VIA RUSH AND CFP: Well worth a yearly read. Happy Thanksgiving!
RUSH:
THE TRUE STORY OF THANKSGIVING is spreading, and I couldn’t be
happier about that. Bottom line: It is spreading. I’m just gonna cut to
the chase here before getting into reading the text. The Real Story of
Thanksgiving, going back to the very first early days of the Pilgrims
arriving at Plymouth Rock, is that socialism failed. Here’s the version
you were probably taught:
The Pilgrims arrived here after an arduous trip across the Atlantic
Ocean. They didn’t know why they were, had no idea what to do. They had
nothing. The Indians took pity on them. The Indians saw them, and the
Indians saved them. The Indians taught ’em how to do things they didn’t
know how to do, like grow food, catch beavers, stuff like that.
The Indians saved them, and the Pilgrims thanked them by growing a
whole bunch of food and having this big feast. So, the story of
Thanksgiving that’s taught is basically how without the Native Americans
there wouldn’t be a country because the Pilgrims would have died. At
least the Pilgrims were nice enough to pay the Indians back with a big
Thanksgiving dinner.
That’s
not at all what happened. It’s not even close to what happened, which
is why I decided to write about it. Now, in the Revere book — the
children’s book, as I say — I went into greater detail about some of the
Native Americans who provided assistance to the arriving Pilgrims,
particularly a young native by the name of Squanto.
Now, I’m doing show prep today, and I come across a story in The
Federalist. I quote from this website all the time, and I’m reading this
story here, and, by the way, folks, it is… (chuckles) I don’t know.
It’s right out of the Rush Revere book, and it’s right out of my See, I
Told You So book. There’s a whole lot of discussion here of Squanto, who
he was, what he did, how he helped, the details.
The point is The True Story of Thanksgiving is spreading, and I
couldn’t be happier about that. Bottom line: It is spreading. I’m just
gonna cut to the chase here before getting into reading the text. The
Real Story of Thanksgiving, going back to the very first early days of
the Pilgrims arriving at Plymouth Rock, is that socialism failed.
This is crucially important today, because we have just elected a
Democrat Party that is going to implement socialism if they win these
two seats in Georgia, and they’re gonna try regardless. But if they win
those two seats in Georgia, you can say good-bye to the United States as
you know it. It will become a socialist state. It will begin the
process of becoming…
Well, we’re way down the road towards it anyway. So, it is crucially
important here for people to understand this. It’s not antiquated. It’s
not a cliche. It’s not something that you can make fun of people about.
You know, it used to be when I first started this show in the late
eighties, early nineties, if you dared to refer to the Soviet Union as
“communist,” people made fun of you.
“Ah, come on, Rush! You see a communist behind every rock,” and they
tried to ridicule you out of identifying communists and communism.
Castro, the ChiComs. I never buckled, but a lot of people did — and
they’re doing it now. If you say, “The United States, the Democrat
Party’s on the pathway to socialism,” they make fun of you. They mock
you.
“Come on! You don’t believe that. You can’t believe that! That’s just
silly,” and they try to mock you and make fun of you, to silence you.
But, folks, it’s real. Now… “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 [the
church’s] absolute civil and spiritual authority,” actually, the state.
“Those who challenged ecclesiastical authority and those who believed
strongly in freedom of worship were hunted down…” This is in England in
the 1600s. They “were hunted down and imprisoned, and sometimes
executed for their beliefs. A group of separatists,” people who didn’t
want any part of this, “first fled to Holland,” they liked wooden shoes
and cheese, “and established a community.”
They were there for eleven years. “After eleven years, about forty
of” these separatists who liked wooden shoes and cheese, “agreed to make
a perilous journey to the New World…” They had heard about it. Some
new, exciting place that hadn’t been developed. They knew they would
“face hardships,” hardships like you and I don’t know — and I’m not
preaching to you.
