Just a reminder of what the Pilgrims were really giving thanks for,
namely, that God blessed them with the wisdom to abandon socialism.
As Rush Limbaugh says, you won't read this in a public school
history textbook...
The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition [Editorial]
November 26, 1997
The Pilgrims' Most Important Discovery
By ROBERT A. SIRICO
Thankfulness for prosperity is the mark of the season.
But as you enjoy the holiday feast tomorrow, remember
that only private property makes prosperity possible--a
hard lesson the original Pilgrims learned in the years
after their arrival in North America.
In 1617, when the Pilgrims decided to leave the
Netherlands, they formed a partnership in a joint-stock
company with a group of London merchants. The company,
John Peirce & Associates, received a grant for a
plantation in the Virginia colony, but the Pilgrims
missed the mark and landed along the Massachusetts coast
instead. According to the terms of the contract, each
adult would be given a share in the company, but the
earnings would not be divided among the shareholders for
seven years. The Pilgrims' sense of collective ownership
was already established when they set sail for the New
World.
Once they landed in 1620, the Plymouth colony, following
the advice of the company, declared all pastures and
produce in common and enshrined this principle in law.
The result was economic chaos, disease and starvation.
After the first winter, half the colonists had died. It
was 1623 before private property rights were established
in land, and each stockholder was allowed to cultivate
food at a profit.
Textbooks typically blame the weather for this disaster.
But William Bradford, governor of the colony, who
instituted the New World's first privatization, had a
different opinion. Faced with a crisis, he wrote in his
diary, the colonists "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." So Bradford "assigned to every
family a parcel of land." "This had very good success
for it made all the hands very industrious, so as much
more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by
any means the Governor or any other could use, and saved
him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better
content."
The previous socialist policy, Bradford wrote, had
proved the "vanity of that conceit of Plato's . . . that
the taking away of property and brining community into a
commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing." In
fact, socialism "was found to breed much confusion and
discontent and retard much employment that would have
been to their benefit and comfort."
It was Bradford's decision to draw clear lines of
ownership, far more than a turn in the weather or better
production techniques, that allowed for the first
plentiful harvest and gave us the first Thanksgiving.
Even today, we set aside a day to give thanks to God,
who commanded us to till and keep the land while
forbidding us from taking what belongs to others.
The idea of Christian socialism is still around; it even
flourishes in seminaries. In part, this is due to a
misunderstanding of the Bible, and particularly the
second chapter of Acts. After Jesus' death, in the midst
of political persecution, the early Christians sold
their possessions and began "taking their meals
together."
Did this mean communism? Evidently not, for the record
also says they kept their own houses. But various
strains of Medieval demagogues expounded on this early
practice, and the monastic ideal it later inspired, to
manufacture a broad social norm. The result was always
the same: absolutism, poverty and failure.
Radical Christian socialism made an appearance in Latin
America beginning 30 years ago. Clerics, guided by
theologians with wild imaginations, embarked on a decade
of political activism in the name of "liberation
theology." Based less on Scripture and more on Marxian
class conflict, the advocates of this movement
unwittingly became apologists for antidemocratic juntas.
Property is code for greed, they said. And today the
Catholic bishops of England ask, in a pastoral letter,
how property can be reconciled with the common good.
Well, the common good is never better achieved than
through property ownership, without which there would be
no social, not to mention global, networks of
cooperative relations between people trading to their
mutual benefit.
Property is not an ultimate value, but a means to an
end. It allows us to make use of our individual talents,
to take risks, to be charitable and to imbue our lives
with ultimate meaning. It is the foundation of a growing
economy, a reward for work, a means of security and a
source of order in our lives. By allowing us to make
contracts and to share, it deters human conflict and
shores up social peace. Without private property, the
state pretends to rule on everyone's behalf, always with
the same disastrous results.
Tomorrow, as we give thanks for the abundance with which
we have been blessed, we should also remember the
lessons of Plymouth. So long as history marches forward,
there will always be another movement, another
demagogue, another aspiring autocrat, who will declare
that private property can and should be abolished.
Mankind has been cursed by collectivism too many times
for us ever to take this blessed institution for granted
again.
--------------------------------------------------------
Father Sirico is president of the Acton Institute for
the Study of Religion and Liberty in Grand Rapids, Mich.
Copyright c 1997 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Jim
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