In recent years the Tea Party has put forth their own version of the Thanksgiving story. It goes something like this:
The Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth and established a policy of communal land ownership, something akin to socialism. When this did not work, William Bradford, the colonial governor, decided to institute a system of private property. This move from socialism to capitalism saved the colony and ultimately saved America. The real lesson of Thanksgiving is that socialism always fails and capitalism always succeeds.
This view of Thanksgiving is thoroughly debunked by this New York Times article, which includes commentary from Richard Pickering (the deputy director of Plimoth Plantation), author William Hogeland, and NYU professor Karen Kupperman.
I will let the article do the heavy lifting.
Yes, the Limbaugh narrative is flawed, John, but there's no reason to suspect him of bad faith.
Scholars with a political agenda, however, have no such excuse. They're more sophisticated about things—they simply elide the facts they don't like.
Limbaugh, to his credit, quotes the source text from Bradford extensively:
What Bradford wrote about this social experiment should be in every schoolchild's history lesson,” every kid gets. “If it were, we might prevent much needless suffering in the future.” Here's what he wrote: “'The experience that we had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years…that by taking away property, and bringing community into a common wealth, would make them happy and flourishing — as if they were wiser than God,' Bradford wrote.
“'For this community [so far as it was] was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For young men that were most able and fit for labor and service did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children without any recompense…that was thought injustice.'” That was thought injustice. “Do you hear what he was saying, ladies and gentlemen? The Pilgrims found that people could not be expected to do their best work without incentive. So what did Bradford's community try next? They unharnessed the power of good old free enterprise by invoking the undergirding capitalistic principle of private property. Every family was assigned its own plot of land to work and permitted to market its own crops and products. And what was the result?” 'This had very good success,' wrote Bradford, “for it made all hands industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been.”
Bold face mine, of course. Limbaugh's main point holds, even if his narrative is confused. Anyone who reads the “scholarly” debunking will be unaware of the “success” Bradford speaks of, or that Bradford explicitly states that the scheme did “retard much employment.”
The professional historians didn't play it straight, which is why Barton/Beck “revisionism” has such currency. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
I meself had to check the Limbaugh “source text” because I don't trust them either.
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_112107/content/01125113.guest.html
'”The experience that we had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years…that by taking away property, and bringing community into a common wealth, would make them happy and flourishing – as if they were wiser than God,'” – Bradford
I distrust the ellipsis there, but I can't track down the original Bradford text. I don't know what “we might prevent much needless suffering in the future” might mean in context either.
Look, I don't get my history from Rush Limbaugh, but I don't trust scholars with an agenda either. Their clear purpose in the NYT article was culture war vs. Limbaugh, et al., not telling the true story, the whole truth.
There's something to be said for keeping history irrelevant.
Incidentally, one thing the article doesn't seem to mention is that I'm pretty sure the land was still held in common even after Bradford's reform. He parceled it out for use depending on family size, but it was still communally owned. Still, I don't think it's unreasonable to see a bit of foreshadowing of Adam Smith in Bradford's observations.