The Real Story Behind Thanksgiving
Did you know that the first [Plymouth Colony Pilgrim's] Thanksgiving was a celebration of the triumph of private property and individual initiative?
William Bradford was the governor of the original Pilgrim colony, founded at Plymouth in 1621. The colony was first organized on a communal basis, as their financiers required. Land was owned in common. The Pilgrims farmed communally, too, following the "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" precept.
The results were disastrous. Communism didn't work any better 400 years ago than it does today. By 1623, the colony had suffered serious losses. Starvation was imminent.
Bradford realized that the communal system encouraged and rewarded waste and laziness and inefficiency, and destroyed individual initiative. Desperate, he abolished it. He distributed private plots of land among the surviving Pilgrims, encouraging them to plant early and farm as individuals, not collectively.
The results: a bountiful early harvest that saved the colonies. After the harvest, the Pilgrims celebrated with a day of Thanksgiving -- on August 9th.
Unfortunately, William Bradford's diaries -- in which he recorded the failure of the collectivist system and the triumph of private enterprise -- were lost for many years. When Thanksgiving was later made a national holiday, the present November date was chosen. And the lesson the Pilgrims so painfully learned was, alas, not made a part of the holiday.
Happily, Bradford's diaries were later rediscovered. They're available today in paperback. They tell the real story of Thanksgiving -- how private property and individual initiative saved the Pilgrims.
This Thanksgiving season, one of the many things I'm thankful for is our free market system (imperfectly realized as it is). And I'm also grateful that there are increasing numbers of Americans who are learning the importance of free markets, and who are working to replace government coercion with marketplace cooperation here in America and around the world.
Paul Schmidt
-- copied from http://FreedomKeys.com/thanksgiving2.htm which was copied from the Nov. 20, 1997 issue of THE LIBERATOR ONLINE at http://www.theadvocates.org/liberator/vol-02-num-21.htm
for more detailed accounts see:
The Great Thanksgiving Hoax at -http://snipurl.com/apur
The Pilgrims’ Real Thanksgiving Lesson at
http://snipurl.com/av27
How Capitalism Saved America at
http://tinyurl.com/CapitalismSavedAmerica
How Private Property Saved the Pilgrims at http://tinyurl.com/ylc83r
The REAL Thanksgiving Story at
http://www.fee.org/thanksgiving/
Giving Thanks for Lessons Learned at http://tinyurl.com/6p7d26
and The Plymouth Experiment at http://snipurl.com/12lca
Find some more excerpts from Plymouth Colony Governor William Bradford's diary-HERE: http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?Id=1678
Finally, to see how it feels to be caught in a coerced-sharing society check out THIS page: http://snipurl.com/kj23
AND for those of you unfortunate enough to have to deal with fanatical self-righteous altruists, see THIS page: http://FreedomKeys.com/paradox.htm#pcdt
Also see: "Private Property Saved Jamestown, And With It, America" HERE: http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8236
"Property must be secured, or liberty cannot exist." -- President John Adams, direct descendent of Pilgrims John and Priscilla Alden
"The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen in his person and property and in their management." -- Thomas Jefferson
"Private property is the most important guarantee of freedom." -- F.A. Hayek
"No freedom is secure if your property rights are not secure." -- Neal Boortz
"It is the institution of private property that protects and implements the right to disagree."-- Ayn Rand
"If you can't own (and use) property, you are property." - Wayne Hage
Check out: HOW CAPITALISM SAVED AMERICA: The Untold History of Our Country, from the Pilgrims to the Present by Thomas DiLorenzo (paperback) $9.95
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HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
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Also see Tasty Trivia-here: http://FreedomKeys.com/fascinating.htm
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-- you can make a cleaner copy by going to this page and copying it or sending it as-is:http://FreedomKeys.com/thanksgiving2.htm
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COPY AND PASTE INTO YOUR EMAIL COMPOSING WINDOW AND SEND IT TO EVERYONE YOU CAN
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