I’ll try to keep this short… November 26, 2008
Posted by downwithabsolutes in Uncategorized.trackback
Governor William Bradford’s Thanksgiving Day Proclamation
Inasmuch as the great Father has given us this year an abundant harvest of Indian corn, wheat, peas, beans, squashes, and garden vegetables, and has made the forests to abound with game and the sea with fish and clams, and inasmuch as he has protected us from the ravages of the savages, has spared us from pestilence and disease, has granted us freedom to worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience. Now I, your magistrate, do proclaim that all ye Pilgrims, with your wives and ye little ones, do gather at ye meeting house, on ye hill, between the hours of 9 and 12 in the day time, on Thursday, November 29th, of the year of our Lord one thousand six hundred and twenty-three and the third year since ye Pilgrims landed on ye Pilgrim Rock, there to listen to ye pastor and render thanksgiving to ye Almighty God for all His blessings.
No matter what your opinion of the authenticity or relevance of Governor Bradford’s proclamation, no matter what your background or motivation for celebrating the holiday, may you and yours have a safe and pleasant Thanksgiving Day.
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downwithabsolutes
Dominique
Mike Matthews
ravages of the savages
Oh my…LOL
I’d be thankful if I were ravaged by a savage. Jeez.
WNJ’s Rhonda Graham went with the ‘history of “The Plymouth Settlement,” William Bradford’ this morning too. At least you stayed off of the nauseating quotes she gave, Leo. I give thanks for that.
These quotes?
Stating that Communal living is a failure,
because it encourages a ‘Let George do it, attitude’, as compared to the success witnessed when people were given private property rights, and they were let to grow their own food, and allowed to trade with others in order to ‘redistribute their surplus crops’?
Or was it the “underpinning of a Christian work ethic” comment that was offensive?
PS. I choose to Believe.
- Paul
From the Editorial:
“”In his history of “The Plymouth Settlement,” William Bradford wrote that communal living in their first year resulted in the near-starvation of the entire colony.
Yet it was “tried for several years, and by good and honest men” and for this first colonist, it proved the emptiness of Plato’s and other ancient philosophies about good intentions of humans when it comes to other people’s property.
For the pilgrims, taking away of private property, and the possession of it in community, by a common wealth, did not make a state happy and flourishing as promised.
“In this instance, community of property (so far as it went) was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much employment which would have been to the general benefit and comfort. …
“Let none argue that this is due to human failing, rather than to this communistic plan of life in itself,” Bradford declared.
The failure of the experiment brought about much debate, after which the “Governor, with the advice of the chief among them, allowed each man to plant corn for his own household and to trust to themselves for that.”
This earliest of micro-economic tweaking, according to Bradford, produced remarkable success. “It made all hands very industrious, so that much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the Governor or any other could devise, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better satisfaction.”
So Joe the Plumber — the GOP’s blue-collar cause celebre, who elicited President-elect Barack Obama’s “spread the wealth” comment during the campaign — is vindicated?
Very possibly for Crossan. Not entirely by my way of thinking.
“The establishment of private property rights resolved the situation and set the course for America’s 400 years of prosperity as we know it today,” Crossan believes. “Along with the underpinning of a Christian work ethic, that is arguably the Pilgrim’s most significant contribution to what has been called ‘The American Dream.’ “”"
Yes Paul, those ridiculous quotes: Scientifically insignificant and anecdotal revisionist conclusions drawn from a conservative trying like hell to equate the foibles of the first year of struggling settlers in a strange land to some treatise on socialism.
This whole Bradford thing is really irritating me this morning so I am devoting some research time on it.
(By the way, Leo dear, it is proper blogger ettiquette to hyper-link to other people’s work that you cite. Did you copy/paste this from Wiki?).
There is no doubt that Bradford was spinning his story over thirty years to put his pilgrim colonists front and center in early American history. I stand with my revisionist claim and posted about it today on DE Way.
Native americans living with terrorism since 1492!
“Native americans living with terrorism since 1492!”
What has been missing, is the blame on the Importing countries. YES, I mean those countries that existed back then, up to and including 1776.
If there are reparations, I believe those that made the most should pay, THE IMPORTERS. SO ante up, Spain, Portugal, England, France and all those other countries that had commercial navies.
The USA inherited all that stuff that occurred 1492 till 1776. Thats 284 years, being colonies. And for the record, it is only 232 years since 1776 as the USA.
Spin, is blaming the USA, when we did not even exist.
.
Oh, for heavens’ sakes, these comments are bizarre-o.
Happy Thanksgiving to you as well, Leo. Happiness and good health to you and yours.