Posted on 11/27/2008 8:03:53 AM PST by SeekAndFind
The Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620 were an idealistic lot. They were part of the broader Puritan movement believing that the Anglican Church, recognized in law as the official church of England, had strayed from true Christianity.
SNIP
But as the colony grew, this initial quasi-socialist community of share and share alike was not working to produce enough for essential basic needs, let alone the prosperity that was expected in the new world. Available wild supplies of food, in particular, were no longer enough. Bradford again wrote in his dairy,
All this while no supply [of wild corn] was heard of, neither knew they when they might expect any. So they began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not thus languish in misery. At length, after much debate of things, the Governor (with the advice of the chiefist amongst them) gave way that they should set corn every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust to themselves; in all other things go on in the general way as before. And so assigned to every family a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number, for that end….This had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the Governor or any other could use, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better content. The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability, whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
If Obama had been there, he would simply have ordered that the wealth be spread around and everything would have been ok.
And fortunately they weren’t planting that Monsanto single generation corn -—
Not just corn, either!
And now we are going to institute a system which failed in this nation 400 years ago! Hope and change!
Who knew we could admire the Pilgrims at all? In today’s politically correct world, the Pilgrims are scorned as having committed genocide. And they weren’t as sexually adventurous as today’s liberals are, so what’s to admire about their courage and their survival?
Thank you American Spectator for a thoughtfull reminder of where we started it is just a shame this is no longer taught in School. No wonder kids think the USA stinks
Rush Limbaugh on the real story of Thanksgiving :
For The Real Story of Thanksgiving, as written by I — by me — in my second book, See, I Told You So. It’s page 70 in the hardcover version. “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. 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.”
Now, you know the usual story of Thanksgiving: They landed. They had no clue where they were, no idea how to feed themselves. The Indians came out, showed ‘em how to pop popcorn, fed ‘em turkey, saved ‘em basically — and then white European settlers after that basically wiped out the Indian population. It’s a horrible example. Not only is that not true, here is the part that’s been omitted from what is still today taught as the traditional Thanksgiving story in many schools. “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,’ when they got here, ‘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 going to distribute it equally. All of the land they cleared and the houses they built belonged to the community as well. … [William] 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 it had failed” miserably because when every put things in the common store, some people didn’t have to put things in for there to be, people that didn’t produce anything were taking things out, and it caused resentment just as it does today. So Bradford had to change it.
“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,” that happens today and will happen “in the future. ‘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 [being paid] that was thought injustice.’ … 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?”
Here’s what Bradford wrote, the governor of the Massachusetts colony. “’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?” or an Obamaite, if I can update it. “Is it possible that supply-side economics could have existed before the 1980s? … Anyway, the pilgrims found “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.’”
Very few people have heard this story or have had it taught to them — and the “thanks” was to God for showing them the way. In later parts of the chapter, I quote John Adams and George Washington on their reminisces and their thoughts on the first Thanksgiving and the notion it was thanks to God. It was an entirely different story than is being taught in the schools. It’s been muddied down, watered down all these years — and now it’s been hijacked by the multicultural community — to the point that the story of Thanksgiving is the Pilgrims were a bunch of incompetents and were saved only by the goodness of the Indians, who then were wiped out. And that’s what kids are being taught today — ‘cause, of course, you can’t mention the Bible in school, and that’s fundamental to the real story of Thanksgiving.
We might still have some home when even the LA Times publishes something like this :
L.A. Times Teaches Kids About Pilgrims and Economic Freedom
Photo of Tim Graham.
By Tim Graham
November 23, 2008 - 08:47 ET
A caller to Rush Limbaugh’s show on Friday alerted him that on Sunday, the Los Angeles Times “Kids Reading Room” section would explain how the Pilgrims discovered that holding all their goods in common led to poverty, but economic freedom — allowing each to keep their own crops — led to prosperity.
Jennifer James told the story from a Thanksgiving dinner, where Grandpa explained the Pilgrim story to the children:
“Squanto taught the Pilgrims to grow corn!” Sam exclaimed. He’s never going to forget that — he played Squanto in the Thanksgiving Day play at school.
“That’s right,” Grandpa said. “But at first the Pilgrims were terrified of the Indians, as they called them. Then one day a tribesman named Samoset ventured into their encampment. He was tall and dark and by many accounts quite handsome. Loudly and plainly he proclaimed, ‘Welcome!’ in perfect English.”
“The Pilgrims must have freaked!” shouted Sam.
Grandpa laughed and agreed. “I’m sure you’re right. He had learned the language from English fishermen. For the Pilgrims, life was a constant battle for survival. Later, Governor William Bradford made a decision. Instead of the colonists sharing their crops equally, he assigned a parcel of land to each family and told them they could keep whatever they produced for themselves.”
“Then what happened?” asked Sam.
“At last the Pilgrims began to prosper. Governor William Bradford wrote in his book ‘Of Plimoth Plantation,’ ‘This had very good success, for it made all hands industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been.’ “
“Shoot! If you can keep everything you make, of course you’re going to work harder. Everybody knows that.”
Grandpa answered, “The first seed had been planted for the American Revolution. People were free to practice their religions as they saw fit and were free to keep the fruits of their labor. This had never happened before in the history of mankind. In the words of William Bradford, ‘As one small candle may light a thousand, so the light here kindled hath shone unto many, yea in some sort to our whole nation.’ “
“That William Bradford sounds like a pretty cool guy,” said Sam.
“He was a pretty cool guy,” Grandpa said with a chuckle.
—Tim Graham is Director of Media Analysis at the Media Research Center
It’s really depressing when supposedly conservative writers can’t even get their history correct. The first Pilgrims were forced into having a common store as one of the conditions imposed on them by the joint stock company that financed the colony. You can read a detailed history of the venture in Gary North’s PURITAN ECONOMIC EXPERIMENTS, available for free here:
http://www.entrewave.com/freebooks/docs/a_pdfs/gnpe.pdf
[Yes, this is THE Gary North of Y2 fame. I believe this book is his PhD thesis, written long before he was tangled up in that mess.]
William Bradford writes about his disapproval of the idea (felt it was against Scripture) and his efforts to remove the condition in his History of Pilmoth Plantation.
Back in the early 80s, we took the kids up to Plymouth to see my wife’s sister who lived there at the time. Visited Plymouth Plantation. During the tour, I was struck by the presence of fortified guard shacks in the town square and asked the guide if they were a last line of defense for the citizens there if trouble with the natives spilled into the compound. He told us that they were for the control of the FOOD RIOTS which broke out those first few winters — BEFORE they abandoned their experiment with Marxism before Karl was even born.
Seems each generation or so we must relearn the hard lessons of history.
Obama will teach us the next round of such lessons. I suspect they will be BITTER ones indeed.
Have a wonderful day.
ping
It’s really depressing when supposedly conservative posters can’t even get their reading correct. ;-)
Limbaugh wrote:“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,’ [...]
btt
The American Spectator article leads the reader to believe that the Pilgrims were idealistic in wanting the quasi-socialistic contract and only later “learned” capitalism by their experience. That is not true. This is what I was reacting to, not Limbaugh’s comments.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.