Did you know that the plentiful results of discarding collectivism for individual liberty ushered in Thanksgiving? Thank you, to all of our loyal viewers for sharing a part of each day with us. We are thankful that the ideas of Liberty are alive and well!
Did you know that the plentiful results of discarding collectivism for individual liberty ushered in Thanksgiving? Thank you, to all of our loyal viewers for sharing a part of each day with us. We are thankful that the ideas of Liberty are alive and well!
Did you know that the plentiful results of discarding collectivism for individual liberty ushered in Thanksgiving? Thank you, to all of our loyal viewers for sharing a part of each day with us. We are thankful that the ideas of Liberty are alive and well!
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With me today is Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
And Daniel, happy Thanksgiving Day.
Thanksgiving, Dr. Paul.
What do you have planned?
Are you going to have a big dinner?
We are having a big dinner with a large family.
So lots of food, lots of loud talking, I hope.
Well, we'll have a big dinner also.
I bet.
No, and Thanksgiving Day has always been one that I was very sympathetic for.
Of course, there's some controversies on how it got started and what it means.
But I think it's interesting because it makes some pretty good points.
But a lot of people think of Thanksgiving Day as having started, you know, at Plymouth Colony, you know, in 1620 when they arrived.
And it was a couple years that they had struggled and they had a dinner.
People visualize having a Thanksgiving dinner with the Indians and it was carried on from that.
It isn't quite that simple.
You know, I think history shows that there were certainly times when the settlers, the colonists at Plymouth Colony were very thankful and things got better.
But when they came over in those very, very small ships, they had a collectivist philosophy.
You know, everybody owned everything and they would divvy it out and maybe on the ship they couldn't do it any other way.
But they followed through and afterwards, after they landed, which was in 1620, they followed this idea of collectivism.
Everybody would work, everybody would put what they earned, and everybody would get it distributed by the governor and Bradford was the governor.
But believe it or not, the collectivism even then just didn't work.
But the thing that we should look at and be thankful for is he figured it out.
After two years of near starvation, a lot of people died there.
He says, maybe we ought to try the private property.
It wasn't like private property was totally unknown, but they just didn't think under these circumstances they could do it.
And then he introduced this notion that each family would have a plot of land.
And all of a sudden, productivity went up.
People were prosperous.
People traded goods.
They were able to raise enough.
Instead of starving to death, they were actually finding ways to sell things.
And they started to prosper.
So to me, the Thanksgiving for beginning at Plymouth isn't the fact that it was just popped up and everything worked out all right.
It was changing plans, discarding socialism and collectivism, and saying private property rights were the way to go.
And lo and behold, they had a much better time after that.
Imagine the ability to change your approach.
This is one of the main themes of our show, which is that the government should change its approach, of course, on its foreign policy and on the way it treats its citizens.
Imagine at a time where they realized it wasn't working.
For example, maybe if we realized spending $5.9 trillion on useless wars was not working and just shifted gears, so maybe there's a lesson there for us.
You know, our title here is, you know, reasons to be thankful.
But if you concentrate on thankfulness and not dissect it out, you could become very complacent.
You know, if you only had one or two years where you were thankful, well, things are going pretty well, and not think what's going on.
And I like to think that part of our job is not to be complacent and saying, well, you know, we've been borrowing a little money and we've been benefiting by that.
Individuals might say to themselves, we're doing okay, even though we owe $5 million.
They can't be complacent about it.
And I think that is something we have to be concerned about because we still do have a lot of things to be thankful for.
One of the times that it crossed my mind about being thankful for living in this country occurred, boy, it's a good many years ago now, it must be 50 years ago, when I was in the military and I traveled a lot.
As a flight surgeon, I traveled and went to many, many different countries and saw a lot of poverty.
And I can remember so clearly being in Pakistan.
And it looks like Pakistan hasn't changed any.
Poverty ridden.
And they talk, well, I can describe it.
