RUSH: From my second bestseller, “See, I Told You So, “”Chapter 6, “Dead White guys, or What the History Books Never Told You: The True Story of Thanksgiving.” The story of the Pilgrims begins in the early part of the seventeenth century (that\u2019s the 1600s for those of you in Rio Linda, California). 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.<\/p>\n
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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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
And the sacrifice they had made for freedom was just beginning. During the first winter, half the Pilgrims – including Bradford\u2019s 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!<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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. They just had a share in it. It was a commune, folks. It was the forerunner to the communes we saw in the \u201960s and \u201970s out in California – and it was complete with organic vegetables, by the way.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s 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\u2019t 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!<\/p>\n
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\u2019s history lesson If it were, we might prevent much needless suffering in the future.<\/p>\n
“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\u2019s wives and children without any recompense…that was thought injustice.”<\/p>\n
Why should you work for other people when you can\u2019t work for yourself? What\u2019s the point?<\/p>\n
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\u2019s 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?<\/p>\n
“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\u2019t 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\u2019s 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)<\/p>\n
In no time, the Pilgrims found they had more food than they could eat themselves.<\/p>\n
Now, this is where it gets really good, folks, if you\u2019re laboring under the misconception that I was, as I was taught in school.<\/p>\n
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.”
\nNow, you probably haven\u2019t read this. You might have heard me read it to you over the previous years on this program, but I don\u2019t think this lesson is still 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? Thanksgiving, in other words, is not thanks to the Indians, and it\u2019s not thanks to William Bradford. It\u2019s not thanks to the merchants of London. Thanksgiving is thanks to God, pure and simple. Go read the first Thanksgiving proclamation from George Washington and you\u2019ll get the point. The word “God” is mentioned in that first Thanksgiving proclamation more times… If you read it aloud to an ACLU member, you\u2019ll get thrown in jail, but that\u2019s what the first Thanksgiving was all about. Get it. I\u2019m telling you, read it. Maybe we can find it and link to it: George Washington\u2019s first Thanksgiving Proclamation. Folks, if you haven\u2019t read that, you need to read it. It will tell you the true story of Thanksgiving. I\u2019m happy to share it with you each and every year as a tradition on this program.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
RUSH: From my second bestseller, “See, I Told You So, “”Chapter 6, “Dead White guys, or What the History Books Never Told You: The True Story of Thanksgiving.” The story of the Pilgrims begins in the early part of the seventeenth century (that\u2019s the 1600s for those of you in Rio Linda, California). The Church […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[12,1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n