Thanksgiving Lessons: What the Experience of the Pilgrims Taught Us About Socialism vs. Private Property

Thursday, if you eat a nice meal, thank the Pilgrims. They made Thanksgiving possible.

They left the Old World to escape religious persecution. They imagined a new society where everyone worked together and shared everything.

As I explain in my weekly video, the Pilgrims attempted collective farming. The whole community decided when and how much to plant, when to harvest and who would do the work.

Gov. William Bradford wrote in his diary that he thought that taking away property and bringing it into a commonwealth would make the Pilgrims "happy and flourishing."

It didn't. Soon, there wasn't enough food. "No supply was heard of," wrote Bradford, "neither knew they when they might expect any."

The problem, Bradford realized, was that no one wanted to work. Everyone relied on others to do the work. Some people pretended to be injured. Others stole food.

The communal system, Bradford wrote, "was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment."

Young men complained they had to "spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children without any recompense."

Strong men thought it was an "injustice" they had to do more than weaker men, without more compensation.

Older men thought that working as much as young men was "indignity and disrespect."

The Pilgrims had run into the "tragedy of the commons." No individual Pilgrim owned crops they grew, so no individual had much incentive to work.

Bradford's solution: private property.

He assigned every family a parcel of land so they could grow their own corn. "It made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been," he wrote.

People who had claimed that "weakness and inability" made them unable to work now were eager to work. "Women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn," wrote Bradford.

The Pilgrims learned an important lesson about private property.

Unfortunately, people keep repeating the Pilgrims' mistakes.

Socialism is more popular than capitalism among college students. Many want everything shared, including their student loan debt.

President Joe Biden wants to give them that by forgiving some of their student debt.

Of course, then the debt would become a common, to be repaid by all taxpayers.

That would punish people who had long ago paid off their debt.

It would punish people who studied, worked hard, got jobs and were working to pay off college loans.

It would people who went to trade school or no school at all.

It would punish poor people because student loans are mostly held by the relatively rich.

Government granted student loans already create bad incentives:

People who don't like or benefit from college are encouraged to take out loans they can't afford and go to expensive colleges anyway.

Colleges increase their tuition, knowing that government will pay what students don't.

Forgiving student debt would make all that worse.

Fortunately, Biden's student loan forgiveness program ran up against legal challenges. I hope it's dead.

Students should learn from the Pilgrims: take responsibility for your own debt, work hard to pay it off, and don't expect the public to fund your bad decisions.

Bottom line: In a common, everybody takes as much as they can. That creates shortages.

Private property creates prosperity.

Every Thanksgiving, I'm thankful for that.

“History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” – George Orwell, 1984

This is such an important article to read (see below), basically about the Pilgrims and the founding of our nation as it truly was, not based on racism (as the 1619 Project wants to portray it). This is our real history, as the Pilgrims documented everything so we have a lot of firsthand information with which to trace our Country’s roots as it occurred in real time.

This is truly a fascinating article to read and I hope that all of you will take the time to re-discover our nation’s origins, the land of the Pilgrims, before it becomes lost to the tearing down of it by the true haters among us in their attempt to create a “new” society, an American version of Communism, and thus destroy our Country as we know it (lots of historical pictures throughout article):

Mansour: ‘Out of Small Beginnings’ – the True History of the Pilgrim Fathers and Our Founding Myth

[Rebecca Mansour is Senior Editor-at-Large for Breitbart News. Follow her on Twitter at @RAMansour.

It just recently appeared in Breitbart; I’m sure you can google it to find it or go to Mansour’s Twitter page where she probably also has the link to the article posted. A great read.

They left the Old World to escape religious persecution.

True as far as it goes. But after arrival they set about establishing their own religious persecution. Just ask Roger Williams who was expelled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for religious reasons and established Providence in what eventually became Rhode Island.

I completely agree with the points of the failure of communalism.

BTW the first documented Thanksgiving was at Berkeley Hundred in Virginia on December 4, 1619 two years before the Pilgrims celebrated one in Massachusetts.

National Geographic: The Thanksgiving before the 'first' Thanksgiving

Unfortunately for the English settlers, the Indian massacre of 1622 caused Berkeley Hundred to be abandoned and the tradition was not continued.

"The problem, Bradford realized, was that no one wanted to work. Everyone relied on others to do the work. Some people pretended to be injured. Others stole food."

The same thing I saw when I decided to visit a hippie commune in the late 60's out of curiosity. The only thing different were the lay-abouts who wanted to sing Kumbaya and bang on their bongos while expecting their equal share of production. That commune (north of Los Angeles) dissolved 2 weeks later because of the producers getting fed up and leaving.

Unlike many here, I've personally seen communism fail in real time.

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