But the message was that when I came home on so many of those trips, and it wasn't just the third world countries, it was some countries, you know, when I'd go to Spain and these other places, I would come home and, you know, I thought, you know, it's pretty nice here.
You know, I became aware of what we had.
And there were places around the world still are where, you know, the justice systems are rotten.
I think we shouldn't be complacent about ours because I worry about that.
But it was, and I've always been thankful for that and thankful for, you know, the many blessings I've had personally and our family has had.
I'm very thankful that I was able to do something I really wanted to do and that was practice medicine, deliver new life into the world.
And very thankful that I was able to participate in a discussion of ideas because that's always fascinated me and did a little bit of that in Washington.
And since that we've had the opportunity to reach a few people, hopefully a few more someday, on trying to get people to understand why we should be thankful and make use of our freedoms so that we can promote it and pass these traditions on to the next generation.
The Evolution of Thanksgiving00:04:06
And you know, it's easy to kind of appropriate a holiday to suit your own perspectives, but I don't think it's too much of a stretch to talk about the early Thanksgivings.
You talk about 1621 and 1622 also being a celebration of trade and friendship.
And of course, things weren't always very smooth between the people from the old world and the Native Americans here, of course.
But early on, as you know, there was trade between the two.
There was friendship.
The people that were, the Native Americans that were here shared some of their techniques for catching fish, for planting crops, et cetera, et cetera.
So I think that's a very nice start and very nice beginning if we had only been able to keep that spirit.
I like to think that the origination and what we want to carry forth is the celebration of the success of the colony.
And that was when Bradford decided that they have property ownership and they did so much better.
And it was the discovery that socialism didn't work and that freedom did.
And that to me was important.
But Thanksgiving Day was not a tradition, didn't become a tradition.
George Washington had one day that he used as a celebration of Thanksgiving, but it wasn't carried forth.
It was never an official holiday.
It became official holiday in 1863.
And when I read about that, it didn't make me really excited.
I'd rather think back about the discovery of what freedom did in Plymouth Colony, how it energized people and how it saved lives and it was really setting a standard for the development of our country, you know, and that was self-reliance and hard work and property ownership.
But in 1863, Lincoln declared this a holiday.
And when I was a bit disappointed about what his rationale was, it was the overwhelming victory at Gettysburg.
Well, it just happens that I don't get excited about that because I saw that as the turning point where the Republic would not be restored and the Republic would be undermined.
And unfortunately, it has steadily eroded since then.
But the whole tragic era of the Civil War is just, you know, and the misinformation we've had.
But anyway, that's when the current Thanksgiving Day was established in 1863, and we have followed through on this.
And I think it was not even until the 40s that they actually established which day of the year it would be.
I think it was kind of roving.
Yeah, they had it, I think Lincoln had it like the second Thursday and they changed it.
I think Roosevelt changed it to like the fourth Thursday of the month.
I don't know what political reason they had for that.
But you know, I just think that there is a time and a place for Thanksgiving.
I think that if it's, it just doesn't seem necessary to make it an official religious holiday by the government.
You know, there were some, even Jefferson was concerned that they might overplay that.
But to be thankful and pick out a day where people can voluntarily be thankful for what they have, you know, I think that is fine.
And even with all the concerns that we express, we still have a lot to be thankful for when you think back that I imagine what would we be doing with our program in 1917?
What would we have been doing with our program, you know, in the 1917?
Well, 1917 was the big year because that war continued all on through World War II.
But what about all the wars since then?
I mean, we fought the wars in the last 17 years, but still, you know, conditions are bad, but they're not as bad as they were.
I mean, those 60s were horrible.
And that was when, you know, I was drafted into the military.
I mean, just think of how many people died there.
The Power of Information Age00:06:02
So thankfulness is important, but trying to recognize exactly what we're thankful for and why it is there, but being vigilant and not being complacent to try to continue to sort it out and those things that we are thankful for and we think they are worthy to try to establish that as a tradition.
And of course, our first obligation is for us to practice what we believe in and also to teach our family and friends and neighbors to promote these ideas.
