Rush Limbaugh: The Real Story of Thanksgiving

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Rush Limbaugh: The Real Story of Thanksgiving

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Was it the Indians who swooped in and saved those pathetic Pilgrims? Not exactly. It was the free market. Read this brilliant transcript from the Dr. of Democracy, Rush Limbaugh:

Now, the real story of Thanksgiving: “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,” and this is what’s not taught. This is
what’s left out. “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. There were no friends to
greet them, he wrote. 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 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 belong to the community as well.” They were
collectivists! Now, “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 what happened? It didn’t work! Surprise, surprise, huh?
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,” every kid gets. “If it were, we
might prevent much needless suffering in the future.” Here’s what he
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.

“‘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.’” 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
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?” ‘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? … 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, aside from this program, have you heard this
before? Is this “being taught to children — and if not, why not? I
mean, is there a more important lesson one could derive from the
Pilgrim experience than this?” What if Bill and Hillary Clinton had
been exposed to these lessons in school? Do you realize what we face in
next year’s election is the equivalent of people who want to set up
these original collectivists communes that didn’t work, with nobody
having incentive to do anything except get on the government dole
somehow because the people running the government want that kind of
power. So the Pilgrims decided to thank God for all of their good
fortune. And that’s Thanksgiving. And read George Washington’s first Thanksgiving address
and count the number of times God is mentioned and how many times he’s
thanked. None of this is taught today. It should be. Have a happy
Thanksgiving, folks. You deserve it. Do what you can to be happy, and
especially do what you can to be thankful, because in this country you
have more reasons than you’ve ever stopped to consider.

From rushlimbaugh.com

The Indians obviously helped but if not for the change from a
communal market to a free market there would not have been a thriving
European community in America. Have a happy Thanksgiving and God Bless.
BigT