In the stories of the first
Thanksgiving sometimes the most important lesson is lost, the
world-shattering evolution from government or common ownership in early
America to private ownership -- while famines continued in Europe for
another 100 years under its "more humane" common ownership and sharing
the wealth.
In 1620, when the Pilgrims
landed at Plymouth Colony, that colony began in pure and unadulterated
communism because whatever was produced was put into a common storehouse
to be distributed to each according to need. In other words they
practiced what some 200 years later would become the basic tenet of the
Communist Party: "From each according to ability to each according to
need."
After two years the Pilgrims
dropped this ideal. Why? Because they were starving! Fifty-one of the
104 people who sailed on the Mayflower were dead by the third winter.
When people are dying of hunger sometimes they will stop and think.
From the diary of Gov. Bradford,
which we have today with the names and ages of the survivors, he called
everyone together one evening and in effect said anyone can give out
what's in the storehouse, but this presupposes there is something to
distribute, however under our system there is nothing to store.
Come spring we will try a new
idea -- we'll assign a parcel and allow each to "plant for his owne
perticuler" -- in other words, to each according to production or merit,
to keep what is produced or trade as seen fit.
When spring came, something
phenomenal occurred. Previously only some of the men worked the fields.
Now the women and children joined in for survival. What they did was
begin to practice the idea of private ownership, not perfectly, but more
perfectly than ever before. The ensuing harvest was so bountiful that it
gave us the first Thanksgiving Day. As a consequence, there began an era
of growth and development that sooner or later had to lead to
revolutionary ideas. And it did, the American Revolution, which was a
break from all previous history.
No, not that skirmish with King
George in 1776 that some call the American Revolution which was a minor
fracas as such things go, for men had been killing themselves by the
millions arguing over which form of authoritarian government should rule
the lives of the common people.
The real American Revolution is
that clause in the Declaration of Independence that states that all men
are "endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that
among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." What this
did was remove the king as "sovereign" and put the creator in his place.
Now it's one thing to declare
independence from authority, but it's another to put it into effect. So
there followed the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The Bill of
Rights is a misnomer because it is not a set of rights but a series of
prohibitions, not against the people but against their government.
There's something like 50 "noes"
and "shall nots." The government shall not abridge freedom of speech,
press, religion, right of assembly, nor shall private property be taken
without just compensation. The founders were mindful that under
Feudalism all land in essence belonged to the sovereign. They fully
agreed with John Locke, "The great and chief end, therefore, of men
uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves under government, is
the preservation of property ... The supreme power cannot take from any
man any part of his property without his own consent." Arthur Lee of
colonial Virginia declared, "The right of property is the guardian of
every other right, and to deprive a people of this, is in fact to
deprive them of their liberty."
Once this thing got rolling,
there was an outburst of creative energy the world had never seen.
People did not look to government for sustenance because the government
had nothing to give.
So people turned to themselves
-- and became, in the words of Emerson, "a self-reliant people." The
result: more human progress has been made in the past 200 years than in
the previous 2,000. This progress has evolved as the result of a limited
government, a market economy and private property -- the essence of
Americanism.
Today, we're seeing more and
more politicians running away from the American Revolution, and new
interpretations of the Constitution are gradually reinstating a feudal
land-use rights system in place of private property rights -- under the
Endangered Species Act, Carbon Emissions legislation, etc. The
government becomes the sovereign and in essence owns our property and
dictates the type of use, or no use at all, such as open space or
endangered habitat -- while the title holder/citizen/tenant, in lieu of
paying the "sovereign" rent -- pays property taxes.
Is America returning to that era
of regulation and set on redistributing the wealth of its most
productive citizens? A Wall Street Journal front page story
datelined Beijing (Nov. 16, 2010) begins: "Since the end of the Cold
War, the world's powers have generally agreed on the wisdom of letting
market competition -- more than government planning -- shape economic
outcomes." Except by China the article reports, and I would add, the San
Diego County planning department, which is poised to take away the
property rights of several thousand landowners under the guise of a new
government General Plan. The planners claim they know what's best for
us. The plan encompasses 3,570 square miles within the county. Do the
county supervisors agree and have the lessons of Plymouth Colony
irretrievably been lost?