I’m just telling you, we don’t know the hardship these people
endured. We can’t. We are way too advanced now. People who lived in the
1600s would not believe life today. (Snort!) Try to explain flight, jet
travel. They wouldn’t understand it. They knew they would “face
hardships,” but paramount importance to them was living freely and
worshiping God according to the dictates of their own consciences, their
own beliefs.
That’s what they were denied the freedom to do in England. “On August
1, 1620, the Mayflower set sail. It carried a total of 102 passengers,
including forty” of these separatists, the Pilgrims. There were just 40
of them. They were “led by William Bradford. On the journey” across the
Atlantic… You talk about something that had to be frightening and scary?
The Mayflower was not much bigger than a 50-foot boat, and 102 people
on it. “On the journey, Bradford set up an agreement, a contract” if
you will, “that established just and equal laws for all [40] members of
the [Pilgrim] community, irrespective of their religious beliefs.” It
didn’t matter what their religious beliefs were.
These are the laws they were all agreeing to live by. “Where did the
revolutionary ideas,” these laws, come from? We’re talking about the
Mayflower Compact. That is what Bradford wrote. The Mayflower Compact
derived “[f]rom the Bible. The Pilgrims were a people completely steeped
in the lessons of the Old and New Testaments.”
They were devoutly religious people. No matter what else is said
about them (and even that is denied), they were devoutly religious.
“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.”
They never doubted they would get to the New World. They never
doubted that once they got there, they would thrive. The journey was
long; it was arduous; it was dangerous. And when they finally landed,
when the Pilgrims finally landed in New England in November, according
to William Bradford’s detailed journal, they found a cold, barren,
desolate wilderness. Imagine New England as it exists today as nothing
but rocks, forest, undeveloped nature in November and getting colder.
There were no friends to greet them. There was no shelter of any kind
other than hiding under a tree, there was nothing, folks. It was
desolate. There were no hotels. There were no inns. There were no places
to clean up. There were no houses. I mean, this was real hardship. The
sacrifice that they had made for the freedom to worship was just
beginning.
During that first winter — remember, they arrive in November — during
that first winter, half of them, including William Bradford’s own wife,
died of starvation, of sickness, exposure to the elements. Now we’re
getting close to what you were taught in school. When spring finally
came — and, by the way, writing that doesn’t do it justice. Spring
didn’t just finally come. It was a survival. It was an act of survival
that you and I cannot possibly relate to or understand.
American Special Forces can. Military people who’ve been trained can
understand what the Pilgrims were — you and I can’t. We’ve never done
anything like that first winter in the New World. They survived it.
Spring finally came. They did meet the Indians, the Native Americans who
were there, who did help them in planting corn and fishing for cod.
They showed ’em where the beavers were so the beavers could be skinned
for coats, other things. You animal rights people are not gonna like
some of this story, but it happened.
But even at this, even with this degree of assistance from the
Indians, the Native Americans, there wasn’t any prosperity yet. They had
the Mayflower Compact. They had these laws they were living by, and
there was no prosperity. And I wonder why. Now, this is important to
understand here, folks, because this is where modern American history
lessons end, with the Indians teaching the Pilgrims how to eat, how to
fish, how to skin beavers, and all that.
That’s where it ends. And that’s the feel-good story. But that
doesn’t even get close to the true story. You know, Thanksgiving is
actually explained in some textbooks as a holiday for which the Pilgrims
gave thanks to the Indians for saving their lives. It wasn’t that. That
happened, but Thanksgiving was a devout expression of gratitude, the
Pilgrims, to God for their survival, and everything that was a part of
it.
The True Story of Thanksgiving has been obscured by what is
taught — what I was taught, you were probably taught. Here’s the version
you were probably taught:
The Pilgrims arrived here after an arduous trip across the Atlantic
Ocean. They didn’t know why they were, had no idea what to do. They had
nothing. The Indians took pity on them. The Indians saw them, and the
Indians saved them. The Indians taught ’em how to do things they didn’t
know how to do, like grow food, catch beavers, stuff like that.
