Socialism at Plymouth Rock: Getting the Thanksgiving story straight
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
One thing to be thankful for this Thanksgiving is that it took the Pilgrims only a year or so to figure out that socialism was bad, both for individuals and communities as a whole.
Four centuries ago, William Bradford, the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, stated flatly in his history of Plymouth that the Pilgrims had been wrong to think the "taking away of property and commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing, as if they were wiser than God."
According to Bradford, not long after the Pilgrims landed in 1620, they found that the collectivity they had instituted in the colony bred "confusion and discontent and retard[ed] much employment" because men did not want to work without pay for other men's families. And so, a little more than a year after the first Thanksgiving, they decided to divide up the land they had so that everybody had a share and could grow what they wanted. Productivity increased, and the colony began to prosper, attracting more and more immigrants and ushering in the great migration from England, which soon resulted in such prosperity that New England became a wealth center for Great Britain.
It's too bad the failed socialist experiment at Plymouth Rock is not more prominently included in the Thanksgiving story. Perhaps it would make a difference to the 65% of Democrats who have a positive view of socialism today, including about half of millennials and Generation Zers who believe it would be preferable to our capitalist system.
As it is, most public school children do not learn about the early decision by the Pilgrims to move quickly from a socialistlike economy to an economic system that provided property rights and incentives for work and productivity. They also know little of the genius of the Mayflower Compact, which called for "just and equal laws" and set the foundation for the principles that the founders employed when they established America's government 150 years later.
Instead, too many public schools emphasize the Native American story, which is important but so riddled with leftist ideas such as critical race theory that it doesn't even get even the basic facts right.
Edward Winslow, a Pilgrim leader who attended the first Thanksgiving at Plymouth, provided us with an eyewitness account of what actually happened that day.
Winslow reported that he and his fellow Pilgrims were very excited about hunting geese and ducks for the big dinner. According to Winslow, they called it "exercising their arms," so perhaps we could have predicted that their descendants would be big supporters of gun rights. Winslow also bragged that Plymouth Bay was full of lobster, so that was likely on the menu, along with deer, which was brought by the Native Americans.
Missing from the traditional paintings of the first Thanksgiving is the fact that most of the people at the feast were Native Americans. It's estimated there were about 90 Native Americans there that day. For comparison, 102 Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, but more than half of them died in the first winter, before the big feast.
It is no accident that our education system has distorted the Thanksgiving story and ignored both the Pilgrims' failed socialist experiment and the importance of the Mayflower Compact. The "1619 Project " produced by the New York Times, for example, was cynically named to challenge the dates we associate with the beginning of the American idea, including the 1776 signing of the Declaration of Independence and even the 1620 landing at Plymouth Rock. The goal of the "1619 Project" is not just to downplay the significance of the American founding but also to attack and destroy American capitalism. And yet it is this capitalist system that granted the Pilgrims, and millions of Americans since, the opportunity to thrive and prosper.
History is dynamic, and there is always more to learn. But one thing is certain: The fact that the Pilgrims rejected socialism and nurtured the principles of liberty and freedom is important to who we are today — and is one more reason to be thankful this holiday season.
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Happy Thanksgiving y'all!
You too!
And to all far right wing fascists as well.
After all, this holiday, like many others, is based on lies.
Human society is based on lies.
To the victors go the spoils. They oft rewrite history for their own benefit.
As more and more people learned to write, more and more memoirs appeared
casting doubt on history giving rise to a cycle of autocracy, cleansing by
book burning and sometimes death and revolution.
The truth is a slippery devil.
Who has actually seen Plymouth Rock, which is located in Massachusetts, with their own eyes?
Arvo..ahh nope.. but I have walked up and down the Mayflower steps in Plymouth where the pilgrims and the ship were said to have left England.
I expected it to be something like Gibralter, but it's only around 5 feet in diameter.
Does it's size reduce it's significance in your opinion opinion?
Of course not. I was just surprised that it was so much smaller than I thought it would be due to its significance.
It's been broken in half at least twice, possibly three times.
Originally they tried to dig it out and move it to City Hall.
The top half broke off ...
They were moving that piece to City Hall and it fell off the truck
split it two..
One of those pieces went to storage while the other was on public display.
Tourists chiseled the display rock relentlessly...
The piece in storage was not guarded and a 400 pound slab was removed and shaped into a front door landing for a private residence.
I believe the displayed remains ended up at the smithsonian
A public display pen was built so that the beached boulder could only be
viewed from above.
The largest piece left in storage was eventually cemented to the beach section.
All over the country there are rock collections that claim to have bits of the Plymouth Rock that the Pilgrims likely never stepped on.
It was just an obstacle on the beach that prevented a more convenient wharf.
I always thought it was just propaganda. How would they know which rock...
How many 50 or more ton granite slabs were on the beach?
