I’ve continued to enjoy my forays up the forebears’ trees through Ancestry.com. I've found stories I never heard, and relatives I never knew about. I’ve corresponded with a cousin who is doing the same thing, and she's uploaded a lot of information to the tree branch we share. One story she uploaded was about my “PawPaw” Kitchens’ first cousin, Willard Kitchens, who was killed on the Bataan Death March in the Philippines during WWII. Tracing my ancestors back to the 1600’s and beyond makes me feel a connection to History I’ve never had before. This Thanksgiving I read about how our tradition started. Some of you may not know the FULL story of Thanksgiving.
It was incredibly brave (or foolish) to bring families across the ocean to a little-known land called the America . . . .
1619:
From the pilgrim William Bradford, “being thus passed the vast ocean, and a sea of troubles . . . they had now no friends to welcome them nor inns to entertain or refresh their weatherbeaten bodies; no houses or much less towns . . . . and for the season it was winter . . . sharp and violent, and subject to cruel and fierce storms, dangerous to travel to known places, much more to search an unknown . . . . a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wild beasts . . . . For summer being done . . . the whole country, full of woods and thickets, represented a wild and savage hue. If they looked behind them . . . the mighty ocean . . . was now a . . . gulf to separate them from all the civil parts of the world.“
1623:
After two years of communal living and near-starvation, with no word of when they might expect any supplies: “. . . they began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery . . . . after much debate . . . the Governor . . . gave way that they should set corn every man for his own . . . and so assigned to every family a parcel of land . . . . This had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means . . . .The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.”
“The experience that was had . . . may well evince the vanity of that conceit of Plato's and other ancients . . . that the taking away of property and bringing . . . into a commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing; . . . was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For the young men . . . repined that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children without any recompense. The strong . . . had no more in division of victuals and clothes than he that was . . . not able to do a quarter . . . was thought injustice. The . . . younger sort, thought it some indignity and disrespect unto them. And for men's wives to be commanded to do service for other men, as dressing their meat, washing their clothes, etc., they deemed it a kind of slavery . . . . it did . . . diminish . . . mutual respects that should be preserved amongst them.”
There it is folks . . . socialism retards employment, breeds discontent, and feels like slavery. Free enterprise fosters creativity and industriousness, which generates MORE for everyone. Capitalism is to prosperity what CO2 is to plant growth.
George Santayana said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Remember . . . and give thanks.
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“ That which is held most in common is least cared for” . . . think of public housing projects.
Read more about the “tragedy of the commons” at Wikipedia and in John Stossel’s blog.
Click here for Stossel’s comments on “public” parks.
Picture was a free download.
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