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Nov. 28, 2019 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
11:22
Thanksgiving - Myth vs. Truth

Happy Thanksgiving from Ron Paul and the Liberty Report. What are the myths about the first Thanksgiving and the early settlers to what became the United States? What are Ron and Daniel thankful for? Tune in to today's special edition of the Liberty Report...

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Grateful For Health 00:09:45
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Daniel, good to have you here with us today on our holiday of giving thanks.
Happy Thanksgiving, Dr. Paul.
Well, very good.
I have a lot to be thankful, to tell you the truth.
And, you know, I think from a personal sense, you know, if somebody can maintain health or who have been blessed with health, it's really something to be thankful for.
And yet, a lot of people suffer from health for things beyond their control.
And our family's been blessed too.
So I'm a very thankful person, even though I complain a lot about our government.
I'm not thankful for what our government does to us or for us.
But it is good.
It's a day that's, I think, worthwhile.
But we wanted to talk a little bit about some misunderstanding about Thanksgiving because, you know, the pilgrims landed in 1620 at Plymouth Rock.
And they had a tough time getting over.
A lot of people died.
Half of people died.
And they made a big mistake.
They had already made a mistake and had to rectify it in Jamestown, but they didn't have an internet to know what they did.
They started off with a collectivist system in Jamestown.
It was a failure.
Then they finally figured out, well, you don't need collectivism.
Literally socialism, you know.
But that's what Bradford, the governor, did.
He set it up a socialist system.
Everybody worked together.
Everybody had their chores.
Everybody put the crops they raised into a central location.
And then everybody got their distribution.
And lo and behold, there was a total destruction of incentive.
Nobody owned anything.
And matter of fact, all they owned was their own lives and their incentives to do well.
They were shocked.
They weren't willing because it looked like they were working for somebody else.
People weren't all working as hard.
So in 1620, they arrived then.
And then this Thanksgiving wasn't the first year.
You know, all of a sudden, oh, we had one year of crop and everything was wonderful and we'll share it with the Indians.
That's mystical.
But then they had, you know, two more years, 1621 and 22.
Bad years.
More people died and people weren't working.
And it had to do with the system that was set up until they realized it and changed it.
There was a lot of suffering.
But there's a tremendous lesson in here, which I hope we can get across.
It has to do with a collectivist socialist system versus private property ownership.
It's no more complex than that.
And guess what?
Private property ownership and self-reliance won by a big margin over the collectivists.
The collectivists, people died due to collectivism.
And as soon as there was private property introduced, things became much better.
Yeah, I think it's what happens when you discount human nature, you know, how humans are.
And that certainly a lot of people would say, oh, yeah, Dr. Paul, you're being such a meanie.
But that does not take away the idea of charity, the idea of giving something that you work for to those that are less fortunate.
But understanding that humans are social animals and they act according to incentives.
And that's what they learned, a difficult lesson when they first arrived to the U.S. Matter of fact, one thing that happened afterwards when they finally got private property introduced by the governor, there was plenty.
And the sick were taken care of and people were helped.
There's more charity.
And immediately after the new rules came in, they were producing more than they needed, and they were able to start trading.
And they had capital is what they were able to develop.
I want to read, you know, later on, the governor wrote about this.
Bradford wrote about this, of his experience.
And I have a short paragraph I want to read to hear what he had to say after the new reforms were put in and returned to a private property format.
He says, this had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious.
So as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means, the governor or any others could use and saved him from a great deal of trouble and gave far better content.
The women now went willingly into the field and took their little ones with them to set corn, which before would allege weakness and inability, whom to have compelled would have been thought a great tyranny and oppression.
Attitudes, it's a psychology.
And, you know, what so often our side gets blamed for is selfishness.
People are selfish.
But the whole thing is, it's probably the best way to create generosity is because when you have good production, you have it, have enough, and then you want to help other people.
This is one reason that sometimes very wealthy people get a bad rap.
But even all the way back to Andrew Carnegie, they all had their imperfections.
But Andrew Carnegie, I mean, I was from Pittsburgh, and there was a lot of things in Pittsburgh that was named Carnegie.
Matter of fact, we had a business in Carnegie.
And it has to do because they did become more generous afterwards.
So this is a great story.
