The Tea Party sees Thanksgiving as a morality tale about finding salvation in Capitalism. The Pilgrims were failed Socialists who turned to Capitalism for survival. Only after foregoing communal ownership of property and allowing private ownership did the colony prosper. (Communism could also have been used, but socialism is the bogey meme du jour.)
The actual historical details are much more interesting than the Tea Party myth.
The Pilgrims formed a start-up and the Merchants and Adventurers of London were their venture capitalists. The Merchants would put up the cash for the supplies and the trip to the New World and the colonists would put up the labor. They signed a seven-year contract in which all land, livestock, lumber, furs, and other trade goods were held in partnership. At the end of the seven year period, the company was to be dissolved and the assets distributed. The Pilgrims were more like shareholders in a corporation than socialists.
Interestingly, only one Pilgrim died on the 66-day voyage. This is attributed to the fact that the Mayflower had never carried passengers, she was a “sweet ship.” Seepage from previous wine cargos had impregnated the ship’s timbers and acted like a disinfectant.
The Mayflower landed in November of 1620 and the first Thanksgiving was held in 1621. The colony’s governor, William Bradford, abolished the communal land arrangement and gave each household a parcel of land, in 1623. It seems unlikely that a colony in the grips of a famine, caused by evils of communal property ownership, would host a three-day feast. The prospects of a famine would come the following year with a devastating summer drought and the seasonal migration of fish and fowl.
Agriculture did become more profitable in following years, in part due to improved cultivation techniques of corn, a crop for which the colonists had no experience, and in part due to the increase in each individual’s exertion on their privately held land.
Two attempts to make payments to the investors were met with pirates, who captured the ships bringing back furs and timber. The investors, fearing a total loss of their investment, settled with the Pilgrims for £1800 after an investment of nearly £7000.
H/T: NY Times, New American, Dictionary of American History.
-David Drumm (Nal)
Andy,
Let me get this straight . . .
You send your goons over here to disrupt the house of my friend(s) and malign the liberal ideals upon which this country was founded with incredible displays of vile behavior. Now that they’ve been routed numerous times and exposed as the propagandists they are, you wish to offer me a job? The old “if you can’t beat ’em, try to hire them” ploy?
And you want me to “behave myself” as a term of employ.
Gonna do my a favor, are you?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0n2vurSBIQ
In case you don’t like watching science fiction, here’s the salient part of the scene and you’d find my terms to be quite similar to Vir’s:
“I’d like to live just long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors come with too high a price. I want to look up into your lifeless eyes and wave like this. (waves) Can you and your associates arrange that for me, Mr. Morden?”
That is, of course, hyperbole. No actual beheading or pike is required, figurative ones will do just fine.
If you want to “add a dimension that other pundit sites are missing”? How about adding dimensions that your site is already missing like honesty, respect for the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, integrity and a concern for people that extends beyond what they can profit you and your paymasters personally.
Now, that being said, if your primary antagonist in media messaging – Mr. Soros – has viewers or is a viewer himself in the Prof’s audience, I would gladly consider a job offer from him to work either at MoveOn or in any other anti-propagandist capacity that frustrates the manifestly destructive and duplicitous ideals your lot promotes. Mr. Soros may contact me through Professor Turley whom I trust to vet his identity before initiating contact provided of course that the Professor is willing to assist in that manner.
Thanks for the offer though, Andy.
It gave me a chance to illustrate that not all men have a price.
Buddha is Laughing:
Mo and Gippers Ghost as you call them have an idea for a segment on our website (http://www.breitbart.com/), we would like to have you debate the issues of the day with Mo and/or Gippers Ghost (Charlie and Kurt). You are free to say anything you wish, except we would like you to refrain from calling them names or using foul language, other than that anything goes.
They have been searching around the blogosphere for someone of your caliber to bring on as an opposing point of view within our organization. We think it would add a dimension that other pundit sites are missing, namely a strong point of view from the opposing team. We feel (me, Charlie and Kurt) that your abilities will bring that added dimension to our content.
The discussion you had with Kurt was certainly enlightening and entertaining. Really good stuff.
If you are interested please call my office and ask for either Charlie or Kurt, just tell them it’s Buddha from the Turley Blog.
After you speak with them you and I can discuss terms.
Hope to hear from you,
A.
Come back whenever you can get your head out of Andy’s pants.
I’ll be glad to smack you down again.
Gip, Mo, and Mike,
GOTCHA.
(Sleep well, guys.)
Two-fisted drinkers beware! Does the “Mike in you” drink, too?
Gotta run, big fella.
Buddha is Laughing:
We’ll be back. For some more fun in a few weeks/months.
