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The Real Non-PC Reason We Celebrate Thanksgiving
Submitted by Judy Thommesen via The Mises Institute,
[Every year at Thanksgiving-time I resurrect a column written by a fellow teacher, Kent Dillon, about the real reason we celebrate this holiday. It is a story no longer told in the textbooks because it is thoroughly unPC, and undermines the idea that government is the solver of all problems. We were teachers, as well as part of the crew, at The Flint School, a private, academic boarding school aboard two large sailing ships, and we used the world as a campus. Kent wrote this for the students’ parents 45 years ago, so they would know what their children were learning and experiencing.
Thanksgiving Day was a special day aboard the ships and we actively celebrated it as the birth of private property and the demise of collectivism. Our celebration wasn’t one of sleeping in or playing games with each other. We celebrated by working a specific task until completed, and then, when tired and hungry, we sat down to a huge feast of fresh cooked turkey, dressing, pumpkin pie, and shared camaraderie.
Even now in 2015, I can tell you that those Thanksgiving Day dinners of turkey, pies, and all the trimmings, after a day of meaningful labor, are still the tastiest I have ever eaten. ]
Thanksgiving Celebrated as the Birthday of Free Enterprise
By Kent Dillon
The celebration of Thanksgiving is a celebration of plenty and appreciation of the abundance that has characterized the free enterprise, individualistic, capitalistic systems of the US. This why America grew into the most productive, highest standard of living area in the world. The Pilgrims had arrived in what is now Provincetown, Mass., on November 11, 1620, but it was late in December before they finally settled in Plymouth. In the words of Gov. Bradford,
that which was most sad and lamentable was, that in 2 or 3 months time half of their company died, especially in January and February, being the depth of winter, and wanting houses and other comforts; being infected with the scurvy and other diseases, so as there died sometimes 2 or 3 of a day, in the aforesaid time; that of 100 and odd persons, scarce 50 remained.
They spent their first winter building houses so that they could move off the Mayflower and by March all settlers had left the ship.
Scurvy and fever had taken their toll, as by then 15 of 18 wives had died as well as 19 of 29 hired men and servants and half of the 30 sailors. When the Mayflower departed she left 23 children and 27 adults behind, but not one Pilgrim returned to England.
The Pilgrims had placed all their food and provisions in what they called the “common store” which was set up on the socialist principle of “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”
As spring came they began to farm and by October took in their first harvest which went to the common store. It was a time to be thankful for their very survival. They had spent 67 days on the Atlantic with 132 people aboard a ship that was 128 ft. long, and survived to establish themselves and reap a harvest.
In November of 1621 the ship Fortune arrived with more than 30 new settlers, mostly young men. They apparently brought “not so much as a bisket-cake” with them, thus providing another drain on the common store for the coming winter. The future looked bleak as food supplies ran out and the “planned socialist” community began to starve again. The common store was practiced for a second year. The harvest was poor in spite of the added manpower and the colonists starved in the ensuing winter dramatically demonstrating once again that collective ownership in a socialist economy was unworkable and could not keep them alive.
Richard Grant in The Incredible Bread Machine writes,
The experience of the first Plymouth colony provides eloquent testimony to the unworkability of collective ownership of property. In his history of the Plymouth colony Governor Bradford described how the Pilgrims farmed the land in common, with the produce going into a common storehouse. For two years the Pilgrims faithfully practiced communal ownership of the means of production. And for two years nearly starved to death, rationed at times to “but a quarter of a pound of bread a day to each person.” Governor Bradford wrote that “famine must still ensue the next year also if not some way prevented.” He described how the colonists finally decided to introduce the institution of private property:
“[The colonists] began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery. [In 1623] after much debate of things, the Gov. (with the advice of the chiefest amongst them) gave way that they should set down every man for his own … and to trust themselves ... so assigned to every family a parcel of land. This had very good success; for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the Gov. or any other could use, … and gave far better content. The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little-ones with them to set corn, which before would allege weakness, and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.”
