Re: The Colorado BS thread
The Great Thanksgiving Hoax
By Richard J. Maybury
Each year at this time school children 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 hardworking or tenacious. 1621 was a
famine year and many of the colonists were lazy thieves.
In his 'History of Plymouth Plantation,' the governor of the colony,
William Bradford, reported that the colonists went hungry for years,
because they refused to work in the fields. They preferred instead to
steal food. He says the colony was riddled with "corruption," and with
"confusion and discontent." The crops were small because "much was
stolen both by night and day, before it became scarce eatable."
In the harvest feasts of 1621 and 1622, "all had their hungry bellies
filled," but only briefly. The prevailing condition during those years
was not the abundance the official story claims, it was famine and
death. The first "Thanksgiving" was not so much a celebration as it was
the last meal of condemned men.
But in subsequent years something changes. The harvest of 1623 was
different. Suddenly, "instead of famine now God gave them plenty,"
Bradford wrote, "and the face of things was changed, to the rejoicing of
the hearts of many, for which they blessed God." Thereafter, he wrote,
"any general want or famine hath not been amongst them since to this
day." In fact, in 1624, so much food was produced that the colonists
were able to begin exporting corn.
What happened?
After the poor harvest of 1622, writes Bradford, "they began to think
how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better
crop." They began to question their form of economic organization.
This had required that "all profits & benefits that are got by trade,
working, fishing, or any other means" were to be placed in the common
stock of the colony, and that, "all such persons as are of this colony,
are to have their meat, drink, apparel, and all provisions out of the
common stock." A person was to put into the common stock all he could,
and take out only what he needed.
This "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need"
was an early form of socialism, and it is why the Pilgrims were
starving. Bradford writes that "young men that are most able and fit for
labor and service" complained about being forced to "spend their time
and strength to work for other men's wives and children." Also, "the
strong, or man of parts, had no more in division of victuals and
clothes, than he that was weak." So the young and strong refused to work
and the total amount of food produced was never adequate.
To rectify this situation, in 1623 Bradford abolished socialism. He gave
each household a parcel of land and told them they could keep what they
produced, or trade it away as they saw fit. In other words, he replaced
socialism with a free market, and that was the end of famines.
Many early groups of colonists set up socialist states, all with the
same terrible results. At Jamestown, established in 1607, out of every
shipload of settlers that arrived, less than half would survive their
first twelve months in America. Most of the work was being done by only
one-fifth of the men, the other four-fifths choosing to be parasites. In
the winter of 1609-10, called "The Starving Time," the population fell
from five-hundred to sixty.
Then the Jamestown colony was converted to a free market, and the
results were every bit as dramatic as those at Plymouth. In 1614, Colony
Secretary Ralph Hamor wrote that after the switch there was "plenty of
food, which every man by his own industry may easily and doth procure."
He said that when the socialist system had prevailed, "we reaped not so
much corn from the labors of thirty men as three men have done for
themselves now."
Before these free markets were established, the colonists had nothing
for which to be thankful. They were in the same situation as Ethiopians
are today, and for the same reasons. But after free markets were
established, the resulting abundance was so dramatic that the annual
Thanksgiving celebrations became common throughout the colonies, and in
1863, Thanksgiving became a national holiday.
Thus the real reason for Thanksgiving, deleted from the official story,
is: Socialism does not work; the one and only source of abundance is
free markets, and we thank God we live in a country where we can have
them.
* * * * *
Mr. Maybury writes on investments.
This article originally appeared in The Free Market, November 1985.
irate1:
member to buy the place, and start taking over the neighborhood.
:doh: :banghead:
