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When it comes to historical memory, the old saying that you can't choose your relatives is just plain wrong. Americans have chosen the Pilgrims as honorary ancestors, and we tend to see their story as inseparable from the story of our nation, "land of the Pilgrims' pride." We imagine these honorary founders as model immigrants, pacifists and pioneers in the democratic experiment. We have burdened them with values they wouldn't have recognized and shrouded their story with myth. The Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. If you visit Plymouth today, you'll find a distinctive rock about the size of your living-room...

Thanksgiving Day - the True History by Fred E. Foldvary The Thanksgiving Day that millions of Americans celebrate, with turkey and stuffing, is a myth. The true history was forgotten long ago, and even most of the history books have it wrong. The Pilgrims landed in 1620 and founded the Colony of New Plymouth in what is now Massachusetts. They had a difficult first winter, but survived with the help of the Indians. The usual story in the history textbooks relates how in the fall of 1621, the grateful Pilgrims held their first Thanksgiving Day and invited the Indians to...

For many Americans, the Thanksgiving meal includes seasonal dishes such as roast turkey with stuffing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie. The holiday feast dates back to November 1621, when the newly arrived Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Indians gathered at Plymouth for an autumn harvest celebration, an event regarded as America’s “first Thanksgiving.” But what was really on the menu at the famous banquet, and which of today’s time-honored favorites didn’t earn a place at the table until later in the holiday’s 400-year history? Many people report feeling drowsy after eating a Thanksgiving meal. Turkey often gets blamed because...

The history of Thanksgiving proves socialism is a killer!I first published this at Mike's America a few years back. The lessons of Obama's socialist failure are even more apparent now.... The Pilgrims learned early on that redistribution of wealth spreads only misery, poverty and hunger. What a shame that many refuse to learn that lesson!Obama has spent the last months going around the country attacking millionaires and billionaires and demanding that the rich "pay their fair share." It's the classic class warfare politics designed to support Obama's socialist policy of redisributing the wealth. Remember what he told Joe the Plumber...

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Southern California doctors and health officials will be on the lookout for Muslim pilgrims returning from Saudi Arabia with flu-like symptoms in the wake of a reported outbreak of a SARS-like virus in the Middle East, according to a report. L.A. County Department of Public Health Director Dr. Jonathan Fielding told the Los Angeles Times severe coughs or other similar symptoms could signal the arrival of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus, or MERS-CoV, to the Southland. While MERS-CoV has so far only been reported in the Mideast and Europe, doctors and emergency departments will be...

Jewish pilgrims came from as far as the Arabian Peninsula to sacrifice animals at the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, new research suggests. … The conclusion was based on an analysis of bones found in an ancient dump in the city dating back 2,000 years. The massive dump was located on the outskirts of the old walled city of Jerusalem. Dating methods revealed that it had been used between the start of King Herod’s reign in 37 BCE and the Great Revolt in CE 66. …

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: My friends, I am so excited. I have been waiting for this day to be able to tell you something. I have been waiting with bated breath. I have been chomping at the bit. I've almost let it slip out of the bag a couple of times, and now I don't have to worry about it slipping out of the bag because today I can announce it. No, no, no, I did not buy Apple computer, and I didn't make an offer on the New York Times or any of that. This is so cool, and I've...

Another English Town Tries to Claim the Mayflower, and Tourism, From Plymouth HARWICH, England—A disagreement between two sleepy English seaside towns could make a splash across the Atlantic: by forcing a rewrite of American history. For 393 years, the southwest England town of Plymouth has been celebrated as the last port of call of the Mayflower before the ship carried the first Pilgrim settlers to what was to become the United States of America. But that is only part of the story. Plymouth's fame has come at the expense of this tiny town to the northeast of London. The reason:...

When the Pilgrims landed in 1620, they established a system of communal property. Within three years they had scrapped it, instituting private property instead. Hoover media fellow Tom Bethell tells the story. There are three configurations of property rights: state, communal, and private property. Within a family, many goods are in effect communally owned. But when the number of communal members exceeds normal family size, as happens in tribes and communes, serious and intractable problems arise. It becomes costly to police the activities of the members, all of whom are entitled to their share of the total product of the...

It’s wrong to say that American was founded by capitalists. In fact, America was founded by socialists who had the humility to learn from their initial mistakes and embrace freedom. One of the earliest and arguably most historically significant North American colonies was Plymouth Colony, founded in 1620 in what is now known as Plymouth, Massachusetts. As I’ve outlined in greater detail here before (Lessons From a Capitalist Thanksgiving), the original colony had written into its charter a system of communal property and labor. As William Bradford recorded in his -- Of Plymouth Plantation, a people who had formerly been...

