The Real Story Of Thanksgiving

I would like to share with you the "Real Story of Thanksgiving", as told by Rush Limbaugh. I found this to be very informational and enlightening, and after I listened to this on his radio show, I was motivated to further read parts of William Bradford's journal. I recommend it to you this Thanksgiving season. To clarify beforehand, it's not Rush Limbaugh that has made me respect and agree with William Bradford and his pilgrim posse, but it is factual history that has made me feel the way I do. Anyway, if you think this is even 10% as great as I think it is, then hooray! Here you go:

"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...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...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.' ...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? Do you realize what we face...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."

Fourth Folder, Fourth Picture

My sister Mary Lynne tagged me! The game is to open your fourth folder, post the fourth picture and give a brief explanation.


My nephew David sent me "Flat Stanley" as part of a class project. If you aren't familiar with Stanley, I'll give you a brief explanation. Flat Stanley is a world traveler, and because he's "flat", he can fit inside a letter and go ANYWHERE. He wanted to visit Las Vegas, so David sent the flat little guy for a visit. I took him on many adventures and captured several photos of him having loads of fun with me in Las Vegas. After a busy week, I took him out to relax by the pool. Unfortunately, he got sunburned. I cannot even stress enough the importance of sunscreen!

Sorry I had to share the fifth photo of my fourth folder, but it helped with the explanation. That's it.

Nov. 4

I'm not going to go into specifics here, but I think many of ya'll know what I'm talking about when I quote the words of Foreigner: "...but that was yesterday, I had the world in my hands, but it's not the end of my world, just a slight change of plans..."