"Chapter 6,
Dead White Guys, or What the History Books Never Told You: The True Story of Thanksgiving by Rush Limbaugh.
-- The
story of the Pilgrims begins in the early part of the seventeenth
century ... The Church of England under King James I was persecuting
anyone and everyone who did not recognize its absolute civil and
spiritual authority. Those who challenged ecclesiastical authority and
those who believed strongly in freedom of worship were hunted down,
imprisoned, and sometimes executed for their beliefs." In England.
So, "A group of separatists first fled to Holland and established a
community. After eleven years, about forty of them agreed to make a
perilous journey to the New World, where they would certainly face
hardships, but could live and worship God according to the dictates of
their own consciences. 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. But this was no
pleasure cruise, friends. The journey to the New World was a long and
arduous one. And when the Pilgrims landed in New England in November,
they found -- according to Bradford's detailed journal -- a cold,
barren, desolate wilderness." The New York Jets had just lost to the
Patriots. "There were no friends to greet them, he wrote." I just threw
that in about the Jets and Patriots. "There were no houses to shelter
them. There were no inns where they could refresh themselves. And the
sacrifice they had made for freedom was just beginning. During the first
winter, half the Pilgrims -- including Bradford's own wife -- died of
either starvation, sickness or exposure. When spring finally came,
Indians taught the settlers how to plant corn, fish for cod and skin
beavers for coats.
"Life improved for the Pilgrims, but they did not yet prosper! This
is important to understand because this is where modern American history
lessons often end. Thanksgiving is actually explained in some textbooks
as a holiday for which the Pilgrims gave thanks to the Indians for
saving their lives, rather than as a devout expression of gratitude
grounded in the tradition of" the Bible, "both the Old and New
Testaments. Here is the part that has been omitted: 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,
and each member of the community was entitled to one common share. All
of the land they cleared and the houses they built belonged to the
community as well." Everything belonged to everybody. "They were going
to distribute it equally. All of the land they cleared and the houses
they built belonged to the community as well.
"Nobody owned anything." It was a forerunner of Occupy Wall Street.
Seriously. "They just had a share in it," but nobody owned anything. "It
was a commune, folks." The original pilgrim settlement was a commune.
"It was the forerunner to the communes we saw in the '60s and '70s out
in California," and Occupy Wall Street, "and it was complete with
organic vegetables, by the way." There's no question they were organic
vegetables. What else could they be? "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," as they saw
fit, and, "thus turning loose the power of the marketplace. That's
right. Long before Karl Marx was even born, the Pilgrims had discovered
and experimented with what could only be described as socialism.
"And what happened? It didn't work!" They nearly starved! "It never
has worked! 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 in the future." If it were,
there wouldn't be any Occupy Wall Street. There wouldn't be any romance
for it.
"The experience that we had in this common course and condition,'"
Bradford wrote. "'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." This
was his way of saying, it didn't work, we thought we were smarter than
everybody, everybody was gonna share equally, nobody was gonna have
anything more than anything else, it was gonna be hunky-dory, kumbaya.
Except it doesn't work. Because of half of them didn't work, maybe more.
They depended on the others to do all the work. There was no incentive.
"'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 any
recompense,'" without being paid for it, "'that was thought injustice.'"
They figured it out real quick. Half the community is not working --
living off the other half, that is. Resentment built. Why should you
work for other people when you can't work for yourself? that's what he
was saying. So 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 under-girding 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? '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.' ... Is it possible that supply-side economics could have existed
before the 1980s? Yes," it did. "Now, this is where it gets really good,
folks, if you're laboring under the misconception that I was, as I was
taught in school. So they set up trading posts and exchanged goods with
the Indians." This is what happened. After everybody had their own plot
of land and were allowed to market it and develop it as they saw fit and
got to keep what they produced, bounty, plenty resulted.
"And then they set up trading posts, stores. They exchanged goods
with and sold the Indians things. Good old-fashioned commerce. They sold
stuff. And there were profits because they were screwing the Indians
with the price. I'm just throwing that in. No, there were profits, and,
"The profits allowed them to pay off their debts to the merchants in
London." The Canarsie tribe showed up and they paid double, which is
what made the Canarsie tribe screw us in the "Manna-hatin" deal years
later. (I just threw that in.) They paid off the merchant sponsors back
in London with their profits, they were selling goods and services to
the Indians. "[T]he success and prosperity of the Plymouth settlement
attracted more Europeans," what was barren was now productive, "and
began what came to be known as the 'Great Puritan Migration.'
But this story stops when the Indians taught the newly arrived
suffering-in-socialism Pilgrims how to plant corn and fish for cod.
That's where the original Thanksgiving story stops, and the story
basically doesn't even begin there. The real story of Thanksgiving is
William Bradford giving thanks to God," the pilgrims giving thanks to
God, "for the guidance and the inspiration to set up a thriving colony,"
for surviving the trip, for surviving the experience and prospering in
it. "The bounty was shared with the Indians." That's the story. "They
did sit down" and they did have free-range turkey and organic
vegetables. There were no trans fats, "but it was not the Indians who
saved the day. It was capitalism and Scripture which saved the day," as
acknowledged by
George Washington in his first Thanksgiving Proclamation in 1789, which I also have here.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I want to quickly tell you about one passenger on the
Mayflower, a guy named Francis Eaton. He was a carpenter. He was not one
of the Pilgrims. He was another passenger. He was a carpenter. He died
in 1633, 13 years after they landed at Plymouth, and here's what he left
in his will: "One cow, one calf, two hogs, 50 bushels of corn, a black
suit, a white hat, a black hat, boots, saws, hammers, square augers, a
chisel, fishing lead, and some kitchen items" and his season tickets for
the Redskins-Cowboys game. No, no, seriously. This is the estate of one
of the men who probably built many of the houses for the first
settlers. Very modest. But it shows what he saw as wealth back then. By
the way, the life expectancy back then was not much. Not compared to
today. And just remember, they were not eating trans fats, and they
didn't live as long as we do today.
END TRANSCRIPT -
Written by Rush Limbaugh
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