Dear Viewers: We have much to be thankful for. Today we take a break from complaining about what is wrong and take a look at what we appreciate and are grateful for. Ron Paul's Thanksgiving reflections and recollections in today's program.
Dear Viewers: We have much to be thankful for. Today we take a break from complaining about what is wrong and take a look at what we appreciate and are grateful for. Ron Paul's Thanksgiving reflections and recollections in today's program.
You know, Daniel, I've told you before that Thanksgiving is a special day for me.
I like it.
It sort of avoids some of the gaudiness of what's going on with Christmas and others.
And those are important days.
But I've always liked Thanksgiving because I've always been a thankful person.
And in many ways, you know, I don't think we express our thankfulness as much because we spend a lot of time on this program trying to make things better.
Then we have to sort of complain about things.
And we never look at just the positive thing and tell us what we're thankful for.
But there are a lot of things to be thankful for.
For instance, you know, just in my lifetime, which is rather short, but I do remember a little bit about the Depression and World War II and Korean War in Vietnam and a lot of economic problems that were much worse even than we have here.
We, of course, worry about what the future will bring.
But, you know, compared to some of those things, I think we live in really pretty good times because, you know, in many ways, for a lot of people, standard living has gone up.
And, you know, the advancement of civilization is something.
When I think about my dad delivered milk and horse and buggies before automobiles, even when my dad passed away, he referred to automobiles as a machine.
There's a machine there.
He always called them a machine, but that's what they were when he remembered them coming in.
And he was born in 1904.
So just think of all the benefits we have.
And I think that me personally, I feel very blessed because of my family, my wife and my family, our kids, and family is very important.
And that's been very good.
But I personally feel very blessed in that I've had personal goals.
And one early goal was, of course, getting through medical school.
And to me, it was never an automatic.
I never felt like, you know, I'm the top person in the class.
I can go to any place I want.
But medical school came and I was able to do a part of medicine that I liked.
There were a lot of specialties you go into, but I sort of picked a happier branch.
Somebody told me once, it's the only branch of medicine where the patient goes home with something.
And other people, they might come in sick and they might go home with their health, but they don't get anything in addition.
But in OB, they get something, and you get more credit than you deserve.
So medicine's been great.
But then because I've been fascinated in ideas and understanding economics and thinking about politics, you know, I think politics sometimes is very lucky.
I didn't set out, this is my goal, I'm going to do this, but it was sort of guided in a direction of speaking out.
And I got to participate.
And I continue to participate in something that I really enjoyed, discussing the issue.
So I am very grateful for my family and what I've had throughout my life.
That's very nice.
You know, I feel the same way.
Thanksgiving was always a happy time in our family.
We always lived geographically close.
And so the family would all come over.
And we were a pretty loud family growing up.
And my grandfather's from Pittsburgh.
Grateful Traditions00:03:35
And so there'd be a lot of yelling for the Steelers if the game was on.
And there was another faction who liked the Raiders and the Raiders people and the Steelers people would yell at each other.
So it wasn't a quiet, harmonious gathering.
But I'm sure grateful for all those times.
You know, it's very important.
And I'm certainly very thankful for, you know, 12 or 13 wonderful years I've spent working for you and working with such a great group on Capitol Hill.
We're all still working together.
And, you know, your careers can be very fulfilling, especially if you do something that you really believe in.
And so I'm grateful to you for giving me that chance way back then when you had no idea who this guy was in your office.
Snuck in the back door.
Very good.
And I want to truly wish the viewers a very happy Thanksgiving.
But just for a minute, thinking about when did Thanksgiving start?
It's been around a long time, and there's no precise date that it was started.
It's been around, and a lot of people like to claim credit even before our colonies were started.
Other people in Texas claimed it started in Texas and the Spanish did it.
But it was always on the same principle: being thankful for the harvest and just surviving or just getting across the ocean.
They had Thanksgiving Day.
But there's one date that generally a lot of people think about, and that is around the time of 1620 with the Plymouth colony.
And the one thing I know, if Thanksgiving came from that date, it didn't come from 1620, probably from 1623 or so.
Because when the settlers came over and landed at Plymouth Colony, it was bad.
A lot of them died away over here, and after the first year, they were starving.
And another large number of people died.
And they had collectivism.
Everybody was supposed to work and put the food in one area, and then the food would be distributed.
It wasn't working.
The second year, the same way, and it wasn't working.
But Governor Bradford, then, in the third year, we have to do something different.
And he had this notion, because it did exist around the world, it existed in England.
We need to not think that the collectivism that we're using is the best way to take care of everybody.
Maybe we ought to look at this in a private property sense.
So they divided up the land and they had an agreement.
Each family would get a plot of land.
And lo and behold, a miracle happened.
You know, the families worked harder.
The wives worked.
The fathers worked.
The children worked.
Production went way up.
Everybody seemed to have enough food.
There was enough food for the people who couldn't work.
They were taken care of.
And the starvation just disappeared.
They weren't having it.
They weren't starving anymore.
Matter of fact, they were able to produce so much that they started trading and selling.
And it was the introduction of a free market economy.
So I would like to think that that time they were grateful for this, but I think what they were really grateful for was the rejection of collectivism and socialism and all this do-goodism and the welfare stuff.
It didn't work.
And individual property ownership actually was the answer to production and taking care of people and generosity.
More people were taken care of.
So that is what I like to think about the origin of Thanksgiving Day.
And there may be variations of that story, but of course, I think they were very grateful that the people were no longer starving.