Two videos today: First, a US Congressman making a fool of himself:
No sir. The Pilgrims, and the Puritans after them, were not socialists, and never were. They were a money-making enterprise from the beginning, and their original plan was to settle in what is now New York State, somewhere in the Hudson River Valley (thank you, Nantucket Sound, for making the trip unbearable with storms in 1620). As in any company, they had divisions of labor, with some people filling out paperwork, others hunting birds, others giving pep-talks (er, I mean… sermons) and others planting and harvesting crops. Anyone who thinks that the Pilgrims were socialist is invited to go live on a hippie commune in central Oregon for a couple of years without cash inputs of any kind, and see how much fun it is to produce all of your own stuff in a howling wilderness.
As well, the Pilgrims and their successors established a “civil body politick” whose job it was to function as a government that reined in the worst impulses of the individuals of the colony, prevented fraud and indecent greed, and punished criminals both violent and non-violent — including William Billington, the Mayflower Murderer, who was hanged; and Isaac Allerton, who played fast-and-lose with the colonists’ money speculating in the trans-Atlantic trading bubble, and in defrauding colonists of their money.
Maybe the Congressman should speculate about that?
Second, an Aadams family Thanksgiving, borrowed from Paul Krugman