The Indians saved them, and the Pilgrims thanked them by growing a
whole bunch of food and having this big feast. So, the story of
Thanksgiving that’s taught is basically how without the Native Americans
there wouldn’t be a country because the Pilgrims would have died. At
least the Pilgrims were nice enough to pay the Indians back with a big
Thanksgiving dinner.
That’s
not at all what happened. It’s not even close to what happened, which
is why I decided to write about it. Now, in the Revere book — the
children’s book, as I say — I went into greater detail about some of the
Native Americans who provided assistance to the arriving Pilgrims,
particularly a young native by the name of Squanto.
Now, I’m doing show prep today, and I come across a story in The
Federalist. I quote from this website all the time, and I’m reading this
story here, and, by the way, folks, it is… (chuckles) I don’t know.
It’s right out of the Rush Revere book, and it’s right out of my See, I
Told You So book. There’s a whole lot of discussion here of Squanto, who
he was, what he did, how he helped, the details.
The point is The True Story of Thanksgiving is spreading, and I
couldn’t be happier about that. Bottom line: It is spreading. I’m just
gonna cut to the chase here before getting into reading the text. The
Real Story of Thanksgiving, going back to the very first early days of
the Pilgrims arriving at Plymouth Rock, is that socialism failed.
This is crucially important today, because we have just elected a
Democrat Party that is going to implement socialism if they win these
two seats in Georgia, and they’re gonna try regardless. But if they win
those two seats in Georgia, you can say good-bye to the United States as
you know it. It will become a socialist state. It will begin the
process of becoming…
Well, we’re way down the road towards it anyway. So, it is crucially
important here for people to understand this. It’s not antiquated. It’s
not a cliche. It’s not something that you can make fun of people about.
You know, it used to be when I first started this show in the late
eighties, early nineties, if you dared to refer to the Soviet Union as
“communist,” people made fun of you.
“Ah, come on, Rush! You see a communist behind every rock,” and they
tried to ridicule you out of identifying communists and communism.
Castro, the ChiComs. I never buckled, but a lot of people did — and
they’re doing it now. If you say, “The United States, the Democrat
Party’s on the pathway to socialism,” they make fun of you. They mock
you.
“Come on! You don’t believe that. You can’t believe that! That’s just
silly,” and they try to mock you and make fun of you, to silence you.
But, folks, it’s real. Now… “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 [the
church’s] absolute civil and spiritual authority,” actually, the state.
“Those who challenged ecclesiastical authority and those who believed
strongly in freedom of worship were hunted down…” This is in England in
the 1600s. They “were hunted down and imprisoned, and sometimes
executed for their beliefs. A group of separatists,” people who didn’t
want any part of this, “first fled to Holland,” they liked wooden shoes
and cheese, “and established a community.”
They were there for eleven years. “After eleven years, about forty
of” these separatists who liked wooden shoes and cheese, “agreed to make
a perilous journey to the New World…” They had heard about it. Some
new, exciting place that hadn’t been developed. They knew they would
“face hardships,” hardships like you and I don’t know — and I’m not
preaching to you.
I’m just telling you, we don’t know the hardship these people
endured. We can’t. We are way too advanced now. People who lived in the
1600s would not believe life today. (Snort!) Try to explain flight, jet
travel. They wouldn’t understand it. They knew they would “face
hardships,” but paramount importance to them was living freely and
worshiping God according to the dictates of their own consciences, their
own beliefs.
That’s what they were denied the freedom to do in England. “On August
1, 1620, the Mayflower set sail. It carried a total of 102 passengers,
including forty” of these separatists, the Pilgrims. There were just 40
of them. They were “led by William Bradford. On the journey” across the
Atlantic… You talk about something that had to be frightening and scary?