Keep the world safe in the meantime, you never know when those sociopathic/greedy/capitalists bent on world domination will show up.
rolfmao
Good night Captain my Captain.:)
Larry:
Mo isnt very good at spelling with a few beers under his belt.
Yeah, Gip. Anything you say, big fella.
I’m thinking “DID” now. (You might know it as “MPD.”)
“Mike” is that you?
(Hey, have a good night breakin’ wind, big guy.
P.S. It’s “bored”, not board.
“It entertains us for a few hours when we are board.”
Well there’s your problem right there!
Your heads and hearts are made of wood.
The word is “bored”, you half-wits.
As to “screwing with me”? If you define “screwing with me” as “getting your asses kicked by me”, well then, that also explains a lot. Many sociopaths are masochists too.
Sociopathy!
It’s not just for sadists any more.
“Marxism = socialism = fascism = death.
Capitalism = Life and respect for the individual.”
As an aside, this is why I use religious imagery when discussing certain peoples attitudes towards those who hold contrary political views.
http://bible.cc/romans/6-23.htm
Larry:
Gipper and I are friends. We like to screw with Buddha. It entertains us for a few hours when we are board.
He never fails to amuse. Sometimes we get a group together and screw with him. We laugh our asses off. He is Don Quixote and we are his windmills.
I think if it weren’t for us he would wither and die, we give him something to live for. Protecting the world from the greedy capitalist hoard bent on world domination. ROLLING ON THE FLOOR LAUGHING OUR ASSES OFF.
He is the socialist equivalent of Captain America. (that was from Mike).
roflmao
And Gipper? Should have known that the two of you were friends. Evil twins, the both of you.
Trying to cover your tracks, but you can’t.
Yeah right, Gipper. I mean Mo. No, I mean Gipper.
Well, anyway, Mo(e), where’s Curly? Lose him somewhere?
Gip:
He is a douche. Probably uses too much vinegar.
I wonder if “his” muff aletta is really a sandwich?
Bakersfield and Rhubarb would have enjoyed this thread.
Bakersfield, Rhubarb are you around?
Mo:
I told you that I would take care of this. It isnt your fun, go find someone else to egg on.
This guy is wound really tight, let me push his buttons.
Bullshit, but preach on, zealot of death. I’m not destroying your nonsense for your benefit. I destroy propaganda because that’s what I do. It’s my nature.
“people who make”
Pardon. It’s hard to type while enjoying a muffaletta. A muffaletta I bought with money earned without exploiting or killing anyone I might add.
“The common man is cannon fodder for socialism, numb nut. Yeah socialism lifts the common man alright, right to heaven.”
Bullshit, but preach on, zealot of greed. I’m not destroying your nonsense for your benefit. I destroy propaganda because that’s what I do. It’s my nature.
“How much more exploitative can you be than to ask a man to die for the state for no good reason?”
By asking them to die for your personal profit and then expecting to escape the consequences of their deaths.
“It is a sad trail of blood that leads to you and those like you. People like me and ekeyra aren’t even in the same league as you and your blood thirsty compatriots.”
You’re right about that. You aren’t in the same league. You’re not even playing the same game. The goal of my game is the betterment of all. The goal of your game is your own narrow and unenlightened self-interests and ego massage that tells you “you’re special”.
“All we want is for a man to keep what he makes by the sweat of his brow to provide for himself and his family.
You want the family of 4 making $50,000 a year to pay for the family of 6 making $40,000 per year. Yeah you are a real uplifting guy.”
You have no idea what I want in regards to taxation. I want the people you make more than $250,000/year to start paying their way in a proportionate manner to the benefits they reap. Or better yet, for everyone to pay the exact same percentage of income tax with a minimum threshold of paying taxes period. There are at least a hundred posts here where I’ve advocated that very same stance on taxation. I’m for tax equity. See what happens when you try to put words in my mouth? You end up choking.
“You are a joke and blood thirsty to boot.”
Yeah, we humanists are such a blood thirsty lot.
“How much blood is on your philosophical hands Mr. Uplifter?”
None. I don’t kill or exploit others for profit. It’s against my ethics.
“More gallons than I would want on my conscience.”
That would be funny if you had a conscience. Your economic defense of exploitation indicates otherwise.
And using equal signs in no way changes you are still making false equivalences – a logical fallacy. You can’t beat my arguments, so you shout louder. Learn that one from Glenn Beck?
How very ineffective you are at both argument and propaganda.
Well boo hoo, Mr. Propagandist.
Looks like you loose again.
Did you grow up poor and the bank foreclosed on your family house? Or you grew up rich and hate your successful father.
One of the 2.
Not my job to pay for your house. Go talk to a charity that I give money to.