I don't think it's a national issue in the sense that what we need to do, and you've heard some of this from conservatives, what we need to do is we need to have a classroom to instruct people on how they understand these things.
Yeah, maybe a classroom to read the Constitution to them once in a while.
That wouldn't hurt.
But when it gets into getting anywhere close to the spiritual matters, that should be left to the family and the church.
You made a good point earlier, and it's easy to forget it.
We complain a lot about the treatment we feel we've gotten from the social media with what we're trying to do with our anti-war message.
And it is frustrating, but you're right, if we were back in 1914, we wouldn't get throttled by Twitter and Facebook.
We'd be throwing in the slammer.
We'd be sharing a cell with Eugene Debs or something.
So we do have to be thankful because we do have technology now.
We have the ability to get around these things if there's an injustice.
Still, hopefully the government doesn't crack down more, but we're certainly in better shape than then.
You know, I think this issue of technology is important because technology can help us, but technology can really harm us.
And I've talked about it and I've written about that, that so much technology in my lifetime has been used to build destructive forces.
You know, when you think of all the weaponry, take for instance, you know, nuclear power.
Nuclear power can be used for peace, but nuclear power can be used to kill a lot of people.
But over the years, so much technology has drifted into destruction.
And yet, I think there's no reason why civilization and the human race can't advance once in a while and use technology to do exactly the opposite, promote a more congenial society, which is personal, but we have the technology.
Now, if the internet would have remained really private and clean and available and not controlled by the government, it would have been a vehicle for improving things.
But I just think that if society is to advance, that we have to concentrate on technology, not being used because we're going to build a bigger bomb and a bigger air force and just build weaponry.
But that is a challenge for the ages.
I don't think we'll solve that.
But being thankful for the ability and the chance to participate, I think, is worthwhile.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I would just, if we're ready to close this up, I would just say there are many things I'm thankful for in my personal life.
But I have to say, my professional life, I'm most thankful to you, our audience.
We started this show in 2015, literally from scratch.
We had zero subscribers on YouTube, and we have about 160,000 of you here.
Now, we work very hard daily.
We know our own limitations.
We try to present complicated and often depressing themes every day to try to enlighten and try to give everyone tools to act to try to make the world and the United States, which we love, a better place.
So I'm grateful for you for watching us, for recommending our channel to your friends and relatives, for subscribing, for supporting our show financially.
Very, very grateful.
And I hope we can continue to work together on through 2019 and beyond.
Along that line, Daniel, and that's a very good point that you make, is the fact that reaching out to people is difficult to measure.
And I've been on the receiving end of some very nice compliments and positive things in campaigning and influencing people because you never know what good can come of it.
People out there are starved for the information.
I look at this as a remnant of people who try to hold the truth together.
And the neat thing is, Daniel points out our direct contact with the show is 160,000 people.
But the truth is, every individual who cares about liberty, no matter what level they're doing it at, they have no idea what kind of influence they have.
Because if they even just convert one person, they have no idea what that next person would do.
Nobody will know.
And in this day and age, the technology, like the internet and sending information around and trying to spread information, there's a lot more people out there that come around to believe in what's happening because of the technology that we do have.
So they're out there, and I think it's much bigger, and I have discovered that to be the case in the politics.
I never believed I would ever last in office very long if I said, you know what, folks, the drug war is evil.
Let's get rid of the drug war.
And I thought, well, that was like committing political suicide in the Bible Belt.
And it did exactly the opposite.
Same way, speaking out against sacred cows when it comes to the monetary system, I thought that too would be challenging the establishment too much.
So there are people out there, and so many of you listen to our program.
I want to thank you, but believe me, your influence can be great because as far as I'm concerned, you're in a unique group if you're searching for the truth and information.
And this to me represents the fact that there's only always will only be a small group of people who will have the curiosity strong enough to look for the truth.
And once you discover it, you won't be able to hold back in spreading that truth one way or another.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.