November 21, 2025 • 30 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
It's that time, time, time, time, luck and load. The
Michael Varry Show is.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
On the air.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
It's Charlie from BlackBerry Smoking. I can feel a good
one coming on. It's the Michael Berry Show. Oh yes
it is. Oh and this is my favorite show of
the year.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
My two favorite shows of the year, well consolidated ten
to one versus Thanksgiving. I don't know, five years ago
or so, we figured out that our Thanksgiving show, which
is so important to us, we would play the day
(00:52):
before or do the day before Thanksgiving, and then the
next week I'd see people and I say, yeah, what
do you think about that call?
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Where?
Speaker 2 (01:06):
What do you think about that piece I played with?
And I realized a lot of people hadn't heard it
because some of you are going to be traveling starting
tomorrow or Sunday or even early in the week, and
you're going to be visiting someone, you're going skiing, you're
going wherever you're going, and you won't get to hear.
(01:29):
And I think, you know, if you meet a miserable person,
take Michelle Obama. Michelle Obama will always be miserable. There's
nothing that can be done for Michelle Obama has had
everything the world given to her, and she's still extremely miserable.
That doesn't make me mad, makes me laugh that she's
so miserable. She's an ungrateful person. A posture of gratitude,
(01:59):
a disposition of gratitude, is the sign of a very
happy person. Indeed, we take Thanksgiving very literally on The
Michael Berry Show. And the other thing that's that we're
passionate about is adoption. As you know, my children are adopted.
(02:22):
There are a lot of you who were adopted. We
found out are the newest member of our team. I've
known him for twenty years. We worked together at the
company iHeart, and then he came and joined us here
on the show, Darrel Kunda that he's adopted. We didn't
know that one of our colleagues that works at one
of those sports that works at the sports station, our
sister station in Houston. Dan Matthews told his story, beautiful story.
(02:47):
So you learn a lot. There are more people who
are adopted than you would believe. There really are. Sort
of like there are more people who are veterans. You know,
we did our Veterans Day special on the eleventh and
Jim put together that montague of various musicians and you go, Hey,
Willy Nelson's about Wait, Jimmy Hendrix. Yeah, all of those
guys are veterans. So these are two concepts that are
(03:11):
very important to us, and that will be the focus
of the show today. So I'm sorry if you wanted
political news, this won't be a political show. This is
to us much more important and this is an annual
tradition for us. So that's what we're doing. What died
to tell you in the upcoming segment. For one segment,
we're going to do something that's become a tradition here
(03:31):
on the show, and we turn off our microphones, then
we listen. It is near and dear to our heart.
It is the Rush Limbaugh the meaning of Christmas. Rush
Limbaugh is our idol, our hero, our inspiration, and it's
one of the most favorite things he ever did. Some
(03:52):
of you who've listened for a while know that when
Rush passed that first christ Us Eve, after he passed
Clay and Buck, it wouldn't have been fair to have
Clay and Buck do that show would not have been
fair to them, and so they wanted a guest host
to do it. And so the team Ali and the
(04:13):
whole team asked that I do it, and it was
such an incredible honor because that was Russia's favorite show
of the year, was his Christmas Eve show, and they
told me three months in advance, and that's when we
hired Jim Mudd to come on and help help produce
that show, and then he stayed on with us these years.
So yeah, that's that's coming up in the next segment.
(04:34):
So if you're pulling into the garage, just hang around
and hear this one segment coming up because it's so
special regard the meaning of thanks.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
He is so incredibly special, all right, to get us.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Start as we always do courtesy the Grace executive producer
and all the land CHATTACONI knakadishi.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Here we can review.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Sandra.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
What's yours? I'm not and I'm not seeing him just right.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
If a white guy's dating a black one, I betted
a white guy before when I was in college and
he was sent to the breast, I don't white man's
little bride. If you don't have big blood.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
He love it my bread.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Oh my goodness. You know what I love about Sandra.
She has no shame. There is nothing that embarrasses her.
She's basically going to tell you about her sax life,
a late husband and have no shame about it. And
in that white boy she dated in college he liked
Boozeo Man. The True Horrors of hazing.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
The psychology behind hazing, to figure out why some young
men seem to be willing to do anything to get in.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
One suspect held his feet down and then pulled his
hands down to his knees before one of the suspects.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Violated him with a broomstick.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
If you were to study it, there's something kind of
partially gay about the whole thing if you think about it,
because the amount of things related to violating the bunghole
are in some way exposing and messing with the peter
are not normal.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Police are also looking for the man who tried to
rob a dairy queen on the city's west side.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Every queen may be known for they're blizzard, but the
chilling encounter with a pipe wheelded Robert is enough to
freeze anyone.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
In their tracks. Do we have to do that? Son?
