Schools' Thanksgiving 'Myths' Stir Controversy

[Rhino]

Seattle Schools' Thanksgiving 'Myths' Stir Controversy
Thursday, November 22, 2007

By Robert Shaffer

Seattle public schools want a side of political correctness served on your Thanksgiving table.

...school district sent letters...suggesting Thanksgiving should be "a time of mourning" for its Native American students.

The memo...included an attachment to a paper titled "Deconstructing the Myths of 'The First Thanksgiving.'"

It includes 11 "myths" disputing everything from what was served at the first Thanksgiving (no mashed potatoes or cranberries) and who provided the food to the nature of the Pilgrims themselves: Myth No. 3 calls the colonists "rigid fundamentalists" who came to the New World "fully intending to take the land away from its native inhabitants."

Time of Mourning? But what got the Internet abuzz was Myth No. 11: "Thanksgiving is a happy time." It was followed by "Fact: For many Indian people, 'Thanksgiving' is a time of mourning ... a bitter reminder of 500 years of betrayal returned for friendship."...http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,312480,00.html

[DesertFox]

Hey, assholes. Fuqq off.

[Reagan Knight]

I personally enjoy celebrating our nation's history by driving over to the local reservation and bringing back a few scalps for the kids.

[DoctorDoom]

From Rush:

RUSH: Now, the real story of Thanksgiving: "On August 1, 1620, the Mayflower set sail. It carried a total of 102 passengers, including forty Pilgrims led by William Bradford. On the journey, Bradford set up an agreement, a contract, that established just and equal laws for all members of the new community, irrespective of their religious beliefs. Where did the revolutionary ideas expressed in the Mayflower Compact come from? From the Bible," and this is what's not taught. This is what's left out. "The Pilgrims were a people completely steeped in the lessons of the Old and New Testaments. They looked to the ancient Israelites for their example. And, because of the biblical precedents set forth in Scripture, they never doubted that their experiment would work. But this was no pleasure cruise, friends. The journey to the New World was a long and arduous one. And when the Pilgrims landed in New England in November, they found, according to Bradford's detailed journal, a cold, barren, desolate wilderness. There were no friends to greet them, he wrote. There were no houses to shelter them. There were no inns where they could refresh themselves. And the sacrifice they had made for freedom was just beginning. During the first winter, half the Pilgrims -- including Bradford's own wife -- died of either starvation, sickness, or exposure.

"When spring finally came, Indians taught the settlers how to plant corn, fish for cod and skin beavers for coats. Life improved for the Pilgrims, but they did not yet prosper! This is important to understand because this is where modern American history lessons often end. Thanksgiving is actually explained in some textbooks as a holiday for which the Pilgrims gave thanks to the Indians for saving their lives, rather than as a devout expression of gratitude grounded in the tradition of both the Old and New Testaments. Here is the part that has been omitted: The original contract the Pilgrims had entered into with their merchant-sponsors in London called for everything they produced to go into a common store, and each member of the community was entitled to one common share. All of the land they cleared and the houses they built belong to the community as well." They were collectivists! Now, "Bradford, who had become the new governor of the colony, recognized that this form of collectivism was as costly and destructive to the Pilgrims as that first harsh winter, which had taken so many lives.

"He decided to take bold action. Bradford assigned a plot of land to each family to work and manage, thus turning loose the power of the marketplace. ... Long before Karl Marx was even born, the Pilgrims had discovered and experimented with what could only be described as socialism. And what happened? It didn't work! Surprise, surprise, huh? What Bradford and his community found was that the most creative and industrious people had no incentive to work any harder than anyone else, unless they could utilize the power of personal motivation! But while most of the rest of the world has been experimenting with socialism for well over a hundred years -- trying to refine it, perfect it, and re-invent it -- the Pilgrims decided early on to scrap it permanently. 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." Bradford doesn't sound like much of a Clintonite, does he? Is it possible that supply-side economics could have existed before the 1980s? ... In no time, the Pilgrims found they had more food than they could eat themselves. ... So they set up trading posts and exchanged goods with the Indians.


