Posted on 11/26/2014 7:08:25 AM PST by dleeper47
The undertold story of how the Pilgrims tried hard to live under what we could call communism and nearly starved to death. In 1623 they abruptly switched to private property and free markets and never went hungry again.
In 1978, we took the RV and the kids up to Plymouth to see my wife’s sister who lived there at the time. We visited Plymouth Plantation. During the tour, I was struck by the presence of fortified guard shacks in the town square and asked the guide if they were a last line of defense for the citizens there if trouble with the natives spilled into the compound. He told us that they were for the control of the FOOD RIOTS which broke out those first few winters — BEFORE they wisely abandoned their clearly failed experiment with collectivism — before Marx was even born.
Seems each generation or so we must relearn the hard lessons of history.
OBOWMA will teach us the next round of such lessons. I suspect they will be BITTER ones indeed.
A sidebar to that visit was that upon crossing into The Peoples’ republic (small “r”) of Taxachussetts, we were greeted by a huge sign on the Interstate displaying a message to the effect that bringing a firearm into the state was a crime punishable by 6 days upon the rack the drawing and quartering then scattering of your remains about Harvard Yard, there to be eaten by intellectually deficient budding libtards.
As our trip took us over 1,000 miles with my wife and 3 small kiddies aboard, our expensive RV was equipped with a .357 magnum handgun for defense.
The sign gave me two choices: I could throw the $300 weapon into the roadside ditch where it could be found by another or a highway worker or I could press on and hope to avoid being consumed by the libtards.
We pressed on as I contemplated the irony that the Founders were certainly doing 3600 RPM in their graves that one of the former colonies that played such a key role in their victory during the unpleasantness with King George now prohibited possession of the very tools with which they achieved same.
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!
Rush tells this story every Thanksgiving on his radio show. Here we have a made to order history lesson for school children. How simple it would be to weave this lesson into every students learning experience. It should be made mandatory, but then liberal teachers would twist the story to fit their communist paradigm.
One of the chief reasons the Pilgrims didn’t starve is because the Indian Squanto took pity on them as fellow Christians and showed them how to survive. That was an act of pure altruism, something the free market doesn’t recognize and ultimately tries to beat out of us. Yes, Squanto was a Christian — Catholic, in fact, having been baptized by Spanish friars. Pilgrims didn’t bring the Gospel to “indian savages”; Catholic missionaries did. If the fine Calvinist pilgrims had known Squanto was Catholic, he’d have been lucky to have escaped with his life. And yes, the pilgrims would probably have starved and there’d be no football tomorrow.
A more inspiring tale is how future immigrants created a society based on rationalism and discarded the failed religious tyranny these people tried to establish.
Notwithstanding current immigration, Britain’s dalliance with the dictator Cromwell taught them not to trust these wackos
Yes, tell the whole history at Thanksgiving! The colony was required to have a common storehouse by the company who was financing the venture, not the Pilgrims themselves. They agreed reluctantly to the condition because it was the only way they could get backing to go to the New World. Additionally, remember to tell that while the Pilgrims made up the majority of the group, not all held their religious beliefs. (I agree with the Puritans attitude, but realizing they were a mixed colony helps explain some of their troubles as well.)
Puritan Economic Experiments
http://www.garynorth.com/puritan_economic_experiments.pdf
One of my ancestors was Stephen Hopkins who came on the Mayflower with his family but not as a Pilgrim. His son, Oceanis, was one of the children born on the Mayflower.
He signed on as a king’s administrator and was a personal friend of William Bradford. He was known as an agitator, having already led a mutiny on one of the three Jamestown bound ships that floundered in a storm near Barbados. He was one of the group who defied the communal collectivism and pushed for the each member of the colony to own property unto themselves and profit from their own work. He opened and ran the first tavern, got into trouble over various rules and restrictions that the religious pilgrims tried to enforce. He was a religious man, a deacon, chief negotiator with the local tribes, and a leader in the colony but he was firmly in favor of free markets and freedom to pursue his own pursuits whether they succeeded or not.
Thank God there were others with him who were of like mind.
Perhaps, there is some positive story to this....but I don’t see it.
They delayed the trip long enough that they only arrive at the beginning of winter.
They made up the original crew with people having no real survivor skills, and marginal farming skills.
The supplies they brought with them....weren’t really thought much about, and didn’t help.
They were on turbo in terms of religious faith....but they just didn’t have any of the next twenty-odd skills for the mission ahead.
Not to say it’s not all a great theme for the holidays....but it wouldn’t have take much for the whole group to have perished by the time the next ship arrived. It’s just good fortune that few of them survived the winter.
Interesting article history you have:
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/by:dleeper47/index?tab=articles
But this tells only half the story.
When they switched to privately worked farms there was no rain for months. The corn crop turned brown; the Pilgrams themselves acknowledged that they had sinned, that they were being punished and asked God for forgiveness of coveting. Afterwhich God brought not only rain but soft rain that did not wash away the crop. The indians were ammazed because at that time of year the rain that came it usually was down pours that would have wash the crops away. The indians realized that God provided generuosly and the crop came in full even though it had turned brown.
As is often the case god is left out of history.
Reformed Christians like the Pilgrims do not participate in the false high holy days of Christmas and Easter, which are unbiblical human innovations.
Nope. Just good ol' fashioned communism.
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