An appropriate reminder

As we as a nation start to wander into a swamp that has destroyed so much from Argentina to Zimbabwe - perhaps it would help to take a moment to remember an episode from our own history. Facts are hard things - economics in the end is nothing but the end result of the factual results of policy and the response to crisis.

On that note, a link to someone I link to about once a year. You don't have to agree with anything he says - but this stands alone as a piece worthy of anyone. From Rush.

Ladies and gentlemen, every Thanksgiving, there's a tradition on this program, every Thanksgiving I go and grab my book, the first book that I wrote, See, I Told You So, hardback, two and a half million sold, counting the paperback, probably close to five million. On page 70, there's a chapter on The Real Story of Thanksgiving. Now, how many of you grew up and how many of your children are growing up today being taught this: The Pilgrims arrived, and it was cold, and it was inhospitable in the New World. And they were ill-equipped to fend for themselves, and they were bedraggled and they were tired and they were hungry and they were thirsty and they were incapable of getting along, and finally the Indians, who they would later massacre, the Indians befriended the Pilgrims and showed them about corn and maize and created a big feast of turkey and dressing and cranberry sauce and maybe even some cheese broccoli. They all sat down and they had Thanksgiving together, and it was the Pilgrims thanking the Indians for saving their wretched lives. And then of course after all of this mercy showed by the Indians, these Pilgrims and their descendants went out and wiped 'em out and put 'em on revolutionaries where they became alcoholics and now they run casinos.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the traditional story of Thanksgiving, is it not? In fact, the Pilgrims and their descendants not only brought all of the plagues, they brought syphilis, they brought environmental destruction, racism, sexism, bigotry, even brought homophobia. Stole Manhattan for 24 bucks, they cheated the Indians, they cheated the Indians who had saved their lives by buying Manhattan for 24 bucks and some trinkets. It was the first ever subprime loan, ladies and gentlemen, the first ever subprime mortgage, 24 bucks. The Indians got screwed royally. This is what your kid is likely taught these days in the multicultural curricula in school. Do you know the real story of Thanksgiving? The Pilgrims arrived and they had to immediately find a way to make a living. They had to find a way to support themselves, and this is, by the way, all contained in William Bradford, he was the first governor, if you will, of the colony. William Bradford in his own writings, which I quote in my book See, I Told You So, William Bradford describes their first experiment.

They gave everybody a plot of land. Everybody produced what they produced and it went into a single store, it went into a communal store where everybody was then able to partake what they needed and what they wanted from what everybody else had produced. Bradford found that this led to a bunch of slackers, a bunch of slackers not producing anything. They just sat around and waited for what the others in the colony produced. It didn't work! The first ever experiment with socialism on this country was undertaken by the Pilgrims in the 1600s. Bradford said this isn't gonna work and got a different idea. He gave everybody their own plot of hand, he assigned them their own plot of land and said whatever you produce here is yours. You keep it. And he writes of the miracle that happened after that. The industriousness and the ambition that was utilized by the Pilgrims, that is when they became prosperous, that is when they had bounty, that is when they had more than they knew what to do with.

So they invited the Indians over, and the whole notion of Thanksgiving was William Bradford and the original Pilgrims thanking God for their blessings. It was not thanking the Indians for saving their lives and showing them how to make broccoli with cheese for Thanksgiving. They might have been grateful for the popcorn, I'm sure they didn't have that over there in England, but nevertheless, that's the story. The first ever experiment with socialism failed, and liberals have been trying to reinstitute it ever since.

Socialism hard or soft never works. Ask everyone east and south of the Oder River from Poland to Mongolia if you don't think old dead white guys have anything to teach you.