Reflecting on the experience of the previous two years, Bradford goes on to describe the folly of communal ownership:
“The experience that was had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years, and that amongst godly and sober men, may well evince the vanity of that conceit of Platos and other ancients, applauded by some of later times; — that the taking away of property, and bringing in community into a common wealth would make them happy and flourishing; as if they were wiser than God. 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 the 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. The strong, or man of parts, had no more in division of victuals and cloths, than he that was weak and not able to do a quarter the other could; this was thought injustice…”
The Colonists learned about “the wave of the future” the hard way. However, once having discovered the principle of private property, the results were dramatic. Bradford continues:
“By this time harvest was come, and instead of famine, now God gave them plenty, and the face of things was changed, to the rejoicing of the hearts of many, for which they blessed God. And in the effect of their particular [private] planting was well seen, for all had, one way and other, pretty well to bring the year about, and some of the abler sort and more industrious had to spare, and sell to others.”
The Jamestown colony in Virginia had similar experiences as they started under the same rules:
- They were to own nothing.
- They were to receive only as much food and clothing as they needed.
- Everything that the men secured from trade or produced from the land had to go into the common storehouse.
Of the 104 men that started the Jamestown colony in 1607 only 38 survived the first year and even those had to be marched to the fields “to the beat of a drum” simply to grow food to keep them alive in the next year. Captain John Smith writes after the common store concept was abandoned:
When our people were fed out of the common store, and labored jointly together, glad was he could slip from his labor, or slumber over his task he cared not how, nay, the most honest among them would hardly take so much true pains in a week, as now for themselves they will do in a day. … We reaped not so much corn from the labors of thirty, as now three or four do provide for themselves.
The Thanksgiving we celebrate is for the success of the Pilgrims after establishing property rights and free enterprise as that event laid the foundation for the growth of America.
Were our Pilgrim and Jamestown colony forefathers to wake up from the dead and look at the graduated taxation (from each according to his ability) and welfare programs (to each according to his need) we have today they might offer us a lesson in history by simply quoting Goethe, “Those who do not learn from the lessons of history are doomed to relive them.”
No longer do the textbooks mention the effects of the common store and the continued starvation until the system of free enterprise and private property was established. Don’t you wonder why the idea of the Great American Experiment is a forgotten concept? And why the writings of de Tocqueville are a “forgotten analysis” in today’s education? As Americana moves into the “planned socialist economy,” those who have moved our country in that direction have made sure that the early lessons of the “police state” force needed to maintain Jamestown’s social plan (Captain John Smith’s guns) and of the starvation and death that resulted from the lack of motivation inspired by the “common storehouse” have been eliminated from our children’s instruction.
Thanksgiving isn’t just a break from work, a time to stuff ourselves with turkey, dressing, and pumpkin pie, it is a time to remember the true significance of the holiday, and pass on the lessons from our forefathers to our children who won’t learn these lessons in school, and thus must learn them elsewhere.
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A fascist diatribe...no mention of the horrid suffering the USA inflicts on the world with its rapacious military. Worse, the entire Thanksgiving narrative is a whitewash of the truth: "pilgrims" led the way for a slaughter of indigenous peoples. Oh the glory, praise God.
"Jonathan Foreman, Daily Mail (London), August 18, 2013
The 16-year-old girl’s once-beautiful face was grotesque.
She had been disfigured beyond all recognition in the 18 months she had been held captive by the Comanche Indians.
Now, she was being offered back to the Texan authorities by Indian chiefs as part of a peace negotiation.
To gasps of horror from the watching crowds, the Indians presented her at the Council House in the ranching town of San Antonio in 1840, the year Queen Victoria married Prince Albert.
‘Her head, arms and face were full of bruises and sores,’ wrote one witness, Mary Maverick. ‘And her nose was actually burnt off to the bone. Both nostrils were wide open and denuded of flesh.’
Once handed over, Matilda Lockhart broke down as she described the horrors she had endured—the rape, the relentless sexual humiliation and the way Comanche squaws had tortured her with fire. It wasn’t just her nose, her thin body was hideously scarred all over with burns.
When she mentioned she thought there were 15 other white captives at the Indians’ camp, all of them being subjected to a similar fate, the Texan lawmakers and officials said they were detaining the Comanche chiefs while they rescued the others.
