[Faith-talk] FW: [thefamilyoffaith] The Real Story of Thanksgiving

[Eric Calhoun]

Original Message: 
From: "TONY_at_FloridaHealth" <FloridaHealth21 at verizon.net>
To: <thefamilyoffaith at yahoogroups.com>, <CcHhEeSsTtEeRr at yahoogroups.com>,
<INTERCESSORS-ALLNATIONS at yahoogroups.com>, "Donna Mae"
<btlg1370 at gmail.com>, <walkwithchrist at tampabay.rr.com>
Subject: [thefamilyoffaith] The Real Story of Thanksgiving
Date: 
Thu, 26 Nov 2009 06:57:57 -0500




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." 

"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 everyone 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, the governor of the Massachusetts colony wrote
about the social experiment after abandoning what essentially was socialism
shortly after the Pilgrims had arrived in the United States or in the new
world: 
"'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
any recompense...that was thought injustice.' 

Do you hear what he was saying, ladies and gentlemen? 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 un-harnessed 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.'" 

Not just use themselves and not just send to a common store but they
could market. They could grow as much, they could sell it for what they
could get for it, and the incentive was clear to do as much as possible on
both sides. "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.' Bradford doesn't sound like much
of a Clintonite, does he? Is it possible that supply-side economics could
have existed before the 1980s? Yes. Read the story of Joseph and Pharaoh in
(Genesis 41). Following Joseph's suggestion (Gen 41:34), Pharaoh reduced
the tax on Egyptians to 20% during the 'seven years of plenty' and the
'Earth brought forth in heaps.' (Gen. 41:47). 

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.' Now, let me ask you: Have you read this history before?
Is this lesson being taught to your children today? If not, why not? Can
you think of a more important lesson one could derive from the Pilgrim
experience? 

"Guess what? There's even more that is being deliberately withheld from
our modern textbooks. For example, one of those attracted to the new world
by the success of Plymouth was Thomas Hooker. Thomas Hooker established his
own community in Connecticut, the first full-fledged constitutional
community, perhaps the most free society the world had ever known. Hooker's
community was governed by the fundamental orders of Connecticut, which
established strict limits on the powers of government. So revolutionary and
successful was this idea that Massachusetts was inspired to adopt its body
of liberties. The body of liberties included ninety-eight separate
protections of individual rights, including no taxation without
representation, due process of law, trial by a jury of peers, and
prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment. Now, those no doubt
sound familiar to you and they should because these are ideas and concepts
that led directly to the U.S. Constitution and the U.S. Bill of Rights." 

"Nevertheless, the Pilgrims and the Puritans of early New England are
often vilified today as witch burners and portrayed as simpletons. But to
the contrary, it was their commitment to pluralism and free worship that
led to these ideals being incorporated into American history, and our
history books purposely conceal the fact that these notions were developed
by communities of devout Christians who studied the Bible and found that it
prescribes limited representative government and free enterprise as the
best political and economic systems. Now, there's only one word for this,
folks. It's censorship. There was a time when every schoolchild did learn
these basic lessons of the American culture. Now these truths are being and
have been systematically expunged from history books in favor of liberal
social studies clap trap," and the chapter goes on. "This brings us to our
Founding Fathers, the geniuses who crafted the Declaration of Independence
and the U.S. Constitution. 

"These were men who shook up the entire world by proclaiming the idea
that people had certain God-given freedoms and rights and that the
government's only reason to exist was to protect those freedoms and rights
from both internal and external forces -- and that simple, yet brilliant,
insight has been all but lost today in liberalism's relentless march toward
bigger, more powerful, more intrusive government," and that's why I wanted
to add to the reading today the George Washington First Thanksgiving
proclamation in 1789. Thanksgiving was about thanking God for bounty and
freedom and opportunity and blessings. Thanksgiving is a time we celebrate
the Pilgrims realizing the best way to enjoy prosperity in a new world that
was foreign to them. Yes, there was cooperation with the Indians and, yes,
the Indians did extend the handshake of freedom when we arrived by teaching
the Pilgrims how to farm and so forth, but after that, all the bounty that
was created by the first settlers were shared with the Indians. 

There was no wiping them out. There was no infiltration. There was no
introduction of various diseases and -isms like environmental wackoism or
sexism or racism or any of this, as have been attached in recent
multicultural curricula to the so-called white Europeans who invaded this
pristine land and destroyed the goodness and the oneness that the Indians
enjoyed with this land. That's what's being taught today. What is not being
taught today is the devotion to God that these people had, but the failure
of a socialist compact to adequately provide for the residents of the first
colony and how William Bradford himself saw it was failing almost from the
outset and devised a new compact which was basically capitalism and
unfettered competition, and incentive, and then it was Katie bar the door.
All of these things are part of the original Thanksgiving, and even when I
go back and remember my days in school, I was not taught this. I was not
taught the involvement and the references to God. 

I was not taught that the Pilgrims had all this bounty after awhile and
shared it with the Indians. It was quite the opposite. The purpose of
teaching Thanksgiving when I was a kid was to tell all of us just how
wonderful the Indians were and how well they treated us when we arrived
because we were basically inept and incompetent. I enjoy passing this story
along every Thanksgiving because we've been doing it here since I published
and wrote the book, and the book is actually 1993. It came out in November
of '93. By the end of the year, it had sold two million copies, and since
then, I guess this is our 11th year now of reading the real story of
Thanksgiving, and it always reaches new people. Every year we do it, people
who have never heard it before are amazed. Now, if I was able to find it
and get the true story, it's out there, but it's not in conventional
history textbooks that you'll find in many of the public schools. 
Rush Limbaugh
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/today.guest.html