Posted on 11/21/2010 8:25:00 AM PST by Sub-Driver
The Pilgrims Were ... Socialists? By KATE ZERNIKE
Ah, Thanksgiving. A celebration regardless of creed; a time for all Americans to come together after a divisive election year.
But why take a holiday from argument? In these fractious times, even the meaning of Thanksgiving is subject to political debate.
Forget what you learned about the first Thanksgiving being a celebration of a bountiful harvest, or an expression of gratitude to the Indians who helped the Pilgrims through those harsh first months in an unfamiliar land. In the Tea Party view of the holiday, the first settlers were actually early socialists. They realized the error of their collectivist ways and embraced capitalism, producing a bumper year, upon which they decided that it was only right to celebrate the glory of the free market and private property.
Historians quibble with this interpretation. But the story, related by libertarians and conservatives for years, has taken on new life over the last year among Tea Party audiences, who revere early American history, and hunger for any argument against what they believe is the big-government takeover of the United States.
It has made Thanksgiving another proxy in the debate over health care and entitlement spending, and placed it alongside the New Deal and the Constitution on the platter of historical items picked apart by competing narratives.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
True, but watch the terminology about “competing narratives.” The postmodern approach to history is that all facts are “untrue” except to the people who believe them. A “narrative” is a postmodern way of dismissing objective facts as no more than a sequence of subjective beliefs, so the facts don’t matter, only the persuasive quality of the “narrative.” Which is precisely why the dems keep saying, “well, our message isn’t working,” instead of “our grasp of physical reality is defective.” For them, reality is created by a good narrative, nit the other way around. It’s no wonder they’re “reality challenged” when it comes to doing anything that actually works, other than propaganda. They’re really good at that.
They started out as socialist and it nearly killed them all the first year. It was only after they dropped the commie nonsense that they were able to thrive.
The Pilgrims Were ... Socialists? ................ No Kimosabe, they were Illegal Aliens.
thanks for the post!
Care to weigh in on this, as FR’s resident historian?
They left England for religious persecution and what’d they do? They brought it right along with them. See what they did to Mary Dyer the Quaker Martyr who was hanged, Boston Commons 1660 for simply preaching the Quaker faith.
Bizarre
It’s true that both the Jamestown colony and the Plymouth colony was socialist when they first arrived, which is to say they used communal food bins and commons. But the number of people working shrank, while the number of people taking from the common food storage rose. So John Smith in VA and Bradford’s predecessor in MA both parceled out the land and turned the systems capitalist, and within a few months they had surpluses.
Would you say that the story is true as Rush relates it?
RUSH: Now, the real story of Thanksgiving: “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,” and this is what’s not taught. This is what’s left out. “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. But this was no pleasure cruise, friends. The journey to the New World was a long and arduous one. And when the Pilgrims landed in New England in November, they found, according to Bradford’s detailed journal, a cold, barren, desolate wilderness. There were no friends to greet them, he wrote. There were no houses to shelter them. There were no inns where they could refresh themselves. And the sacrifice they had made for freedom was just beginning. During the first winter, half the Pilgrims — including Bradford’s own wife — died of either starvation, sickness, or exposure.
“When spring finally came, Indians taught the settlers how to plant corn, fish for cod and skin beavers for coats. Life improved for the Pilgrims, but they did not yet prosper! This is important to understand because this is where modern American history lessons often end. Thanksgiving is actually explained in some textbooks as a holiday for which the Pilgrims gave thanks to the Indians for saving their lives, rather than as a devout expression of gratitude grounded in the tradition of both the Old and New Testaments. Here is the part that has been omitted: 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, 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 collectivists! Now, “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 what happened? It didn’t work! Surprise, surprise, huh? 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,” every kid gets. “If it were, we might prevent much needless suffering in the future.” Here’s what he wrote: “’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 any recompense...that was thought injustice.’” That was thought injustice. “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 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?” ‘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? Is it possible that supply-side economics could have existed before the 1980s? ... 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.’” Now, aside from this program, have you heard this before? Is this “being taught to children — and if not, why not? I mean, is there a more important lesson one could derive from the Pilgrim experience than this?” What if Bill and Hillary Clinton had been exposed to these lessons in school? Do you realize what we face in next year’s election is the equivalent of people who want to set up these original collectivists communes that didn’t work, with nobody having incentive to do anything except get on the government dole somehow because the people running the government want that kind of power. So the Pilgrims decided to thank God for all of their good fortune. And that’s Thanksgiving. And read George Washington’s first Thanksgiving address and count the number of times God is mentioned and how many times he’s thanked. None of this is taught today. It should be. Have a happy Thanksgiving, folks. You deserve it. Do what you can to be happy, and especially do what you can to be thankful, because in this country you have more reasons than you’ve ever stopped to consider.