Speaker 2 (06:10):
I realize you're excited to be a journalist.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
Did you make a list?
Speaker 2 (06:16):
If he was doing it ironically, I could get it.
How bad is this going to be It's going to
have a chilling effect that could freeze any bad guy.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
But what's wrong with it?
Speaker 3 (06:33):
I was almost full.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
I'm still going going. I can't stop going once they
started stays.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
If you're midpee and you have to stop because you're
starting or whatever.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
I don't know what all the parks down there are.
But something involved in the urethra gets pinched off or something,
and it is unpleasant. And I feel like women talk
enough about childbirth that we should get to talk about
when you got to snap off real quick, myrepan.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Listen to the Michael Ferry Show podcast and you'll be
the smartest guy in the room. Share with your friends
and you'll be the most popular.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Anal tradition on our Thanksgiving edition, which is the Friday
before or the following Thursday, is to play rush Limbaugh's
The Meaning of Thanksgiving in honor of the Great Irreplaceable
Rush Limbaugh.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
The True Story of Thanksgiving, The story of the Pilgrims
begins in the early part of the seventeenth century. The
Church of England, under King James the First was persecuting
anyone and everyone who did not recognize its absolute civil
and spiritual authority. Those who challenged ecclesiastical authority and those
who believe strongly in freedom of worship were hunted down, imprisoned,
(08:02):
and sometimes.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Executed for their beliefs. A group of separatists.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
First fled to Holland and established a community. After eleven years,
about forty of them agreed to make a perilous journey
to the New World, where they would certainly face hardships,
but could live and worship God according to the dictates
of their own consciences. On August first, sixteen to twenty,
the Mayflowers set sail. It carried a total of one
(08:28):
hundred and two passengers, including forty Pilgrims, led by William Bradford.
On the journey, Bradford set up an agreement, a contract,
and established just and equal laws for all members of
the new community, irrespective of their religious beliefs. Where did
the revolutionary ideas expressed in any Flower compact come from?
Speaker 1 (08:48):
They came from the Bible.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
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. Because of the biblical precedent
set forth in scripture. They never doubted that their experiment
would work, but it was no pleasure cruise. The journey
to the New World was a long and arduous one,
(09:11):
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 that
they had made for freedom was just beginning. During the
(09:32):
first winter, half the Pilgrims, including Bradford's own wife, died eater, 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, and this is important to understand because
(09:53):
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.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Here's the part that's been omitted.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
The original contract the Pilgrims had entered into with their
merchant sponsors in London called for everything they produced to
go into a common sore, and each member of the
community was entitled one common share. All of the land
that they cleared and the houses they built belonged to
the community as well, and they were going to distribute
it equally. All the land they cleared, the houses they
(10:35):
built belonged to the community. Nobody owned anything, they just
had a share in it. It was a commune. It
was the forerunner to the communes we saw in the
sixties and seventies out in California. And it was a
complete with organic vegetables, even just like the communes of
today are.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
God No, there's no question it was organic vegetables.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
Bradford, who had become a new governor of the colony,
recognized that this form of collectivism 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 in the marketplace.
(11:17):
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, but nearly starved, never
has worked. What Bradford in his community found was that
the most creative and industrious people had no incentive to
work any harder than anybody else unless they could utilize
(11:37):
the power of personal motivation. But while most of the
rest of the world has been experimenting with socialism for
well over one hundred years, trying to refine it, perfect it,
and reinvent it, the Pilgrims decided early on to scrap
it permanently. What Bradford wrote about this social experiment should
be in every school child's history lesson. If it were,
we might prevent such needless suffering in the future, such
(12:00):
as that we are enduring now. The experience that we
had in this common course and condition, This is Bradford,
the experience we had in this common course and condition,
tired or tried someday years that by taking away property
and bringing community into a commonwealth would make them happy
and flourishing as if they were wiser than God. Bradford wrote,
(12:24):
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 that worked for other men's wives and.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Children without being paid for it. That was thought injustice.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
Why should you work for other people when you can't
work for yourself?
Speaker 1 (12:48):
What's the point? That's what he was saying.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
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 unharness the power of good old
free enterprise by invoking the undergirding capitalistic principle of private property.
