The First Thanksgiving . . .

I was listening to some of the recent 'occupy' people on the radio yesterday and what stuck in my mind from there conversation was their premise that 'until everyone has one, no one should have two'. They seemed to think this socialistic attitude would turn the world around. History has shown up over and over how socialism does not work yet there are always young minds or uninformed minds who see it as a new discovery that they can make work.

Every year, Rush Limbaugh has a Thanksgiving story about the first Thanksgiving that isn't being taught. He isn't making it up as it is in the journal of one of the leaders of that first colony here in America. I had to share it because it is so revealing.

It's time for the real story of Thanksgiving and the George Washington 1789 Thanksgiving Proclamation. The real story of Thanksgiving in my second book, See, I Told You So. It's in the chapter that begins on page 66, and the title of that chapter is "Dead White Guys Or What Your History Books Never Told You." Now, as is so often the case with much of what has happened on this program, the details of this story are now all over the Internet under other people's names and bylines, which is fine with me. I'm like Ronald Reagan: I don't care how the truth gets out. I don't care who gets the credit for it, as long as it gets out. The more people that get it out, the more people that understand it, spread it, the better. But this book goes back to 1994 or '93, actually, and the true story of Thanksgiving prior to that time, I didn't see it anywhere. Like I was telling you at the beginning of the program, I'm like everybody else.

When I was going to grade school and it was time to teach us about Thanksgiving, the basic synopsis of what I was told was the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth Rock, a bunch of destitute white people. When they arrived; they had no clue what to do, didn't know how to grow corn, didn't know how to hunt, basically didn't know how to do anything. And if it weren't for the Injuns who befriended them and gave them coats and skins and taught them how to fish and shared their food and corn with them, the Pilgrims wouldn't have survived and the Pilgrims thanked them by killing them and taking over the country and bringing with them syphilis, environmental destruction, racism, sexism, bigotry and homophobia.

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. 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. That's right. 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."

Now, I'm going to cease and desist at this point because I don't want to get started and have to interrupt myself for a commercial break with the passage from Bradford in his journal about the decision to scrap socialism, this common share business, and he turned everybody loose, and this new social experiment, forerunner to capitalism, is profoundly detailed in his journal, but I don't want to, as I say, interrupt myself in the process. So we'll get to that and the rest of the story after the commercial break. We are going to post the George Washington 1789 Thanksgiving proclamation at Rush Limbaugh.com, and I haven't decided yet, folks, but I might make the reading here of the first story of Christmas an MP 3 file so you can download it, and take it with you to Thanksgiving dinner, and if you start getting some grief from liberals, just say, "Here, I got something I want you to listen to and make them listen to it. Ask them as a favor on Thanksgiving."

Here now, in its entirety, the William Bradford journal, what he wrote about the social experiment after abandoning what essentially was socialism shortly after the Pilgrims had arrived in the United States or in the new world:

"'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 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.' 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 un-harnessed 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.'"

Not just use themselves and not just send to a common store but they could market. They could grow as much, they could sell it for what they could get for it, and the incentive was clear to do as much as possible on both sides. "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? Yes. Read the story of Joseph and Pharaoh in Genesis 41. Following Joseph's suggestion (Gen 41:34), Pharaoh reduced the tax on Egyptians to 20% during the 'seven years of plenty' and the 'Earth brought forth in heaps.' (Gen. 41:47) 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, let me ask you: Have you read this history before? Is this lesson being taught to your children today? If not, why not? Can you think of a more important lesson one could derive from the Pilgrim experience?