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The Real Story of Thanksgiving
On
this coming Thanksgiving holiday, I would be eternally grateful if our
government-run education camps would teach the next generation of Americans the
true story of Plymouth Rock rather than the romanticized fairy tale version.
Ten
years ago I read for the first time Matthew Givens’ column titled, “Thanksgiving:
America’s Lesson on Why Socialism Doesn’t Work.” And I’ve been reading it to my homeschooled
kids every Thanksgiving ever since.
“When
the colonists first landed” at Plymouth Rock in 1620, Givens wrote, “they
signed something called the Mayflower Compact.
Most of us have heard this document praised as an early social contract
helping different people live together.
What most of us never learned was that it was also an experiment in
socialism.”
An
experiment that went horribly wrong, big time.
The
Mayflower Compact required that all the colonists donate all the benefits
derived from their work – farming, fishing, clothing, etc. – into the “common
stock” and only take out what they actually needed. You know: From each according to ability; to
each according to need.
Well,
as the story was told by then-Gov. William Bradford, the young men of the
colony became unhappy campers about being forced to “spend their time and
strength to work for other men’s wives and children.” And since the non-producers got the same
amount of goodies from the common stock as producers, the producers simply
stopped producing.
As
such, “the amount of food produced was never adequate.” Thus the inadequate harvests of 1621 and 1622
did, in fact, lead to famine, malnutrition and starvation among the
Pilgrims. But it wasn’t the Indians
teaching them how to farm that ultimately rescued the colonists from their
plight.
What
did? Old-fashioned American capitalism!
“In
1623,” Givens explains, “Bradford ‘gave each household a parcel of land and
told them they could keep what they produced, or trade it away as they saw fit.” The result?
“By 1624, the colony was producing so much food that it began exporting
corn.”
Vunderbar!
“Thanksgiving,”
Givens concludes, “far from being the simple and uninspiring story of a group
of people learning how to farm, is actually a celebration of what has made
America itself great. It is the story of
people working together by working for themselves first, and in so doing,
improving the standard of living for everyone.”
Amen
and hallelujah!
So
as you sit around the Thanksgiving table this year with family and friends
munching on turkey, sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie, pause to reflect on the
true meaning of this quintessential American holiday just as we should pause to
reflect on the true meaning of Christmas each year; that socialism is bad, even
when slick-talking community organizers from Chicago try to peddle it as “fairness.”
TAX PLEDGE SIGNERS
Click here for the
update 2014 list of Taxpayer Protection Pledge signers in Nevada.
Opponents
of the current U.S. sugar policy rarely get beyond their global free-market
talking points long enough to consider the International Law of Unintended
Consequences
Read
more at www.FreeMarketSugar.com
STOP PATENT TROLLS
Nevada
Sen. Dean Heller joined the fight against “patent trolls” last week, testifying
before a sub-committee investigating such lawsuit abuse. Read his opening statement by clicking here
Read
more at www.StopPatentTrolls.info
FAMOUS LAST WORDS
“Words
every Republican should memorize and repeat when asked about Obamacare: ‘We
can't fix it as long as Democrats control the Senate.’" - @BillHobbs
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