It was a decision that prompted one of the most brutal slaughters in the history of the Wild West—and showed just how bloodthirsty the Comanche could be in revenge."
http://www.amren.com/news/2013/08/the-real-life-tontos-how-comanche-indi...
All that's missing is the koran
bunny i hope you didnt reproduce and if you did, may they disown you
Fuck you with a GMO produced Turkey drumstick (that's extra large for the socialist/commie schooled idiots)
Sounds like you were force-fed Howard Zinn's A People's History Of The Americas in college as we were. They are no doubt STILL pushing this twaddle on young unsuspecting minds. It can be summed in three words: white man bad. Overcome your indoctrination, if we did it you can.
oh contrar, you forgot your sarc tag...bwahahahhahaaaaarg...so many morons, so little time to put them down...
Isn't Thanksgiving a bullshit holiday created by Lincoln around the lowest point of the civil war to boost Union morale?
Yep.
The celebration of Thanksgiving is a celebration of plenty and appreciation of the abundance that has characterized the free enterprise, individualistic, capitalistic systems of the US.
That was about fifty years ago. The writer is living in another time.
Commies hate the truth... and Freedom
Omitted by Mises:
Thanksgiving was first declared a holiday by Abraham Lincoln in 1863, during the Civil War, and made no references to Pilgrims or natives.
The mythologies about Puritans, Natives, and feasts only began to circulate later, around the 1890s.
Chronology of conquest and actual relations with (genocidal) settlers.
Mayflower Plymouth 1620
The War 1634 -1638 against the Pequots was fought by
English colonists of the Massachusuetts Bay, Plymouth, and Saybrook colonies.
The 1637 Massacre of a Pequot village: nearly 700, mostly women, children and old men were slain (as the warriors were out on a raiding party).
Hundreds of Pequot prisoners taken later were sold into slavery,
and the tribe was wiped out.
"establishing property rights" -- lol
"The mythologies about Puritans, Natives, and feasts only began to circulate later, around the 1890s."
Full retard.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanksgiving_%28United_States%29
tmosley
You are correct.
The myths about settlement and expansion (the creation of what was declared to be an "American Israel") had begun to be circulated much earlier.
e.g.:
"Extermination" would be a useful fate for "the animals vulgarly called Indians" who not having made "a better use of the land" had no right to it. - Hugh Brackenridge 1782 (founder of Pittsburg Gazette)
p.77 Manifest Destiny by Albert Weinberg
Why do you think they called them animals? BECAUSE THEY ACTED LIKE ANIMALS. Theft. Kidnapping. Murder. They did these things amongst themselves, and when they attempted to do it to the whites, they got crushed.
And they indeed didn't make use of the land. It was merely treated as a toilet bowl for them to slaughter each other in.
why?
Because they were projecting and rationalizing their own
thefts and destruction (of land, wildlife, forests, fisheries, minerals)
kidnappings (slavery, tortures, brutality)
murders (massacres, genocides)
History as written by the victors
and the US/European propensity for self-delusion and hypocrisy,
has woven depictions of the "righteous white settler" into conventional hubris and mythology.
Refuting straw-man depictions of the "good Indian" (which no serious historian would make) hardly substantiates the venomous arrogance you proclaim.
Western settlers in north America didn't do any of that shit, you ignorant fuck. They would go out and establish a homestead, then Indians would come through and murder the men, and kidnap women and children, ABSOLUTELY BRUTALIZE THEM, and then whine when the army comes in and burns them out for their CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY.
If you were in the hands of a tribe of these savages, I guarantee you that you would be PRAYING for their genocide, and right fast. Same as you would be were you in the hands of ANY communist society in human history.
And also, I have NEVER seen anything about "righteous white settlers" in any form of media! I had to deduce their existance for myself! All the media shows us is crying Indians who were good bois din du nuffin at touch wit da eart an shit. But it's all lies. I know Indians. I have them in my family, and have spent time on reservations. I know what I'm talking about when I decry communism there and everywhere else.
tmosley
before you accuse others of
"ignorance",
do learn some history yourself.
Governor Gilmer of Georgia, speaking then of the Cherokee Removal of 1830:
"Treaties were expedients ... to yield up what civilized people had a right to possess by virtue of that command of the Creator ..."
