Free Republic

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...

This is the time that Americans from coast to coast cease their workaday activities and gather with friends and loved ones for Thanksgiving. It is a time-honored ritual, observed by the overwhelming majority of the American population. What are the origins of this celebration, and what meaning should it have for Americans today? Thanksgiving is a combination of two longstanding traditions in Anglo-American civilization—the joyous harvest festival and the more somber declaration of a day of prayer or thanksgiving in the midst of some national crisis.The origin of the present American Thanksgiving, spiritually and emotionally, harkens back to the 1621...

And ultimately, we may only keep as much as they might allow through the government’s ever-increasing assertion of its ownership, a mandate which becomes more firmly placed with each popular declaration that all property is, somehow, communal. Again returning to Adams, he predicted this: "The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence." And he even provides a description as to how it would happen, which, again, is eerily similar to...

“There is a tradition that in the planting of New England, the first settlers met with many difficulties and hardships, as is generally the case when a civiliz’d people attempt to establish themselves in a wilderness country. Being so piously dispos’d, they sought relief from heaven by laying their wants and distresses before the Lord in frequent set days of fasting and prayer. Constant meditation and discourse on these subjects kept their minds gloomy and discontented, and like the children of Israel there were many dispos’d to return to the Egypt which persecution had induc’d them to abandon. “At length,...

Happens every Thanksgiving, doesn’t? Some bleeding heart liberal you’re “related to” gets on their moral high Crazy Horse and lectures about how horribly rotten the white man was to the Native Americans. Which is why this year we’re throwing in the tomahawk. Time to scalp the facts about the Indians. Feathers not dots. TRIGGER WARNING: offensive video at link. Transcript (without the sketch-cutaways or jokes) It’s Thanksgiving! You know what that means. As you try and enjoy your downtime with your family, you’ll undoubtedly find a social justice warrior around your Thanksgiving table trying to force-feed you white guilt. Afterall,...

1778 By the United States in Congress assembled. A PROCLAMATION. It having pleased Almighty God, through the course of the present year, to bestow great and manifold mercies on the people of these United States; and it being the indispensable duty of all men gratefully to acknowledge their obligations to Him for benefits received: Resolved, That it be, and hereby is recommended to the legislative or executive authority of each of the said states, to appoint Wednesday, the 30th day of December next, to be observed as a day of public thanksgiving and praise, that all the people may, with...

In September of 1789, a scant six months after the first legislative session in our nation's history convened, Congress passed a resolution recommending a national day of thanks. On October 3, 1789, President George Washington issued his Thanksgiving Proclamation, establishing the first national Thanksgiving and giving us one of the most concise definitions of purpose for the United States. In his proclamation, President Washington asked for Thanksgiving to be a day to recognize "the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now...

As we get ready to celebrate another Thanksgiving, there's one more thing to be grateful to God for---the U.S. Constitution and the political freedom it has brought. What many people don't realize is the link between the Pilgrims, authors of our Thanksgiving tradition, and our nation's founding document. When the founding fathers sat down in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 at the Constitutional Convention, they had almost 150 years of constitution-making on American soil to draw from. And devout Christians of earlier generations, who used the biblical concept of covenant as a model, were those who provided the precedents....

John Howland may not be as famous as William Bradford, John Carver and Myles Standish, notable passengers on the Mayflower that landed in Massachusetts in 1620. Yet Howland, who boarded the ship as Carver's servant, probably had a greater impact on the history of the United States than any of them. Hundreds of thousands of Americans will sit down for Thanksgiving dinner Thursday unaware that they owe their very existence to Howland, who almost never even made it to the New World. Howland fell overboard in the middle of the Atlantic during a gale

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:...

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.

What’s even more American than turkey, cranberries and pumpkin pie these days? An Italian gun, that’s what. The only known surviving firearm that crossed the wild Atlantic aboard the good ship Mayflower, settled with the pilgrims at Plymouth Colony and ultimately helped the first colonists not only survive, but prosper. Meet the Mayflower Gun. The GunAffectionately dubbed the Mayflower Gun and thought of as an American icon, the gun is actually an Italian-made wheel-lock carbine. This single-shot musket was originally chambered in .50 caliber rifle, though ages of heavy use have worn away the majority of the rifling. Given...

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...

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...

Overcoming Socialism. Great, short, video about the REAL truth behind why we celebrate Thanksgiving. Enjoy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igdCrePWTF4

November 21, 1620 • Original Mayflower Compact There are more than l60 independent nations in the world. Whether dictatorships or democracies, nearly all have written constitutions, but that of the United States is by far the oldest. This is something we can so easily take for granted. But it really marked a pivotal turning point in history and the way nations came to govern themselves. Signing the Mayflower Compact. How do you suppose the founding fathers ever thought of having a written Constitution? The idea of a written contract between the people and their government came from a tiny band...

When the Pilgrims came to America aboard the Mayflower to establish the Plymouth Colony, they did so under the requirement that "all profits and benefits that are got by trade, working, fishing, or any other means" were to be placed into the "common stock" of the colony and that "all such persons as are of this colony are to have their provisions out of the common stock." Sort of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need"— Socialism. But something happened at Plymouth in 1623 because "instead of famine now God gave them plenty," Bradford wrote...

My apologies for not bringing a should-be classic, "The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History," to the attention of our Internet readers in a more timely fashion. What Dr. Thomas Woods does is directly confront many of the falsehoods that are weighing down Americans with boatloads (dwarfing the Mayflower) of junk knowledge. Frankly, many well-meaning people, including many educators, have been sucked into thinking things "that just ain't so." In fact, I have been divested of quite a number of things in my head. The academic world has miserably failed the public in accepting, teaching, and promoting many "clichés," to...