(13:11):
Every family was assigned its own plot of land to work,
and permitted to market its own crops and products.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
What was the result.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Bradford wrote, This had very good success, for it made
all hands industrious, so as much more corn was planted
than otherwise would have been. Is it possible that supply
side economics could have existed before the nineteen eighties? Yes,
read the story of Joseph and Pharaoh in Genesis forty one.
Following Joseph's suggestion, Pharaoh reduced the tax on Egyptians to
(13:41):
twenty percent during the seven years of plenty, and the
earth brought forth in heaps.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Well.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
In no time, the Pilgrims found that they had more
food than they could eat themselves.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
Now this this.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
Is where it gets really good if you're laboring under
the misconception that I was as I was taught school.
They set up trading posts, they exchanged goods with the Indians.
The prophets allowed them to pay off their debts to
the merchants in London, and the success and the prosperity
of the Plymouth settlement attracted more Europeans and began what
(14:16):
came to be known as.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
The Great Puritan Migration.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
But this story stops when the Indians taught the newly arrived,
suffering in socialism Pilgrims how to plant corn and fish
for cod. That's where the original Thanksgiving story stops. Story
basically doesn't even begin there. The real story of Thanksgiving
is William Bradford giving thanks to God for the guidance
and the inspiration to set up a thriving colony that
(14:41):
socialism caused near starvation. The bounty was shared with the Indians.
They did sit down, they did have free range turkey
and organic vegetables.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
But it wasn't the Indians who saved the day.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
It was capitalism and scripture which saved the day, as
acknowledged by George Washington in his first Thanksgiving Proclamation in
seventeen eighty nine.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
You take carry it down, Thank you about it, Thanks Michael.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Thought.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Today is our Thanksgiving special. We do this every year.
And the reason we do it today rather than the
day before Thanksgiving is because many of you this will
be the last day that you're in your usual routine.
You will board a plane or load up the family
(15:38):
station wagon. People have the family station wagonzinemore and on.
That's crazy. Station wagon became the minivan. The minivan became
the suburban explorer. And you will head off to Mammal's house.
And that is a sacred, sacred ritual. You know that
(16:01):
it is a sacred ritual. When Barack Obama attempted to
destroy it by telling young people go home and tell
your grandmother she's a racist, tearing apart the family, the
fabric of the family is the ultimate goal of the
(16:21):
cultural Marxist, because the communist has to destroy your faith
and your family in order to control you. Faith and
family are rivals to communism, which is both a faith
and a community that replicates the family. It destroys the
(16:45):
identity and makes you part of it. But let me
not get too deep into that. It is important that
we dive deep into our family love. If you have
an negative influence in your family, I encourage you to
cut them loose. You can't fix them and they'll ruin everything.
(17:06):
Don't bring them to the family occasion. But it's on
this day every year that we stop as a show,
as we like to think of ourselves as your friends.
I mean, heck, you let us come into your homes,
your cars, your trucks, your speakers, your earphones. Some of
(17:26):
you every day, some of you on the podcast, literally
every day of the week. It's a pretty intimate relationship
if you think about it. We may never meet, but
we share values, we share a lot, and so on
this day every year, our last chance to get the
entirety of our audience due to travel schedules. Next week,
(17:49):
we take a moment to talk about the importance of
what it means to stop and give things. And that's
perhaps more important today and it has been for a
very long time. There's a beautiful gospel song that goes
counter your blessings, Name them one by one, count your
(18:12):
blessings and it will surprise you what the Lord hath done.
I teach my children this, We talk about it as
a family. I often ask my friends, tell me one
thing that you're thankful for today, and I am surprised
(18:35):
how many times it will be the case that someone
cannot immediately tell you something for which they are grateful, thankful.
I think you have to have a thankful spirit. It's
part of humility. I think you have to be grateful.
(18:55):
And if you can't think of something quickly for which
you are grateful, perspective and that is unhealthy. And I
would argue that many people in this country are winning
at the ballot box but losing in their lives, because
(19:15):
when you lose perspective, then effectively they own you. It's
very important to stop and be grateful for the things
you have. When I look in my own life, I
start with my father. I lost my mother. I'm grateful
(19:37):
for my father. I'm grateful for every day I have
with him. I'm grateful for every conversation I have with him.
He's had severe diabetes since he was nineteen. He was
discharged from the Coastguard. They didn't believe he'd survived, almost
lost his life with a diabetic attack. There wasn't treatment
(19:58):
for diabetes. He had to if treat that before there
were the things, the tools that we have today, and
he did and he survived. And I'm grateful for every day,
for every shared memory. I'm grateful for every conversation where
I can call up and go, hey, Dad, you remember
when we went to this Remember we went to see
(20:18):
the Astros play and Terry Poole got the game winning hit.
