Hey, look how John Stossel celebrates Thanksgiving! It's all about capitalism! Sound familiar? It should. Rush Limbaugh said basically the same thing last Thanksgiving on his radio show. (Sorry, the link to Rush's show is long dead.)
That's right. Long before Karl Marx was even born, the Pilgrims had discovered and experimented with what could only be described as socialism. And what happened? It didn't work! Surprise, surprise, huh? What Bradford and his community found was that the most creative and industrious people had no incentive to work any harder than anyone else, unless they could utilize the power of personal motivation! But while most of the rest of the world has been experimenting with socialism for well over a hundred years - trying to refine it, perfect it, and re-invent it - the Pilgrims decided early on to scrap it permanently.
Besides being "borrowed," Stossel's observations are annoying. Me, last year:
By this same logic, then, the lesson of Jamestown and the Virginia colony was that indentured servitude and slavery works and should be hailed today.
This view of Thanksgiving exploits the holiday for partisan politics, of course, where the original event was a harbinger of Reaganite and Bushian ideology of unfettered corporatism. It's the story, not of giving thanks to God or to the ether or a simple moment to meditate on your fortune and family, it's an ueber-patriotic call to conservative arms and an American Capitalist Empire!
Ugh.
Go read the original accounts of Thanksgiving, I dare you. Dig out the quotes about capitalism. What? You can't find any? But you will find this from Edward Winslow:
And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.
Winslow recognized his heavily bedecked table was the result of chance - or God, if you wish. He was lucky this year, and wanted to share his overabundance with others. Considering their success on the continent - and that of other European settlers - had more to do with disease than hard work or the free market, Winslow's attitude and humility on his holidy was totally appropriate.
Unlike Stossel, I don't think this is the holiday for arrogant self congratulation. Instead we should take inspiration from the Pilgrims, who were cut off from home, freezing, starving, dying of disease, and living in an alien land, farming unfamiliar crops and surrounded by a (to them) strange people. They knew how tenuous their hold on life was: they knew enough to be thankful for what they had. They knew that a time of plenty is a time of humility.
(And football. Whee!) |
