Alas, this history is now secret, because it is a complete repudiation of everything liberal dogma holds dear - the servitude of each man to his fellow man, the able enslaved to lazy and incompetent, who grow fat on their labor while doing nothing to earn their rewards. While at the top, a precious few elite direct the human concentration camp that is socialism in such a way to fill their pockets and bellies to greater capacity than any of their citizens. All under the threat of force, of course...
The early results of the socialistic/communistic experiment by the Pilgrims have been repeated in every social laboratory it has been tried - from the Soviet Union to Cuba to North Korea. And yet, Barack Obama wants to try it one more time here in America, risking the world's greatest wealth machine in an attempt to force reality to bend to his leftist ideology.
We can't let it happen. And one of the best ways to prevent it is through education, and if the liberals who run the school systems refuse to tell our children the truth, we must do it ourselves.
And what better day than Thanksgiving, when our ancestors discovered that capitalism is the true road to prosperity and peace, and will actually bring us closer to God than any "wealth-sharing scam" could ever imagine...
Let the secret be unveiled, with a cry of...Happy Thanksgiving!
Here's the above story, in video form:
If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, "thank you," that would suffice. ~Meister Eckhart
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