As I write this, most American refrigerators have a dead but thawing bird within their Arctic grasps because tomorrow is Thanksgiving and this nation prepares itself to inhale too many calories.
Because I wasn’t here at the time, I escaped the “noble savage saving the white colonialists” as taught in public schools but, nevertheless, 30 plus years of residence has exposed me to the maudlin and political correctness of the Hollywood Left, the fawning of the mainstream media and the best efforts of Hallmark Cards.
Just ask Joseph Goebbels of yesteryear or David Axelrod of today and inherent to both their crafts is a common thread; Within the best lies there is a nugget of truth. The trick for the consumer is to find it. Which takes me back to the liberal version of Thanksgiving and the oft-missed nugget which has never been more appropriate than this year.
On August 1, 1620, the Mayflower set sail from Europe. 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?
Well, the Christian Bible of course because 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 and 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
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 belonged to the community as well. They were, in effect, 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. 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.
“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."
Then he continued; "'For this community 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.”. Read those words again. 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 capitalistic principle of private property. Every family was assigned its own plot of land to work and was 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 an Obamanista, 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.
Those 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. So the Pilgrims decided to thank G-d for all of their good fortune.
And, let us not overlook the fact that, the salvation of this tiny colony came not wholly from without but largely from within!
Happy Thanksgiving!
No comments:
Post a Comment