Blame it on too much turkey, but this had me laughing out-loud. Never let it be said Fox News ever misses an opportunity to politicize any and/or everything…even if it means re-writing history.
quote
Had today’s political class been in power in 1623, tomorrow’s holiday would have been called “Starvation Day” instead of Thanksgiving. Of course, most of us wouldn’t be alive to celebrate it. Every year around this time, schoolchildren are taught about that wonderful day when Pilgrims and Native Americans shared the fruits of the harvest. But the first Thanksgiving in 1623 almost didn’t happen.
Long before the failure of modern socialism, the earliest European settlers gave us a dramatic demonstration of the fatal flaws of collectivism. Unfortunately, few Americans today know it. The Pilgrims at Plymouth Colony organized their farm economy along communal lines. The goal was to share the work and produce equally. That’s why they nearly all starved…. (JOHN STOSSEL: The Lost Lesson of Thanksgiving)
(But after they privatized their crops, Stossel writes, everything flourished under the tenets of capitalism.)
Earlier this week a New York Times reporter investigated and spoke to a historian who debunked the tale:
Leave aside the question of whether this country is on the march to socialism (conservatives say yes, and blame the Democrats). What does the record say?
Historians say that the settlers in Plymouth, and their supporters in England, did indeed agree to hold their property in common — William Bradford, the governor, referred to it in his writings as the “common course.” But the plan was in the interest of realizing a profit sooner, and was only intended for the short term; historians say the Pilgrims were more like shareholders in an early corporation than subjects of socialism.
“It was directed ultimately to private profit,” said Richard Pickering, a historian of early America and the deputy director of Plimoth Plantation, a museum devoted to keeping the Pilgrims’ story alive.
The arrangement did not produce famine. If it had, Bradford would not have declared the three days of sport and feasting in 1621 that became known as the first Thanksgiving. “The celebration would never have happened if the harvest was going to be less than enough to get them by,” Mr. Pickering said. “They would have saved it and rationed it to get by.”
Bradford did get rid of the common course — but it was in 1623, after the first Thanksgiving, and not because the system wasn’t working. The Pilgrims just didn’t like it. In the accounts of colonists, Mr. Pickering said, “there was griping and groaning.” “
Bachelors didn’t want to feed the wives of married men, and women don’t want to do the laundry of the bachelors,” he said.
The real reason agriculture became more profitable over the years, Mr. Pickering said, is that the Pilgrims were getting better at farming crops like corn that had been unknown to them in England.
The Pilgrims Were … Socialists? -
Fox amends history to find a Thanksgiving lesson about socialism
This is the same intellectually-bankrupt malarkey that Limbaugh spouts every year. He even reads a chapter from his own book about it … because he thinks his book counts as a history text, I guess.
Ever wonder why words like “socialism” and “capitalism” never occur in the scripture? Probably because they are themes that God is simply not greatly concerned about. The church thrives equally well in socialist lands as it does in capitalist ones and in many flavors in between as well. In very radical socialist lands, of course, the church is often persecuted. In very capitalist lands, the church tends to suffer from other equally damaging assaults such as consumerism and rampant heresy. But one way or another the faithful remnant survives and passes on the faith to the next generation. So we can be sure that those who carp against either “socialism” or “capitalism” are not really interested in the advance of the gospel, but only in the advance of their own political agenda. We should give them the amount of attention they deserve which is not much.
The Pilgrims lived in a paradigm far removed from our own. Most of the comments that attempt to reconcile their reality with ours show a large lack of understanding of anything.
Since when has the primary purpose of Christianity existed to nurture individualism and materialism? Men have seldom chosen to live according to the way of our Master. Al least as recent history seems to show. What is going on now is what does not work and to attempt to validate Capitalism is utterly absurd. It never has worked and is not the way of our Master.
“Since when has the primary purpose of Christianity existed to nurture individualism and materialism?”
Of course these are concepts that are actually very much OPPOSED to what the Bible teaches, but you wouldn’t learn that in many, if not most, churches. And this is not to mention the church fathers, Ignatius for example.
We laughed and laughed….there was some congressman on the news saying the Pilgrims came to America because they were fleeing Socialism.
!!!!
This is right up there with the American Revolution was fought for religious liberty. Another fiction keep hearing lately.
If these people bothered to pick up a history book they’d find out that the City on the Hill Puritans loathed Capitalism. They viewed it as Arminian. Capitalism is based on a view that people will do the right thing and not squash their neighbours. Very Pelagian, but not very Biblical.
Does that mean we have to have Socialism? No. But with these people, you can’t even have an honest discussion. They’re not interested in learning anything or working things out. They’re interested in power….and what a lovely Plutocracy they’ve created….oops, I mean Constitutional Democratic Republic.