Your inane assertion that white settlers did not practice slavery, tortures, or thefts is beyond ignorance.
Your selective limited impression of current conventional wisdom has nothing to do with how the hubris has been historically woven into myth and false rationalizations.
damn another piece of crap liar, ever get tired of your own lies rwe2late?
Unix
illogical ad hominems
backed by nothing in the way of factual argument
are by far the most tiring comments at ZH.
i dont have to backup true history, your lies are out there for everyone to see, moron
Throughout history a Leisure Class forms at the top.
The toil of the working and middle classes supports the upper, Leisure class.
We still have our aristocracy in the UK.
You are just forming your aristocracy in the US.
It is not about hard work but inherited wealth and privilege, it is inheritance that concentrates wealth.
Without Government interference the wealth will concentrate more and more as your Aristocracy tries to take everything for itself.
You can see it now, it’s the way it works.
Unfortunately your Government has already been captured by your Aristocracy and the road to Serfdom awaits.
Adam Smith:
“The Labour and time of the poor is in civilised countries sacrificed to the maintaining of the rich in ease and luxury. The Landlord is maintained in idleness and luxury by the labour of his tenants. The moneyed man is supported by his extractions from the industrious merchant and the needy who are obliged to support him in ease by a return for the use of his money. But every savage has the full fruits of his own labours; there are no landlords, no usurers and no tax gatherers.”
The Austrian school came from Aristocrats of the European Leisure Class.
They were working in their own self-interest.
I missed private schools and universities, the instruments by which the wealthy ensure their children get the best education.
In the UK we have always had a privately educated elite - it works.
"And the meek shall inherit the earth....and the bank shall reposess it."
Cafe on the corner
There is no better form of government than 'natural selection'.
All false government props up the stupid and lazy until the profits of the smart and productive run out.
Then Mother Nature takes over.
thumbs up for this comment head...
Dup - F'ing computer (operator error really)
The evolution of the state.
Just study any early European history to see how the wealthy constantly fight each other to steal each other's wealth, land and property.
Eventually nation states emerge and the wealthy stop fighting each other within nations and then head abroad to steal other peoples wealth, land and property.
The native Americans and Australians stood no chance against the UK state.
The cult of the individual ignores human nature and any nation that goes this way is going to be easy prey for a state looking to steal its wealth, land, property and resources.
It's as Utopian as Socialism.
The real non-economic reason they succeeded: "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit."The Pilgrims mostly died and ultimately all died out. The Puritans flourished in "Mazza-jos-ek."
wow Tyler, you scrubbed the comment section pretty good didnt ya? what you cant stand the truth?
edit: i stand corrected, this is a second article of TG, imagine that, so i apologize for that much.
it is too bad socialism/communism is celebrated in america today
what we have here is the most criminal administration in us history...
one day the two idelogies will clash and it will not be pretty for all of you scum sucking socialists
Communism vs. Free Markets at Plymouth Rock
I just learned from an article entitled Our Forefather’s Failure (at LibertyUnbound.com) that the colonies at Plymouth Rock and Jamestown tried both free market and communist systems – long before Karl Marx was born.
The Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock in December 1620, and in spite of help from the Native Americans, half of them died the first year as a result of their initial system. During the second year, more of them died. They would quickly learn that their initial system was tragically incompatible with human nature. It was simply unnatural.
The colonists had the ideal conditions for their initial system because they all had a reputation as virtuous hard working people, they all were of the same race, religion, politics, and nationality; and of course, they all had agreed to this system voluntarily. They also knew that failure meant death.
Although the colonists supposedly had their first Thanksgiving after their first harvest, they simply weren’t producing and storing enough food, which lead to starvation, disease, and discontent. Their first solution was to institute beatings for those who did not work hard enough, but this had little effect on productivity, and it further increased discontent.
The colonists astutely observed that their system tended to retard productivity while breeding confusion and discontent. We know this because they wrote about it in their journals. Clearly, their initial system was incompatible with human nature.
By the spring of 1623 the Pilgrims feared they would not survive another winter, so in desperation, they adopted a radically different system, and it saved their lives. Productivity increased, and in 1623, they actually had their first real reason for Thanksgiving.