You remember that. I am grateful for all the years
that I did have my mother, because she was seventy
nine years old and for fifty three years of my life,
she was in my life. And you know, when someone passes,
(20:40):
the depth of loss you experience is a mirror. It
is the converse to the wonderfulness of what you experience.
You know, when someone tells me their mom or dad
has died and they don't care, that tells me they
didn't love them. I feel sad for them, not that
(21:01):
they don't care. But if you're going to love deeply,
you're going to lose deeply. So I hope that on
this Thanksgiving week that you will be grateful for the
loves that you've lost, for the things you once had
and cannot get back, for the fact that you once
(21:23):
had them, for the fact that you had that blessing,
because I can guarantee you there are plenty of people
who didn't. If you've lost a father, lost a mother
that you love deeply, be grateful. Think how many didn't
a brother, a sister, a wife, a husband, a child.
(21:45):
It's a great time of year in a great American
tradition to just stop and take stop take inventory. You know,
as a business owner, particularly if you're in retail or hospitality,
it's very important that you stop and take an inventory.
What are your par levels for your alcohol? How long?
(22:08):
How many stocks do you have for what's coming up
for Christmas, for instance, or at Mother's Day or Father's
Day or some others Valentine's Day. It's important to stop,
to stop and see what you have already and where
you need to supplement. And I think Thanksgiving is a
great opportunity to do that. It's a true opportunity for
(22:32):
us to do something maybe we don't do often enough
in our longing to add more things to our lives,
to accumulate more stuff, to travel to more places, to
make more money. Sometimes we don't stop long enough and
(22:53):
look around to.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
What we do have.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
If you have your health, I didn't understand this when
I was younger. I do now. If you have your
help or be grateful for that, because you won't always,
and once you don't have it, you'll realize what a
blessing it was that you did. If you have someone
(23:17):
that you love in your life, be grateful for that.
And if they also love you, boy, you found you've
found it. You found the path to riches greater than
any gold. If you have children who are healthy, be
(23:37):
grateful for that. If they love you, boy, that's a blessing.
I don't want to be too preachy, but this is
very important to me, and I have an opportunity anywhere.
Before Biden came into office, we had a legal immigration
at a record loan.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
It will be my policy to take down.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
The cartels, just as I took down the Califate. People
often tell me, especially our older listeners that it feels
like the thing that the America they grew up in
has changed. And when I asked them, what does that mean?
How has that manifested itself? One of the things that
(24:20):
will come up is we don't celebrate Easter the way
we used to. We don't celebrate Christmas the way we
used to. We don't celebrate Thanksgiving the way we used to. Well,
you understand those are not self celebrating holidays. It is
as highly or unanticipated as we make it. It's all
(24:45):
human emotion. And the problem is, or the challenge or
the opportunity is it has to be replicated year in
and year out. What's important about Thanksgiving? It's a uniquely
American tradition. I mean, if I need to make this
(25:08):
political to get some people's attention, because some people are
only driven by the political stuff. The left wants to
destroy Thanksgiving because everything that Thanksgiving represents the white man
coming to a nation where there were people already. Now,
(25:29):
those people had displaced other people who had displaced other
people who had displaced other people. So it's not that
they're the original inhabitants indigenous people, but just as has
happened throughout the world. You know, one hundred five hundred
years ago from now, they will describe the era we're in.
(25:52):
What that era will look like is up to us.
I'm not a fatalist in this sense. I think that
the decisions we make, actions we take will determine what
that history will be. Will this be the end of
a great empire, a great republic or will this just
be the beginning and we will see an ascendance that
(26:13):
will be up to us, not Donald Trump, all of us.
But it is important that we remember our history, and
we celebrate our history, and that we perpetuate our history.
People will see. You know, when I was growing up,
the kids in the school, you know, we'd all dress
up and as turkeys, and you know, my parents would
do this, and my parents would do this, and my
(26:34):
parents would do this, And I say, all right, will
you have kids about that age? Now?
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Are you doing that? No?
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Well then what changed? What change does you so bring
back those traditions? Well, I just remember my grandmother would
cook And well, now your wife is the grandmother. Is
she cooking like that? No, we ordered it in from
somewhere else. Okay, well that's fine, But when your kids
(27:02):
and grandkids are the age you are now, are they
going to remember that Mamma and Papa made this particular thing,
and Mamo and Papa made this particular thing. One of
my greatest memories is that my grandfather would make the
dressing every year. He was a big bear of a man.