The Mayflower was not much bigger than a 50-foot boat, and 102 people
on it. “On the journey, Bradford set up an agreement, a contract” if
you will, “that established just and equal laws for all [40] members of
the [Pilgrim] community, irrespective of their religious beliefs.” It
didn’t matter what their religious beliefs were.
These are the laws they were all agreeing to live by. “Where did the
revolutionary ideas,” these laws, come from? We’re talking about the
Mayflower Compact. That is what Bradford wrote. The Mayflower Compact
derived “[f]rom the Bible. The Pilgrims were a people completely steeped
in the lessons of the Old and New Testaments.”
They were devoutly religious people. No matter what else is said
about them (and even that is denied), they were devoutly religious.
“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.”
They never doubted they would get to the New World. They never
doubted that once they got there, they would thrive. The journey was
long; it was arduous; it was dangerous. And when they finally landed,
when the Pilgrims finally landed in New England in November, according
to William Bradford’s detailed journal, they found a cold, barren,
desolate wilderness. Imagine New England as it exists today as nothing
but rocks, forest, undeveloped nature in November and getting colder.
There were no friends to greet them. There was no shelter of any kind
other than hiding under a tree, there was nothing, folks. It was
desolate. There were no hotels. There were no inns. There were no places
to clean up. There were no houses. I mean, this was real hardship. The
sacrifice that they had made for the freedom to worship was just
beginning.
During that first winter — remember, they arrive in November — during
that first winter, half of them, including William Bradford’s own wife,
died of starvation, of sickness, exposure to the elements. Now we’re
getting close to what you were taught in school. When spring finally
came — and, by the way, writing that doesn’t do it justice. Spring
didn’t just finally come. It was a survival. It was an act of survival
that you and I cannot possibly relate to or understand.
American Special Forces can. Military people who’ve been trained can
understand what the Pilgrims were — you and I can’t. We’ve never done
anything like that first winter in the New World. They survived it.
Spring finally came. They did meet the Indians, the Native Americans who
were there, who did help them in planting corn and fishing for cod.
They showed ’em where the beavers were so the beavers could be skinned
for coats, other things. You animal rights people are not gonna like
some of this story, but it happened.
But even at this, even with this degree of assistance from the
Indians, the Native Americans, there wasn’t any prosperity yet. They had
the Mayflower Compact. They had these laws they were living by, and
there was no prosperity. And I wonder why. Now, this is important to
understand here, folks, because this is where modern American history
lessons end, with the Indians teaching the Pilgrims how to eat, how to
fish, how to skin beavers, and all that.
That’s where it ends. And that’s the feel-good story. But that
doesn’t even get close to the true story. You know, Thanksgiving is
actually explained in some textbooks as a holiday for which the Pilgrims
gave thanks to the Indians for saving their lives. It wasn’t that. That
happened, but Thanksgiving was a devout expression of gratitude, the
Pilgrims, to God for their survival, and everything that was a part of
it.
Now, here’s the part that has been omitted. The original contract the
Pilgrims entered into in Holland — they had sponsors. They didn’t have
the money to do this trip on their own. They had sponsors. There were
merchant sponsors in London and in Holland. And these merchant sponsors
demanded that everything that the Pilgrims produced in the New World
would go into a common store, a single bank, if you will. And that each
member of the Pilgrim community was entitled to one share.
So
everybody had an equal share of whatever was in that bank. All of the
land they cleared, all of the houses they built belonged to that bank,
to the community as well. And they were going to distribute it equally,
because they were gonna be fair. So all of the land that they cleared
and all the houses they built belonged to everybody. Belonged to the
community. Belonged to the bank, belonged to the common store. Nobody
owned anything. They just had an equal share in it. It was a commune.
The Pilgrims established a commune, essentially. Forerunner of the
communes we saw in the sixties and seventies out in California. They
even had their own organic vegetables, by the way. Yep. The Pilgrims,
forerunners of organic vegetables. Of course, what else could there be?