Which system failed the colonists initially, and which radically different system saved them? Which system was so incompatible with human nature, and which system was so compatible with human nature? Which system was so ugly, and which system was so beautiful?
According to their original governing document, the Mayflower Compact, they shared everything produced by any one of them – from each according to his ability – to each according to his need. The result was that only a small percentage of them worked hard, and the rest were freeloaders to varying degrees. They even left food rotting on the vine!
Then, in the spring of 1623, the surviving colonists decided to let each person keep the fruits of his labor, and the colony’s total output increased so much that they were never hungry again.
The governor wrote in his journal that under their initial (communist) system some of them claimed to be too sick to work, and they were so convincing that it would have been the height of tyranny to make them work. Then, after they learned they could keep the fruits of their labor, they sprang from their beds and began working the fields!
Communism was killing the colonists at Plymouth Rock, and by switching to a free market system, they became more productive and saved themselves – in a single growing season.
The transition from communism to free markets still lacked full property rights however. Whereas, each individual owned the fruits of his labor, he did not own the land he worked, and thus he did not own any improvements he made to that land.
In 1623, the colonists were still growing food on parcels of land that were reassigned by random lots each year, which they astutely observed was a disincentive for each farmer to make permanent improvements to his parcel of land because in the following year, someone else would inherit the fruits of any labor he devoted to improvements. Therefore, in 1624, they adopted full property rights where everyone owned the land he worked, and the result was another productivity boost. Whereas, the first step toward property rights and the free market increased productivity enough to feed everyone, the move to full property rights produced enough extra food to export and trade for furs and other goods.
The article goes on to explain the similar experience in Jamestown:
The article didn’t mention the Roanoke colony, which just disappeared, and many speculate that they were killed by the Native Americans, but it is far more likely that they were killed by communism.
Although both my first hand experience and observations as well as my research and analysis have long since led me to conclude that the free market and property rights are superior to communism, I would have believed that communism could have worked in the case of the first American colonies because they had every advantage one could give communism. They had already unanimously agreed to communism. They all shared the same race, nationality, religion, political views and economic views. Failure meant starvation, and slackers were beaten, but in spite of every advantage possible, communism was a catastrophic systemic failure in the first American colonies.
Consider that the colonists at Plymouth Rock had no historical precedent on which to evaluate communism vs. the free market, and yet when communism failed them, they invented and adopted a complete free market system with full property rights in just two years.
In just four years, the colonists proved that that communism was a very unnatural and ugly thing, and that free-market and property rights were a very natural and beautiful thing.
Our ancestors’ understanding of the superiority of the free market and property rights made us the dominant nation on earth; whereas, today we are rapidly losing that status. Could it be that Americans have forgotten the hard won knowledge of our ancestors?
Consider that the President of the United States has 400 years of additional historical precedent as well as a Harvard education, and yet he still doesn’t understand how the free market is superior to communism. He says that that when the government forcibly takes the fruits of your labor and gives it to others to “spread the wealth around”, then that’s “good for everybody”.
Those colonists at Plymouth Rock, who seem so much more in touch with reality than the President of the United States, remind me of small town Americans of my childhood. Of course, the President sees small town Americans as basically racists who have “antipathy toward those who are different” and who “cling to their guns and religion”.
Although, the President of the United States is a dilettante, whose image was manufactured by the media, progressives have told me that he is right because communism in early America was too soon. They claim that it is not human nature to be a freeloader and that the people themselves have learned and would no longer be freeloaders. However, the Danish proved that 90% still prefer to be freeloaders when they can – even when they can make more money working.
I'm not sure the average American has any concept of such a holiday as described. We celebarte it because King Lincoln mandated it as a federal holiday.
That said, we have the personal freedom to have a day of thanksgiving. I choose to thank God for Jesus Christ and common grace. No turkey. Beef. Good whiskey and a good cigar.
What do you mean "we", paleface! Thanksgiving is a day set aside by alien invaders to celebrate the annihilation of a whole indigious people. Von Mises would roll over in his grave if he knew about this sophomoric screed by Judy Thommesen. I hope she didn't give up her job at Denny's.