The original was estimated to be 9 to 10 tons
Beaches all around Plymouth Bay are very nice, relatively rock free.
What boulders there are have been dragged into miniature loose walls
perpendicular to the waters edge to help fight erosion during
nor'easters. Many are not granite, so who knows if they are native or not?
I know I am weird but I always just thought it was odd.
They have to dock the ship offshore, get in the dinghies and go ashore.
So instead of landing on a beach they decide to land and crawl up this huge boulder....
Quoting Britanica? That's one wild ass guess range.
Plymouth Rock presently measures 14 feet by 6 feet
and is a slab with varying thickness
from 6 to 18 inches
putting in squarely in the 4 ton range.
Besides some experience in large rock landscaping decades ago,
I would suggest that in 1774 as today, the described team of oxen
would not be able to budge 20,000 lbs.
The most a trained team could have pulled might have been 12,000 lbs
before they broke it.
Just my wild ass opinion.
I have seen it. 60 years ago. Underwhelming.
They were going to move it further inland again because the tides were encroaching on it.
When I saw it the tide was in and the inscription "162o" was difficult to make out.
No one is scientifically certain it is the same rock the Pilgrims reportedly used to disembark.
The Pilgrims actually landed on Cape Cod a month prior anyway.
It wasn't until 120 years later when a new wharf was planned to be built over the 9 ton boulder
that there were suddenly feelings about saving the rock.
It's all about as much of a myth as the first thanksgiving...
That was when I saw it as well, and my opinion of it was the same as yours.
Weirdly I guess, although I knew there was an actual rock, I always associated "Plymouth Rock" with a place rather than a slab of "naturally occurring and coherent aggregate of one or more minerals".
Thus I have never wondered about the size of Plymouth Rock.
Well, I guess it's just very ordinary to think of a rock that is named a "rock", like Rock of Gibralter, to actually be what they perceive as being a "rock". When you think of the moon , do you think of craters and anyalysis of its composition, or as just a cream-coloured disk in the sky?
I have. We took our children to (then) Plimoth Plantation many years ago while on a Cape Cod vacation. The name was changed in 2020 to Plimoth Patuxet in order to be more "inclusive". Frankly, Plymouth Rock was underwhelming. Although it was set in a deep pit and barricaded from above by bars, people still managed to climb down and spray paint it. The tours of the Plantation were very informative.
I saw the Liberty Bell but never saw the rock. It was ok but a little underwhelming too.
Americans just don't know how to do whelming symbology.
I was a lot more impressed by the Liberty Bell than I was by Plymouth Rock, but to me, even though I'm not American, the most impressive symbolic item, one that had me stand in awe before it, was not the Statue of Liberty, it was the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.
I first saw it in Independance Hall in the 60s and everyone was able to touch it.
I recently saw it in it's new home which is kind of like a sterile museum with the
bell hiding behind glass in a Mall like atmosphere with Park Service gift shops
and a theatre, tickets requires $$.
Progress /s
The later is when I saw it. I was thinking it was outside for some reason. Long time ago.
After Independence Hall it was in a glass box on the Mall.
Now it's at the end of a very long walk through it's own National Park Museum.
The Liberty Bell - Independence National Historical Park (U.S. National Park Service) (nps.gov)
When we went to Independance Hall two years ago it was worse than the
airport. Long lines,
frisked, wanded, pocketbooks and backpacks scanned, remove belts,
empty pockets, was counseled about having so much change in my pockets,
agreed to give it to my 90 plus year old Mom.
Which made her pocket book a dangerous weapon, lol.
Nice tour, excellent docents and an historically accurate armory upstairs.
Access to the third floor (roof access and the bell tower) are usually restricted
except for special occasions.
I have!
What jobs would the first pilgrims have had....
They obviously had to provide themselves with shelter, food and security. Since they didn't have the money to make the journey as well as by the necessary tools, and other supplies, they entered a contract with English investors. These investors paid the upfront bills, the colonists in return would work sending natural resources such as fish, timber and furs back to England. All assets, including the land and the Pilgrims’ houses, belonged to the investors until the end of seven years.
Plymouth Rock is perhaps 1/4 of its original size or smaller as souvenir hunters chipped away at it until it was protected in the mid 1800's. There are two chunks of the granite in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History.
"...to an economic system that provided property rights and incentives for work and productivity."
So, big walls work?
The Pilgrims didn't have walls, but they apparently had fences.
capecodtimes.com
gowandering.com
I'm looking for pix I took at PP, long ago. I thought there was a stockade fence around it. But there was a definite immigration angle to it - unless the revisionists are insisting it was a problem with skunks.
I don't recall a stockade fence around the plantation's perimeter, but there were fences around individual homes and gardens. If you go to DuckDuckGo Images, you'll find many pictures of these fences.
I find it disturbing that so-called "educated" US citizens are actually very UNeducated.