Enduring Lessons of Thanksgiving

We have become disconnected from and ignorant about the source of our great prosperity for which we give thanks. The earliest Americans, who lived under socialism, understood.
Enduring Lessons of Thanksgiving
By: George Noga – November 18, 2018

       Your children and grandchildren undoubtedly have been indoctrinated in the Thanksgiving narrative foisted on them by government schools and the media. You know, the one about Pilgrims celebrating their abundant first harvest and sharing it with Native Americans. It is a warm, fuzzy, politically correct, multi-cultural, feel-good myth, but it ignores the enduring lessons of Jamestown and Plymouth.

          Colonists arriving in Jamestown in 1607 found fertile soil and an abundance of game, fruit and nuts. Everything went into a common store owned by everyone and hence, no one. There was no direct connection between work and benefit. As with socialism everywhere, there soon was starvation amidst plenty. Within six months all but 38 died – most from starvation. In 1609 another 500 settlers arrived; six months later 440 more had died from starvation. In desperation, they turned to cannibalism.

          Then a new governor, Sir Thomas Dale, arrived. His first action was to give each man 3 acres, while requiring him to work one month a year for the common wheal, equal to a flat tax of 8.33%. Overnight the colony prospered; people became inventive and industrious. John Rolfe, husband of the real Pocahontas (not Elizabeth Warren), wrote about how private property had turned everything around. Jamestown’s first good harvest in 1611 was a direct result of abandoning socialism for private property.

       Fast forward to 1620; when the Pilgrims landed, they were governed under an arrangement that established communal property ownership. Everything went into  a common stock and was withdrawn by anyone as needed. This was pure communism: from each according to his ability, to each according to his need. Soon enough, they were reduced to eating rats and 50% of them died. Again, starvation amidst plenty.

     Governor Bradford took action. As Dale had done in Jamestown, he instituted private property rights, granting a parcel of land to each family. In Bradford’s words: “This led to good success, for it made all hands industrious. Much corn was planted; women now went willingly into the fields and took their little ones with them, which before was thought to be tyranny and oppression.” At the next harvest in 1621, there was enough of an abundance to share – thanks once again to private property rights.

       If the Pilgrims could not make socialism work, no one can. They were deeply religious, homogeneous, few in number and their survival depended on one another. Nevertheless, they starved to death en masse rather than work collectively. They did not tinker with, modify or seek to perfect socialism; they abandoned it as a failure.

         Over 400 years ago, the earliest American settlers understood socialism far better than Bernie Sanders, Andrew Gillum and Ocasio-Cortez, who are advocating that America return to the principles that created mass starvation in Jamestown, Plymouth and now Venezuela. Without liberty and property rights there is no abundance and there is no Thanksgiving. Socialism is pure evil and incapable of being refined.

       Teach your kids and grandkids the authentic lessons of Thanksgiving; you can begin by having them read this post. When society breaks the link between work and benefit, the inevitable results are privation and misery. No socialist scheme has ever worked; they all fail for the same reason, i.e. they are antithetical to human nature. If you want a veritable cornucopia to share with others, only capitalism can produce it.

       As in Jamestown and Plymouth, socialism always creates starvation (and even cannibalism) amidst plenty. Our ancestors found it so repugnant, they died rather than alter their human nature to make collectivism succeed. This year, let’s be thankful for the ineluctable lessons of early America: socialism fails and capitalism succeeds!


Next week’s post is about the politicization of science.