With the United States under direct assault from the evils of Socialism (or other forms of "Collectivism" including: Communism, or Fascism...pick your tyranny), and with Thanksgiving Day upon us, it's timely, appropriate, and necessary to visit the nation's very first attempt with Socialism, nearly four centuries ago...

The Pilgrims Weren't Socialists The New American 26 November 2008 When next you sing the Hymn of Harvest Home, think kindly of our Pilgrim Fathers, for they were not "communists with a small c" nor any other kind of communists, Some conservative editors and commentators in recent years have given the impression that the Pilgrims were starry-eyed idealists intent upon founding a socialist utopia in the wilderness. One such editor, zealous to refute socialism, has written: "Socialism is not a new experiment in the United States. Neither is Communism. The Socialist community was tried by the Pilgrims in New England...

One of my favorite Peanuts holiday specials. Charlie Brown and the gang play Pilgrim children in this re-enactment of the Mayflower voyage and the first Thanksgiving. I highly recommend this one for children. It's also nice to see something from Hollywood that's pro Western civilization.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. I expect all of you atheists, agnostics, America-haters, smart-ass liberals who think things suck in this country, and otherwise ungrateful people to be at work on time and with your smiley faces on. We'll be there to buy our television sets a little after 8:00 PM. For the rest of you, particularly graduates of the public school system, here's a little easy-to-digest American history for you to chomp on in between bites of that dried out turkey you'll insist is "the best turkey [you] ever had."

As you gobble your Thanksgiving turkey, imagine being a Pilgrim in March 1621. Hardly four months after the Mayflower reached Plymouth Rock the previous November, you still struggle for food, shelter, and survival in the state of nature.Suddenly, an Indian reaches your outpost. Friend or foe? What brought him here? How would you ever communicate with him?And then he opens his mouth. He speaks English! More amazing, he does so with a British accent and the demeanor of someone who had lived and worked among England’s elite.Who on Earth is this incredible man?Squanto, a.k.a. Tisquantum, was born about 1580...

The Thanksgiving Day that millions of Americans celebrate, with turkey and stuffing, is a myth. The true history was forgotten long ago, and even most of the history books have it wrong. The myth goes like this: The Pilgrims landed in 1620 and founded the Colony of New Plymouth. They had a difficult first winter, but survived with the help of the Indians. In the fall of 1621, the grateful Pilgrims held their first Thanksgiving Day and invited the Indians to a big Thanksgiving-Day feast with turkey and pumpkins. There was indeed a big feast in 1621, but it was...

Can Americans Learn Anything From Our Founders for Today? Who were the original Founders of America? Two groups can be described from the group of original hardy settlers—the Pilgrims and the Puritans. The seeds of the Pilgrim stock came from the illegal English Separatist Church. All Englishmen were expected to attend Anglican Church, weekly. It provoked much controversy in Christian circles that power swung between English Protestants and Catholics. The Separatists wanted no state meddling in private beliefs, and so left England in search of religious freedom, first to Leiden, Netherlands, and later to North America. This explains the US...

The Pilgrims set foot on Plymouth Rock in November, 1620. Can you imagine moving to a “New World”? Can you imagine moving anywhere for that matter right before the rush of the Christmas season? I can’t. Maybe it’s just a woman thing, but I know what would have been on my mind had I been on the Mayflower. I would be thinking.......Here it is nearly the first of December, I have no home, and Christmas is just around the corner. I have shopping to do, the decorations need to be up (hope I remembered where I packed them), and then...

That's right, the Pilgrims who came to America on the Mayflower were debt slaves. The London Company, which financed the trip and the establishment of the Plymouth Colony, was a publicly owned business that insisted that the Pilgrims live and work in a communal or collectivist group, under the guise of lowering costs and speeding up repayment. Unfortunately, then as now, socialist/collectivist endeavors don't work out very well. That's because when it's "All for One and One For All," society breaks down and everyone winds up broke and starving. In the 1600's, economic thought was not very well developed and...

It seems that there was a time in this country when Thanksgiving was a benign and festive stand-alone celebration. Schoolchildren dressed up as Pilgrims, Indians and turkeys in pageants observing the 1621 feast that served as a gesture of friendship toward the Indians who helped save the infant Plymouth Bay colony from starvation. The pageants have begun to disappear. Our new political correctness toward Native Americans seems to consist of erasing public acknowledgement of their existence, by outlawing Indian nicknames for schools. It seemed a harmless conceit. The young scholars would learn soon enough that that early display of amity...