On the good side, at least the New York Times is readily admitting they are full-on socialists.
On the bad side, the New York Times is confusing cooperation with socialism.
The were indeed Socialist. Fro a short period of time and they finally got that old time religion.
It is amazing to me that they do not teach William Bradford’s writings in High school as they are truly enlightening.
(Encyclopoedia of Massachusetts Biography)
Abraham Temple, undoubtedly of English Birth, was in Salem, Massachusetts, as early as 1636; there his first grant of land was five acres, to which five acres more were added, November 21, 1638. He was a freeman of Salem, June 21, 1637, at which time he proposed the name of a fellow citizen as a freeman. He died soon after 1639, and his widow Margaret married a second time about 1651. He is supposed to have been a tailor by occupation. He had two(sic) sons:Richard;Tobias, born after 1627;Robert born before 1637.
You’ll note to word “Freeman” There is a difference between “freeman” and “freemen”. I read up on it one time and have long forgotten what it was. But, it basically was a type of nobility that was established and you were indentured to the society until you fulfilled your obligations to the compact. So, in fact it was a form a slavery to the compact until you bought your way out of it..or fulfilled the contract you signed onto. Some never fulfilled it because it was to restrictive and those simply left. They could pile restrictions upon restrictions until one could never become a free man.
Historian's can't quibble with the facts as written in "William Bradford, History of Plymouth Plantation, 1620-1647". This was written by Bradford himself, who was the Governor of Plymouth colony at the time. He relates unequivocally how the colony was set up on a socialist system and in bred anger, resentment and laziness. When converted to a capitalist system, the people were energetic and industrious and turned the colony around. How do you quibble over the clear account written by the leader of the colony?
Historian's can't quibble with the facts as written in "William Bradford, History of Plymouth Plantation, 1620-1647". This was written by Bradford himself, who was the Governor of Plymouth colony at the time. He relates unequivocally how the colony was set up on a socialist system and in bred anger, resentment and laziness. When converted to a capitalist system, the people were energetic and industrious and turned the colony around. How do you quibble over the clear account written by the leader of the colony?
I like how in bradford own words
“The women now wente willingly into ye field, and tooke their little-ons with them to set corne, which before would aledg weaknes, and inabilitie; whom to have compelled would have bene though great tiranie and oppression.”
I am thinking of all the millions sitting around in the projects claiming back injuries prevent them from working.
Human nature hasn’t changed one bit. But liberals never see this, they can only see the world and people for how they WANT it to be, instead of how it really is.
File this under “Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.” Hate to tell you, but they’re right on this one.
· In 1978, we took the RV and the kids up to Plymouth to see my wife’s sister who lived there at the time. We 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 wisely abandoned their clearly failed experiment with collectivism — before Marx was even born.
Seems each generation or so we must relearn the hard lessons of history.
OBOWMA will teach us the next round of such lessons. I suspect they will be BITTER ones indeed.
Have a wonderful day.
The myth that the Pilgrims had the first thanksgiving in America is well established but wrong. The first thanksgiving celebration in America took place on the Berkley Plantation in 1619 in Virginia. Since the south lost the War Between the States that is unacceptable. Don’t rely on me, check it out. It is well documented.
Puritan Economic Experiments by Gary North, PhD.
http://www.entrewave.com/freebooks/docs/a_pdfs/gnpe.pdf
If you are interested in reading a historical account of the economics of Plymouth, this is the book to read.
They learned through harsh reality that Socialism DID NOT WORK except where there are kind hearted Capitalists to bail them out from time to time when they “Fail”.
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