"The profits allowed them to pay off their debts to the merchants in London. And the success and prosperity of the Plymouth settlement attracted more Europeans and began what came to be known as the 'Great Puritan Migration.'" Now, aside from this program, have you heard this before? Is this "being taught to children -- and if not, why not? I mean, is there a more important lesson one could derive from the Pilgrim experience than this?" What if Bill and Hillary Clinton had been exposed to these lessons in school? Do you realize what we face in next year's election is the equivalent of people who want to set up these original collectivists communes that didn't work, with nobody having incentive to do anything except get on the government dole somehow because the people running the government want that kind of power. So the Pilgrims decided to thank God for all of their good fortune. And that's Thanksgiving. And read George Washington's first Thanksgiving address and count the number of times God is mentioned and how many times he's thanked. None of this is taught today. It should be. Have a happy Thanksgiving, folks. You deserve it. Do what you can to be happy, and especially do what you can to be thankful, because in this country you have more reasons than you've ever stopped to consider.The Real Story of Thanksgiving (http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_112107/content/01125113.member.html)

[Incident_command]

I personally enjoy celebrating our nation's history by driving over to the local reservation and bringing back a few scalps for the kids.

I go to the local Indian casino, down some firewater and drop some coin to Big Chief Tumbling Dice.

[DesertFox]

Why, you hopeless racist, you.

[Reagan Knight]

Why, you hopeless racist, you.

No offense intended, I was just being facetious to point out the extent of liberal ridicularity about political correctness.

[Rhino]

I think DF was just teasin ya.

[PrezLeefun]

I know DF was just teasing.

[Wolfcounsel]

WHAT? You mean socialism does not work? It most certainly does, if a bunch of con artists, like Hillary, administer it to a population of American dumbasses who rely on the government stooges for their needs.

[Lazarus]

The real story in this thread is that this revisionist history that the West Coast is subscribing to will be the law of the land when Hilary's Marxist revolution wraps its bloody claws around our nation... Old historical records will be burned and no future generation will know the truth about the Pilgrims and their landing on this continent...

[Neil Peart]

Guess what, you retarded PC jackassholes? THE PILGRIMS DID NOT STEAL INDIAN LANDS. GET THAT THROUGH YOUR THICK SKULLS, YOU MORONS!!!!

[DesertFox]

They don't care about the truth. All that matters to them is "the narrative."

[Neil Peart]

They don't care about the truth. All that matters to them is "the narrative."What I'd really like to do is take those narratives, shine them up real nice, stick 'em sideways, and shove them straight up those leftists' candy asses!

IF YA SA-MEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL............

WHAT THE PEART. IS. COOKING!

[HomeschoolrsRUs]

They don't care about the truth. All that matters to them is "the narrative."

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” ~ Joseph Goebbels

[DeclinetoState]

Everything that happened at the first Thanksgiving was bad, and it was all Bush's fault.

[Venus de Smilo]

I go to the local Indian casino, down some firewater and drop some coin to Big Chief Tumbling Dice.
Go shoot up town with smoking firestick.

[Neil Peart]

Everything that happened at the first Thanksgiving was bad, and it was all Bush's fault.No, Thanksgiving was the fault of Reagan. Get it right.

[Reagan Knight]

I know DF was just teasing.

Yeah, I just realized that as well. I have a hard time picking up sarcasm and the like on internet message boards.

[Venus de Smilo]

Yeah, I just realized that as well. I have a hard time picking up sarcasm and the like on internet message boards.
Desert Fox big wind, makum joke all time.

[Rhino]

http://freeconservatives.com/smilies/doggie.gif

[DoctorDoom]

White squaw speak with forked tongue. Makum fun of Native American dialectic peculiarities. Me scalpum. Ugh.