Coming Soon: Reason's Thanksgiving Wishes!

Nick Gillespie | November 23, 2011

We'll be putting up our 2011 Thanksgiving video in just a little while today. In the meantime, relax with our offering from last year's holiday. Here's the original writeup:

The Pilgrims founded their colony at Plymouth Plantation in December 1620 and promptly started dying off in droves.

As the colony's early governor, William Bradford, wrote in "Of Plymouth Plantation":

That which was most sadd & lamentable was, that in 2. or 3. moneths time halfe of their company dyed.

When the settlers finally stopped croaking, they set about creating a heaven on earth, a society without private property, where all worked for the common good. Everything was shared. Especially bitching and moaning about working for the common good. Bradford again:

Yong-men that were most able and fitte for labour and service did repine that they should spend their time and streingth to worke for other mens wives and children, with out any recompense....And for men's wives to be commanded to doe service for other men, as dresing their meate, washing their cloaths, etc., they deemed it a kind of slavery, neither could many husbands well brooke it.

With nobody working, everybody was suffering. And in case you think nobody was working simply because they couldn't understand a damn thing Bradford was saying, chew on this: In 1623, Bradford and the other leaders

...assigned to every family a parceel of land...this had very good success; for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more torne was planted then other waise would have bene by any means the Govr or any other could use, and saved him a great deall of trouble, and gave farr better contente.

In no time at all

any generall wante of famine hath not been amongest them since to this day.

America would never go hungry again. So this week, before you drift into your annual tryptophan-induced coma, don't forget to give thanks to the true patron of this holiday feast: property rights.

For more on this, go here. For a contrary take on whether the Pilgrims were proto-socialists, go here.

Approximately 2.30 minutes.

Produced by Meredith Bragg and Nick Gillespie. Voices by Meredith Bragg and Austin Bragg.

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S.B.|11.23.11 @ 3:35PM|#

Except the Pilgrims weren't in the Bay Colony. They were in Plymouth. And both the Separatists of Plymouth and the Puritans of Mass. Bay had no laws that were in any appreciable way different from the country they came from - England. So unless you want to argue that the common law of England in the 17th century was nothing more than Sharia law, you should probably back off on the idiotic comparisons.

There is no "we"|11.23.11 @ 4:05PM|#

So the government gives everybody an equal amount of real property for free right up front? Sounds great to me.

Let's do it again: Redistribute all existing wealth equally on a per capita basis today. I know those who own large chunks of existing wealth right now would be upset, but so what? If we could legitimately take from the Indians and give it to the settlers back then, we can do pretty much the same thing today.

PantsFan|11.23.11 @ 11:49AM|#

Thanksgiving was 6 weeks ago.
Slackers.

Apatheist|11.23.11 @ 11:51AM|#

You've put up the gambol signal!

tarran|11.23.11 @ 11:55AM|#

How could they be starving? I thought the land provided anything anybody would need for only 4 hours of foraging per day?

Colin|11.23.11 @ 11:56AM|#

What color?

Fist of Etiquette|11.23.11 @ 11:56AM|#

So Bradford was texting his thoughts?

|11.23.11 @ 11:58AM|#

Should be interesting to see how that all works out in the end.

www.surf-privacy.at.tc

Spoonman.|11.23.11 @ 12:09PM|#

Anon-bot takes the long-term view on colonialism.

Cliché Bandit|11.23.11 @ 12:30PM|#

I lol'd

Injun Joe|11.23.11 @ 12:04PM|#

If my fellow Injuns hadn't taught those dumbass Pilgrims how to fish and trap, all of those fuckers would have starved to death. Then out Wampum would have never hyperinflated.

Injun Joe|11.23.11 @ 12:05PM|#

* our

Injun Joe forget preview.

GILMORE|11.23.11 @ 12:08PM|#

In the meantime, relax with our offering from last year's holiday. Here's the original writeup

Come on guys. You're supposed to serve reheated leftovers *the day after* thanksgiving. Not before.

Spoonman.|11.23.11 @ 12:08PM|#

This thread needs to be put in gambol lockdown right away.

romulus augustus|11.23.11 @ 1:06PM|#

Too bad their Sharia Law made the Bay Colony a hell-hole for any dissenter dumb enough to remain there.

Eduard van Haalen|11.23.11 @ 1:48PM|#

But it sounds like such fun...being stoned all the time!

There is no "we"|11.23.11 @ 4:06PM|#

It was pretty much sharia law. Elizabethean England bears comparison to the most vicious dictatorships of the present time -- Burma, Syria,

Old English law was maybe even worse than sharia, since it was even more fanatical about witchcraft.

The Point|11.23.11 @ 4:15PM|#

You missed me.

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