Thankgiving Story That's Never Told

This is something everyone should tell their children for
Thanksgiving , the story that they do not hear in
school!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

On August 1, 1620, the Mayflower set sail. It carried a total
of 102 passengers, including forty Pilgrims led by William
Bradford. On the journey, Bradford set up an agreement,
a contract, that established just and equal laws for all members
of the new community, irrespective of their religious beliefs.
Where did the revolutionary ideas expressed in the Mayflower
Compact come from? From the Bible. The Pilgrims were a
people completely steeped in the lessons of the
Old and New Testaments. They looked to the ancient Israelites
for their example. And, because of the biblical precedents set
forth in Scripture, they never doubted that their experiment
would work. "But this was no pleasure cruise, friends.
The journey to the New World was a long and arduous one.
And when the Pilgrims landed in New England in November,
they found, according to Bradford's detailed journal, a cold,
barren, desolate wilderness, " destined to become the home
of the Kennedy family. "There were no friends to greet them,
he wrote. There were no houses to shelter them. There were
no inns where they could refresh themselves. And the sacrifice
they had made for freedom was just beginning. During the first
winter, half the Pilgrims – including
Bradford's own wife – died of either starvation, sickness or
exposure. "When spring finally came, Indians taught the settlers
how to plant corn, fish for cod and skin beavers for coats." Yes,
it was Indians that taught the white man how to skin beasts.
"Life improved for the Pilgrims, but they did not yet prosper!
This is important to understand because this is where modern
American history lessons often end. "Thanksgiving is actually
explained in some textbooks as a holiday for which the Pilgrims
gave thanks to the Indians for saving their lives, rather than as
a devout expression of gratitude grounded in the tradition of
both the Old and New Testaments. Here is the part [of
Thanksgiving] that has been omitted: The original contract the
Pilgrims had entered into with their merchant-sponsors in London
called for everything they produced to go into a common store, and
each member of the community was entitled to one common share.
"All of the land they cleared and the houses they built belong to the
community as well. They were going to distribute it equally. All of
the land they cleared and the houses they built belonged to the
community as well. Nobody owned anything. They just had a share
in it. It was a commune, folks. It was the forerunner to the
communes we saw in the '60s and '70s out in California – and it
was complete with organic vegetables, by the way. Bradford,
who had become the new governor of the colony, recognized
that this form of collectivism was as costly and destructive to
the Pilgrims as that first harsh winter, which had taken so many
lives. He decided to take bold action. Bradford assigned
a plot of land to each family to work and manage, thus turning
loose the power of the marketplace. "That's right. Long before
Karl Marx was even born, the Pilgrims had discovered and
experimented with what could only be described as socialism.
And what happened? It didn't work! Surprise, surprise, huh?
What Bradford and his community found was that the most
creative and industrious people had no incentive to work any
harder than anyone else, unless they could utilize the power
of personal motivation! But while most of the rest of the world
has been experimenting with socialism for well over a hundred
years – trying to refine it, perfect it, and re-invent it – the
Pilgrims decided early on to scrap it permanently. What Bradford
wrote about this social experiment should be in every schoolchild's
history lesson. If it were, we might prevent much needless
suffering in the future.

"'The experience that we had in this common course and condition,
tried sundry years...that by taking away property, and bringing
community into a common wealth, would make them happy and
flourishing – as if they were wiser than God,' Bradford wrote.
"For this community [so far as it was] was found to breed much
confusion and discontent, and retard much employment that would
have been to their benefit and comfort. For young men that were
most able and fit for labor and service did repine that they should
spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and
children without any recompense...that was thought injustice.'
Why should you work for other people when you can't work for
yourself? What's the point? "Do you hear what he was saying,
ladies and gentlemen?
The Pilgrims found that people could not be expected to do their
best work without incentive. So what did Bradford's community
try next? They unharnessed the power of good old free enterprise
by invoking the undergirding capitalistic principle of private property.
Every family was assigned its own plot of land to work and permitted
to market its own crops and products. And what was the result?
'This had very good success,' wrote Bradford, 'for it made all hands
industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would
have been.' Bradford doesn't sound like much of a..." I wrote
"Clintonite" then. He doesn't sound much like a liberal Democrat,
"does he? Is it possible that supply-side economics could have existed
before the 1980s? Yes. "Read the story of Joseph and Pharaoh in
Genesis 41. Following Joseph's suggestion (Gen 41:34), Pharaoh
reduced the tax on Egyptians to 20% during the 'seven years of
plenty' and the 'Earth brought forth in heaps.' (Gen. 41:47) In no
time, the Pilgrims found they had more food than they could eat
themselves.... So they set up trading posts and exchanged goods
with the Indians. The profits allowed them to pay
off their debts to the merchants in London. And the success and
prosperity of the Plymouth settlement attracted more Europeans
and began what came to be known as the 'Great Puritan Migration.
'" Now, other than on this program every year, have you heard this
story before? Is this lesson being taught to your kids today -- and if it
isn't, why not? Can you think of a more important lesson one could
derive from the pilgrim experience? So in essence there was, thanks
to the Indians, because they taught us how to skin beavers and how
to plant corn when we arrived, but the real Thanksgiving was thanking
the Lord for guidance and plenty -- and once they reformed their
system and got rid of the communal bottle and started what was
essentially free market capitalism, they produced more than they
could possibly consume, and they invited the Indians to dinner,
and voila, we got Thanksgiving, and that's what it
was: inviting the Indians to dinner and giving thanks for all the
plenty is the true story of Thanksgiving.

The last two-thirds of this story simply are not told.

Thanks Rush for the LINK