No such thing as processed anything back then.
Now, William Bradford, who had become the governor of the colony
’cause he was the leader, recognized that this wasn’t gonna work. This
was costly and destructive, and it just wasn’t working. It was
collectivism. It was socialism. It wasn’t working. That first winner had
taken a lot of lives. The manpower was greatly reduced. So William
Bradford decided to take bold action, which I will describe when we get
back.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: William Bradford, the governor of the Pilgrim community, saw
that none of this was working. The Mayflower Compact was not working.
Giving everybody a single share of stock in the common store, in the
common bank was not working. Collectivism. It was as costly and
destructive to the Pilgrims as it is and has been to anybody who has
ever tried it.
So Bradford decided to scrub it. He threw it out and took bold
action. He assigned a plot of land to each family. Every family was
given a plot of land. They could work it, manage it however they wanted
to. If they just wanted to sit on it, get fat, dumb, happy, and lazy,
they could. If they wanted to develop it, if they wanted to grow corn,
whatever on it, they could. If they wanted to build on it, they could do
that. If they wanted to turn it into a quasi-business, they could do
whatever they wanted to do with it.
He turned loose the power of the capitalist marketplace. Long before
Karl Marx was even born. Long before Karl Marx was a sperm cell in his
father’s dreams, the Pilgrims had discovered and experimented with what
could only be described as socialism, and they found that it didn’t
work. Now, it wasn’t called that then. But that’s exactly what it was.
Everybody was given an equal share. You know what happened? Nobody did
anything. There was no incentive. Nothing worked. Nothing happened.
“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,” if the true story of Thanksgiving had been taught
for years and years and years.
So, William Bradford, after putting everybody in a common store, the
Mayflower Compact… They wanted to be fair. They wanted everybody to have
one common share of stock in everything that happened that the Pilgrims
produced — and it bombed. It didn’t work.
There was no prosperity; there was no creativity because there was no
incentive. Here’s what Bradford wrote about the failure: “‘For this
community [so far as it was] was found to breed much confusion and
discontent…'” They were not happy, in other words. “‘[T]his community
was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much
employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort.'”
In other words, nobody worked.
The way they set it up, killed and discouraged work.
There was no need.
“‘For young men that were most able and fit for labor and service'”
sat around and did nothing. “‘[T]hey should spend their time and
strength to work for other men’s wives and children without'” being paid
for it? Why should they do that? So, they didn’t. “‘[T]hat was thought
injustice.’ Why should you work for other people when you can’t work for
yourself? What’s the point? 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”
capitalism, “the principle of private property,” all the way back in the
1600s. It was incredible. “Every family was assigned its own plot of
land,” and they could do with it whatever they wanted to do.
“‘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.'” So when profit was introduced, when the opportunity to prosper
was introduced, it went gangbusters. That, my friends, is the essence of
the True Story of Thanksgiving. “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” after
they had enjoyed this prosperity. It was not the Indians that brought
them to prosperity. It’s not said to insult anybody. The Indians
assisted in their arrival undeniably. But what led to prosperity for
these original settlers was the common store failed. Socialism didn’t
work.
It’s when they introduced what turns out to be capitalism. They
didn’t have the name for it, but when they turned loose individual
incentive — keep what you produce, sell what you don’t need — it went
crazy. This is not something they were taught by anybody by
self-experience. It was not the Indians. None of this is said to put
anybody down. Don’t misunderstand.
The Indians did a lot of things that helped them, which I’ll get to
in just a second, but it was their own industriousness. “[T]hey set up
trading posts and exchanged goods with the Indians.” They sold stuff to
them, and those “profits allowed them to pay off their debts to the
merchants,” their sponsors in London and in Holland, and you know what?
The success of that colony after they had abandoned socialism and
tried what was essentially capitalism, the word spread throughout the
Old World of this massive amount of prosperity that was there for the
taking in the New World. And guess what happened? The New World was
flooded with new arrivals. “[T]he success and prosperity of the Plymouth
settlement attracted more Europeans and began what came to be known as
the ‘Great Puritan Migration.'”
