The Real Story of Thanksgiving Not Taught in Schools: America’s First Socialist Failure.

Frequent readers of my blog already know Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Probably because I have a whole lot to be thankful for in my life, and well I love food… I have also enjoyed the story surrounding Thanksgiving.

Ever since I was a child, and I suspect the majority of Americans too, were taught the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth Rock settling in this barren place with no ability or knowledge on how to survive or feed themselves. It was so bad, that if it had not been for the Indians teaching them how to grow corn, hunt and slaughter animals, they would have surely starved to death and died! In order to show their thanks and appreciation the Pilgrims held a feast with the Indians This commencing Thanksgiving as taught in schools, it’s not at all what happened.

The truth is Thanksgiving was a celebration of how capitalism, private property and individual initiative saved the colonist from starvation.

Yes it is true the Mayflower brought the Pilgrims to Plymouth in 1621. It was a barren land and it was very hard times, but it was not hard times because of a lack of survival skills.

William Bradford, the governor of the Pilgrim colony, writes about this in his journal. The colony was first organized on a communal basis, as their financers required. The land was owned in common and farmed communally. Whatever they produced went into the common store so all could share the fruits of everybody’s labor.

This is one of the first known experiments with socialism and it was based on all the great compassion and fairness you can think of, but the results were disastrous!

Some Pilgrims realized they didn’t have to do anything in order to get what they needed from the common store, because other people would pull their weight.

The food supply quickly became short and the winters long. At one point corn was rationed out at three kernels per day per person. By 1623 the colonist had suffered severe losses and starvation was almost imminent.

Bradford now realized the communal system was not working because it encouraged and rewarded laziness and inefficiency while destroying individual initiative. So he abolished the plan, distributed private plots of land among the surviving Pilgrims, encouraging them to farm as individuals and what you produce is yours. If there is a surplus you can sell it for a profit. This is when the Pilgrims began to flourish, and they shared their bounty with the Indians.

In the true story of Thanksgiving as wrote by Bradford, is thanks to God…It was thanks to God for helping them learn the way to survive and prosper when they arrived in this forsaken, unknown place.

So how was this story left out of the history books? Well, unfortunately Bradford’s journal is about the only recorded history we have from this time period. Many parts of his journal recording these events were lost. When Thanksgiving was later made a national holiday, the lesson the Pilgrims so painfully learned was not made part of the holiday.

Several years later, Bradford’s diaries were found. They’re now available in paperback documenting how capitalism saved the Pilgrims.

This Thanksgiving I now have one more thing to be thankful for…capitalism. The system that has lifted more people out of poverty than any other in history, perhaps one day America will return to it.

Welcome to the United Socialist States of America

If you have a copy of the United States Constitution lying around, you can go ahead and run it through the paper shredder or burn it. At this point the paper it was wrote on is worth more than the words. The United States Congress has been ignoring it for several of years with no accountability from the American voter. In doing so we have taken this nation into areas we never had any business being in.

In fact we created the greatest financial risk and collapse this country has ever seen by ignoring the principles and wisdoms placed by the founders of the constitution. Politicians in Congress think they are above the constitution. They thought they knew better. They thought they could do better and create a system outside the boundaries of the law. They were wrong! We were wrong for letting them continue to do it without accountability.

For years Congress continued to spend more, create a bigger and more intrusive government, limiting freedom while increasing their power for the social experiment to supply all with an increased standard of living.

The government required banks to offer no money down mortgages backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for before unqualified low-income family borrowers with good or bad credit became the norm. After all, everyone in America should own a house regardless if they can actually afford it. This significantly increased the demand for houses inflating the housing market and creating the housing bubble.

As the bubble grew, so did the amount of dangerous subprime loans given. While the economy was on the rise everyone was happy. Then gas prices started to rise. Interest rates rose and paychecks got squeezed. All of a sudden our unqualified borrowers couldn’t make their mortgage payments. Foreclosures skyrocketed, banks quit lending them money and no one was buying houses only selling. The bubble popped as house prices plummeted. All those government-backed mortgages became worthless and banks begin to collapse.

Did Congress and politicians learn their lesson? No, instead they blame it on the free market. It is capitalisms fault, not ours. The premise from most of our politicians on both sides of the aisle of this financial crisis is that some how the free market has failed and the government must come to the rescue. The truth is the crisis we are now in is a result of government intervention in the market.

This is not a failure of the free market. In a free market, bankers would not give loans to people who are not qualified.

We started to here politicians say things like the government must act to protect the financial well being of all from the reckless financial actions of a few.

Someone show me where in the constitution does it say it is the government’s responsibility to protect the financial well being of anybody? I must have missed it in my copy!

I am so disgusted by this bailout! Democrats and Republicans both united to vote for this damn bill. Both presidential candidates voted for it. We can’t get them to unite to win wars, or close our borders, but we can get them to unite to give them the absolute most power they will ever gain over the free market ever!!! Does anyone realize how much control this bill gives the federal government? How much real estate the government will now own?

There is no way you can justify in the constitution the government should be a source of mortgages for homeowners, but Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were able to control more than 50% of the mortgages in this country before this bailout.

We are in tough times, but they are going to get tougher until the American people hold Congress and politicians accountable to live within the rules of the US Constitution that have served this country so well. We are ignoring the constitution at our own peril and are reaping exactly what we have sown.

Capitalism is pretty much dead. Welcome to the United Socialist States of America! The US Constitution was bought and destroyed for 700 billion dollars!!!

Perhaps it is time to reject the two-party system in this country. It’s time for a revolution! A voter revolution…The Libertarian Party anyone?