The Great Thanksgiving Hoax (Probably a repost, and it should be every year)

The Mises Institute ^ | 11/27/2014 | Richard J. Maybury

[FreedomPoster]

Each year at this time, schoolchildren all over America are taught the official Thanksgiving story, and newspapers, radio, TV, and magazines devote vast amounts of time and space to it. It is all very colorful and fascinating.

It is also very deceiving. This official story is nothing like what really happened. It is a fairy tale, a whitewashed and sanitized collection of half-truths which divert attention away from Thanksgiving's real meaning.

The official story has the Pilgrims boarding the Mayflower, coming to America, and establishing the Plymouth colony in the winter of 1620–21. This first winter is hard, and half the colonists die. But the survivors are hard working and tenacious, and they learn new farming techniques from the Indians. The harvest of 1621 is bountiful. The pilgrims hold a celebration, and give thanks to God. They are grateful for the wonderful new abundant land He has given them.

The official story then has the Pilgrims living more or less happily ever after, each year repeating the first Thanksgiving. Other early colonies also have hard times at first, but they soon prosper and adopt the annual tradition of giving thanks for this prosperous new land called America.

The problem with this official story is that the harvest of 1621 was not bountiful, nor were the colonists hard-working or tenacious. 1621 was a famine year and many of the colonists were lazy thieves.

[Bratch]

Thanksgiving Lessons

John Stossel | Nov 23, 2022

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.

In other words, they dreamed of socialism. Socialism then almost killed them.

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."

Women who cooked and cleaned "deemed it a kind of slavery."

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.

[bigbob]

The real bottom line was, if you want to keep socialism, learn how to steal elections.

[P.O.E.]

Wow!

[V K Lee]

He told this every year, a tradition
https://officialrushlimbaugh.com/the-true-story-of-thanksgiving/

[EvilCapitalist]

But you can still read Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims.

[Southside_Chicago_Republican]

I get it, and this should be taught. But you can’t exactly have a holiday based on lazy bums who stole stuff and had a big party; at least not until more recent times.

[aquila48]

Yes, Thanksgiving should be a celebration of capitalism - free enterprise and private property!

[Justa]

“The original settler society was an attempt at Christian collectivism.... and people despite their religious fervor”

Ummm, no. This is slanderous to Christians. The majority of the Mayflower’s young able-bodied men were not pious. They were opportunists, adventurers, etc. placed into a pretentious (believing everyone was moral) forced collectivism they resented. In 1620 - 23 they didn’t want to starve to death so they worked as little as possible and stole as often as they could. Just like today’s collectivist societies.

[goodnesswins]

Thank you for posting that...and here we are 401 years since the Pilgrims first Thanksgiving...looking like we will have to experience socialism again...

[Newtoidaho]

1621 was a famine year and many of the colonists were lazy thieves.

So, we can pinpoint the exact year the demonrat party began.

[escapefromboston]

Thanks

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Every year, Rush Limbaugh would read the True Story of Thanksgiving as only he could do. Here is a link to the transcript of his November 27, 2019 Thanksgiving story. It, too, is worth reading for the meaning of the story as well as remembrance of The Great One.

The True Story of Thanksgiving

[Buttons12]

Rush is always right, but the Mayflower was longer than 50ft.

[gr8eman]

Me too!

[eyeamok]

Thanksgiving is and always has been a Celebration of the End of Communism in the United States.

[DJ MacWoW]

This is Kirk Cameron investigating the journey of the Separatists (Pilgrims) and why they left England. He starts in England with an historian.

Monumental YouTube

[FarCenter]

This appears to be almost as much of a hoax as the traditional story.

You can read the History of Plimouth Pllantation at:
https://www.google.com/books/edition/History_of_Plimoth_Plantation/OWFAcDEnVMEC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PP3&printsec=frontcover

I looked for mention of the first harvest feast. Fall of 1621 is approximately at pages 90 to 100. Couldn’t find any mention of it.

The Mayflower Pilgrims are a sketchy lot of religious extremists, and most of them seem to have had little experience in farming. So the idea that the Indians taught them Indian farming methods because their English farming was inadequate is false. The Indians taught them farming because they didn’t know how. Nor did they bring appropriate seeds.

The harvest of 1621 was adequate for the diminished number of Pilgrims and they were happy. Then another 35 mostly young men arrived on a second ship, the Fortune. So the colony had to go on half rations for the winter.

Besides not being good farmers, it seems that they mostly wanted to live by trading for food with the Indians. When the Indians didn’t have enough to spare for trading, the English stole from the Indians. In fact, the first Indian corn and beans they “acquired” were from a buried Indian cache.

Read the book. These people were not the cream of English yeomanry.

[Yollopoliuhqui]

Independent thinkers should recall that the Pilgrims were the remnants of Oliver Cromwell’s republican government, made political undesirables after the restoration of the British crown under Charles II.

Independent thinkers should recall, that Cromwell removed the body of Charles I from his head in traditional republican fashion. Trump is today’s Cromwell.

Death to the financier aristocracy.

[momincombatboots]

He did… listened to it this year. Trut debunks te thieves and slaughter narrative. Going to get the book with William Bradfords hai her tat also has pilgrim diaries. Got to find the best translation tout Evans’s he olde English has some different interpretations into modern English.

[bitt]

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