And all it took was prosperity and the word spreading across the
Atlantic Ocean of how there was prosperity and it was there for the
taking. All you had to do was get there and give it a shot. The lesson
is — The True Story of Thanksgiving is — that William Bradford and his
Pilgrim community were thanking God for the blessings on their community
after the first miserable winter of a documented failure brought on by
their attempt at fairness and equality, which was socialism.
It didn’t work.
Only when they abandoned it did it work — and I need to say it again,
because I don’t want people to misunderstand and get noses out of
joint. The Native Americans, the indigenous people, the Injuns, whatever
you want to call ’em, they were of considerable assistance, and they
were friendly when the Pilgrims arrived. But they had little, if
anything, to do with the prosperity that occurred.
Because that was the result of Bradford and the Pilgrim leadership
deciding to change their structure, the Mayflower Compact. Now, Indians
assisted, naturally. I can’t deny it. I mean, they taught them how to
fish and this kind of thing that they didn’t know how to do, and that
led them to be productive, undeniably so. But it was the Pilgrim
community itself which experienced this massive prosperity.
The word of which spread all the way back to the Old World, Europe across the Atlantic Ocean.
Now, I mentioned earlier that The Federalist has a story on all this,
and in it they describe much of what we did in the second book that
dealt with this, the children’s book, Rush Revere and the Brave
Pilgrims. That book goes into great detail about how the Indians did
provide assistance and what kind of assistance it was, how valuable it
was and how crucial it was.
In Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims, we focus on a Native American
by the name of Squanto. Now, as I told you, “During the winter of 1620,
only 44 out of the original 102 [Pilgrims] survived, including their
first elected governor of the colony, John Carver,” and it was “an
Indian named Squanto came to their rescue.” As I say, this is, as I say,
explored in great detail in Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims.
“Squanto was no ordinary native. Early settlers in 1610 had captured
him and sold him into slavery. A group of Catholic friars freed him and
brought him to England, where he learned to speak English. In 1618,
serving as an interpreter on an English ship, he was brought back to the
New World.” It was Squanto — who is a famous Native American in his own
right in the Pilgrim story. it was Squanto who “taught the Pilgrims how
to plant and fish,” how to skin beavers. It was Squanto who “broker[ed]
a peace treaty between the Pilgrims and other Indian tribes.”
There was more than one tribe of Indians. It was not copacetic. It
was not friendly and at one with nature. It was not anything like the
multiculturalists would have you believe. There were squabbles; there
were power struggles; turf battles. It was human. The Indians, the
Pilgrims, everybody was scrambling for power, for survival.
Survivability was the name of the game. And it was not guaranteed.
Now, many of the Pilgrims literally believed that God had sent
Squanto to save them. And they believed, the Pilgrims believed, that
without Squanto they never would have survived, or thrived. And they
experienced a tremendous harvest in 1621, and that’s the big gathering
that is taught in the history books, the native Indians and the Pilgrims
joined together for a huge feast, which is the foundational story of
the Thanksgiving story that’s taught in public schools.
But, again, that is not The Real Story of Thanksgiving. That’s the
textbook brand. It did happen, but it’s so much more than that. And I
love taking the opportunity every year to explain the truth of,
especially now given this election’s apparently, allegedly fallen out.
Because even at The Federalist — this is so great that the story is
spreading. “One of the most important legacies of early settlers is that
they experimented with socialism in the 1620s, and it didn’t work.
Private property rights and personal responsibility, two pillars of a
free market economy, saved the Plymouth colony from extinction and laid
the economic foundation for a free and prosperous nation that we all
enjoy today.”
And that is exactly right. And that is The True Story of
Thanksgiving. And that has been what should have been shared with you
every Thanksgiving for the past 31 years.