(27:23):
He was a bus driver, he was a maintenance worker.
He was a hard drinker. He smoked his entire life
till he finally quit and went to smokeless as it
was called back then, which was tobacco. Red man was
his choice. But boil boy could he cook. And he
would make dressing that was delicious, I mean, just delicious dressing.
(27:47):
But my mother would declare that he put too much sage,
and everyone would sit around, they're too much sage in?
Is there too much stage?
Speaker 1 (27:52):
In?
Speaker 2 (27:52):
All afternoon there would be complaints that there had been
that there was too much sage, and now everyone had
well they referred to as intergestion, which is indigestion and
it's an unpleasant thing. And there would be talk that
there had been too much sage, and he'd say, I
put too much sage, and no, it didn't do too
(28:13):
much stage. And that memory to this day. The taste
of my grandfather's dressing. Well, lo and behold my wife,
being the saint that she is. When we met and
I told her what Thanksgiving was because she's from India,
she was an immigrant to the country, new to the country.
And I told her by that second Thanksgiving she was
(28:36):
here because the first Thanksgiving we just started dating. And
I told her what it was. I wanted to come,
you know, meet my grandparents and all this.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
Sort of stuff.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
And I told her all about that, and she figured out, Ladies,
listen to this. She figured out, you know, the way
that this man's heart is through his belly, and many
men are that way. There's two things that drive most
of us, one or the other or both, and just
know that. And the third would be not being nagged.
But that doesn't get its credit. So she sat next
(29:05):
to my grandmother and my grandfather, and she learned how
to make their dressing, how to make their chili, how
to make their corn bread. And so every day when
I sit down to our dining table at night for supper,
I feel this connection to my childhood, to my family's history.
(29:26):
So you've got time, it's not too late. And if
you don't, if you don't have a good recipe, go
find one. It's easy. It's easier, it's never been. Today,
it's easier than it's ever been to find the recipe
for what will become the Baker family or Jackson family,
or Roblist family, whatever that's going to be dressing blueberry Hi.
(29:49):
We've got to talk about these things. We have to
preserve our traditions. Thanksgiving is America. I mean, it's July
fourth and Thanksgiving. That's your distinctly American traditions, not a
tradition that we share with the rest of the world
for the human condition. These are traditions of America. If
that doesn't fire you up, your wood is wet.
It's that time, time, time, time, luck and load. The
Michael Varry Show is.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
On the air.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
It's Charlie from BlackBerry Smoking. I can feel a good
one coming on. It's the Michael Berry Show. Oh yes
it is. Oh and this is my favorite show of
the year.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
My two favorite shows of the year, well consolidated ten
to one versus Thanksgiving. I don't know, five years ago
or so, we figured out that our Thanksgiving show, which
is so important to us, we would play the day
(00:52):
before or do the day before Thanksgiving, and then the
next week I'd see people and I say, yeah, what
do you think about that call?
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Where?
Speaker 2 (01:06):
What do you think about that piece I played with?
And I realized a lot of people hadn't heard it
because some of you are going to be traveling starting
tomorrow or Sunday or even early in the week, and
you're going to be visiting someone, you're going skiing, you're
going wherever you're going, and you won't get to hear.
(01:29):
And I think, you know, if you meet a miserable person,
take Michelle Obama. Michelle Obama will always be miserable. There's
nothing that can be done for Michelle Obama has had
everything the world given to her, and she's still extremely miserable.
That doesn't make me mad, makes me laugh that she's
so miserable. She's an ungrateful person. A posture of gratitude,
(01:59):
a disposition of gratitude, is the sign of a very
happy person. Indeed, we take Thanksgiving very literally on The
Michael Berry Show. And the other thing that's that we're
passionate about is adoption. As you know, my children are adopted.
(02:22):
There are a lot of you who were adopted. We
found out are the newest member of our team. I've
known him for twenty years. We worked together at the
company iHeart, and then he came and joined us here
on the show, Darrel Kunda that he's adopted. We didn't
know that one of our colleagues that works at one
of those sports that works at the sports station, our
sister station in Houston. Dan Matthews told his story, beautiful story.
