While we celebrate Thanksgiving with family and friends, we will also remember the Thanksgivings of our past—the ones of our childhood and the ones when our parents were still with us. But there is another Thanksgiving tradition that conservatives might have forgotten. It involves the great Rush Limbaugh. It has been almost four years since he left us, and I am confident that I speak for many when I say I miss him daily.
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As he always did, Rush educated us daily, even at Thanksgiving. Every year, he told the story of the first Thanksgiving, but he told the parts of the story that were left out.
More than four centuries ago, our Pilgrim fathers joined the Wampanoag tribe for the first Thanksgiving. Today, we continue to have much to be grateful for in the nation the Pilgrims helped to build.
From the Cotton family to yours, we wish you a happy Thanksgiving.
— Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) November 28, 2024
The story we all heard in school went something like this: the Pilgrims came to the New World in search of religious freedom. They endured a dangerous, trans-Atlantic journey. When they arrived, they really had no idea how to survive in the wilderness. The Indians taught them how to grow corn, hunt, and fish. The Pilgrims were so grateful they invited the Indians to a big feast.
Well, there is a little more to it. And as Rush told it, it became apparent why this part of the story would have been glossed over by public education. We have all heard of the Mayflower Compact, the set of laws that all agreed to live by, But it included something else. Before the Pilgrims left Holland, they needed to fund the trip. They found sponsors who would do just that. But their merchant sponsors in London and Holland required that the Pilgrims agree that everything they produced went into a common store, a common bank, and every family would be entitled to one share of the common store.
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So, the Pilgrims got down to the business of living life in the New World. They cleared land, and they grew crops. The other part of the story we have heard was of the Pilgrims’ first winter. Nearly half of them died of starvation, sickness, and exposure. The group’s leader, William Bradford, who later became the governor of the colony, realized early on that the whole “common store” idea was a huge failure. He decided to scrap that portion of the Mayflower Compact and came up with another idea.
The Pilgrims’ Abolition of Socialism (Photo Credit: Jenny A. Brownscombe) William Bradford delivered the Pilgrims from the ills of socialism to a healthy culture of economic freedom based upon individual property rights. https://t.co/BmqK8jEczv
— American Thinker (@AmericanThinker) November 28, 2024
He assigned a plot of land to every family. They could do with it what they pleased. They could grow corn; they could build on it; they could do nothing if they chose to. What Bradford discovered was that under the collectivism model, no one worked. He wrote in his diary:
“[T]his community was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort.”
Bradford continued, “‘For young men that were most able and fit for labor and service’” did nothing. They didn’t see the point of working for other people when they did not see any benefit for themselves or their families. But after each family got their own plot of land, here is what Bradford wrote:
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“This had very good success, for it made all hands industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been.”
When people saw profit from their own hard work, everything changed. So, where do the Indians come in? Well, the Pilgrims became so successful they began to set up trading posts with the Indians. They sold things to them, and that allowed the Pilgrims to pay off their debts to the London and Holland merchants. The Indians absolutely helped the Pilgrims to survive by teaching them to hunt, fish, grow corn, and skin beavers for coats.
Even though they didn’t call it socialism or capitalism back then, the Pilgrims soon figured out that a common bank and collectivism were not going to work. It was only when they implemented the incentive to work and invest themselves in the land that they became prosperous, and it benefitted themselves and the Indians.
Makes you wonder, if we have only heard the “official” story of Thanksgiving for this long, what else have we only heard the “official” story of?
I looked forward to Rush Limbaugh telling us the true story of Thanksgiving every year. Let’s keep it going. pic.twitter.com/BuE1OGaWdI
— Jill Savage (@Jill_Savage) November 27, 2024
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