We started with socialism at Plymouth Rock, Plymouth Colony.
It was a total failure and a total victory for private property management.
I wonder if we could get some congressmen that we know to read this story.
But the whole thing is, they get the story from the public schools, the government schools, and the government schools wouldn't want them to know about this.
And in fact, you know, with all of the faults, all of the problems that we complain about, we are blessed with plenty in this country because we still have that sort of vestige of the free market, even though it's under attack.
And as you're reading that wonderful passage, I was thinking, oh no, child labor.
They went in the field.
They helped.
They probably were a lot happier for helping produce.
That was important.
But we still do have that remnant.
And in fact, I'm thinking about my own Thanksgiving.
We're blessed to be able to enjoy a turkey that was raised in a local farm, but raised the right way, and we got it through the barter system.
We bartered a deal with the farmers.
And so this is the beauty of our system here.
Well, that is pretty unique.
People will adapt.
And this is a very positive one, and it's not under dire circumstances.
But if we have a reversal away from private property and have a lot more collectivism, like a lot of people want, because the poorer this country gets, the more collectivism they want, believing that it's the government, not realizing that the government gets in the way.
They should protect principles of liberty and the principles of owning something, but the incentive has to be there.
But they say, well, that's selfish.
Well, why is it selfish if you work hard and earn some money and you spend on it, but it's not selfish if you have the socialists take your money and spend it on something like that.
That's not selfish at all.
They're doing the Lord's work.
They're taking care of it.
This is what charity is all about.
That's right, at the end of a gun.
Well, I think about what I'm grateful for, and I am grateful for work.
I enjoy work.
I think working is somehow cleansing and purifying, and I enjoy doing it.
And I try to work as hard as I can.
Maybe I even work too much, but I'm grateful for the opportunity, certainly to work with you, but to work in general.
I'm grateful for, and that also brings me to being grateful for having my family and the traditions that we have.
And as the children get older, and my son is off having him come home, you do appreciate the traditions more.
I'm sure that's true in the Paul household as well.
You know, you gave me a thought about this because something that I accept is a personal acceptance of when people feel good about themselves.
And you said work, you like work.
And I think it's the principle of productivity.
When you produce something, something that, you know, regardless of one's ability, no matter what you produce, big, small, or whatever, when you produce something, people feel good about it.
So that is one reward that you get that you don't measure by how many dollars I made.
And some people spend a whole lifetime being charitable and producing things, and they don't feel like they've been cheated.
But the whole thing is that if somebody works and they serve the public and provide a good product, that there's something evil about them.
That's where it's really off the tangent.
And you know, our early history was very powerful on getting ahead and prosperity and independence and self-reliance.
But there's not so much of that now.
And that's what we need.
And on this Thanksgiving Day, we should be thankful for the good part of our history that taught self-reliance and why freedom is better than slavery and why property ownership is by the individual is much better than collectivism where the government owns everything and tells you everything that you're allowed to do.
That's right.
And I finally want to thank all of you.
I'm very grateful and thankful to all of our audience and all the people that support what we do.
It enables us to do what we do.
And I know that a lot, probably the vast majority of our donors, Dr. Paul, are not billionaires.
Grateful Audience Enables Us 00:01:25
They're people who work very hard for what they have and they generously give a little bit of it, sometimes a little more of it to us.
And we're grateful to all of you.
So thank you.
Very good.
And I would like to change our viewers to thank our viewers as well.
Because, you know, it is a tendency to consider what we do a little bit of work.
But believe me, if we can reach some people and there is somebody that moves in our direction, we don't consider it much work at all.
So it's what is in our mind and what our goals are, and they can vary.
And I think the wonderful thing about liberty is everybody has different talents, but the rewards can be sometimes very wealthy people might have earned their money, but they're not necessarily happy with their productivity.
And for some reason, it hasn't met up to their expectations or whatever.
But then there are other people who are hardworking.
They raise their family, take care of the kids, they take care of their house, and they feel very good about what they do with their family.
So I think that people shouldn't be discouraged because they're not a billionaire or a millionaire or whatever.
And really, if you follow some basic rules of responsibility, self-reliance, and taking care of one's family and helping others when you're so inclined, I think that is the road to peace and prosperity.
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