(02:47):
So you learn a lot. There are more people who
are adopted than you would believe. There really are. Sort
of like there are more people who are veterans. You know,
we did our Veterans Day special on the eleventh and
Jim put together that montague of various musicians and you go, Hey,
Willy Nelson's about Wait, Jimmy Hendrix. Yeah, all of those
guys are veterans. So these are two concepts that are
(03:11):
very important to us, and that will be the focus
of the show today. So I'm sorry if you wanted
political news, this won't be a political show. This is
to us much more important and this is an annual
tradition for us. So that's what we're doing. What died
to tell you in the upcoming segment. For one segment,
we're going to do something that's become a tradition here
(03:31):
on the show, and we turn off our microphones, then
we listen. It is near and dear to our heart.
It is the Rush Limbaugh the meaning of Christmas. Rush
Limbaugh is our idol, our hero, our inspiration, and it's
one of the most favorite things he ever did. Some
(03:52):
of you who've listened for a while know that when
Rush passed that first christ Us Eve, after he passed
Clay and Buck, it wouldn't have been fair to have
Clay and Buck do that show would not have been
fair to them, and so they wanted a guest host
to do it. And so the team Ali and the
(04:13):
whole team asked that I do it, and it was
such an incredible honor because that was Russia's favorite show
of the year, was his Christmas Eve show, and they
told me three months in advance, and that's when we
hired Jim Mudd to come on and help help produce
that show, and then he stayed on with us these years.
So yeah, that's that's coming up in the next segment.
(04:34):
So if you're pulling into the garage, just hang around
and hear this one segment coming up because it's so
special regard the meaning of thanks.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
He is so incredibly special, all right, to get us.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Start as we always do courtesy the Grace executive producer
and all the land CHATTACONI knakadishi.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Here we can review.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Sandra.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
What's yours? I'm not and I'm not seeing him just right.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
If a white guy's dating a black one, I betted
a white guy before when I was in college and
he was sent to the breast, I don't white man's
little bride. If you don't have big blood.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
He love it my bread.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Oh my goodness. You know what I love about Sandra.
She has no shame. There is nothing that embarrasses her.
She's basically going to tell you about her sax life,
a late husband and have no shame about it. And
in that white boy she dated in college he liked
Boozeo Man. The True Horrors of hazing.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
The psychology behind hazing, to figure out why some young
men seem to be willing to do anything to get in.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
One suspect held his feet down and then pulled his
hands down to his knees before one of the suspects.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Violated him with a broomstick.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
If you were to study it, there's something kind of
partially gay about the whole thing if you think about it,
because the amount of things related to violating the bunghole
are in some way exposing and messing with the peter
are not normal.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Police are also looking for the man who tried to
rob a dairy queen on the city's west side.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Every queen may be known for they're blizzard, but the
chilling encounter with a pipe wheelded Robert is enough to
freeze anyone.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
In their tracks. Do we have to do that? Son?
Speaker 2 (06:10):
I realize you're excited to be a journalist.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
Did you make a list?
Speaker 2 (06:16):
If he was doing it ironically, I could get it.
How bad is this going to be It's going to
have a chilling effect that could freeze any bad guy.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
But what's wrong with it?
Speaker 3 (06:33):
I was almost full.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
I'm still going going. I can't stop going once they
started stays.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
If you're midpee and you have to stop because you're
starting or whatever.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
I don't know what all the parks down there are.
But something involved in the urethra gets pinched off or something,
and it is unpleasant. And I feel like women talk
enough about childbirth that we should get to talk about
when you got to snap off real quick, myrepan.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Listen to the Michael Ferry Show podcast and you'll be
the smartest guy in the room. Share with your friends
and you'll be the most popular.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Anal tradition on our Thanksgiving edition, which is the Friday
before or the following Thursday, is to play rush Limbaugh's
The Meaning of Thanksgiving in honor of the Great Irreplaceable
Rush Limbaugh.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
The True Story of Thanksgiving, The story of the Pilgrims
begins in the early part of the seventeenth century. The
Church of England, under King James the First was persecuting
anyone and everyone who did not recognize its absolute civil
and spiritual authority. Those who challenged ecclesiastical authority and those
who believe strongly in freedom of worship were hunted down, imprisoned,
(08:02):
and sometimes.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Executed for their beliefs. A group of separatists.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
First fled to Holland and established a community. After eleven years,
about forty of them agreed to make a perilous journey
to the New World, where they would certainly face hardships,
but could live and worship God according to the dictates
of their own consciences. On August first, sixteen to twenty,
the Mayflowers set sail. It carried a total of one
(08:28):
hundred and two passengers, including forty Pilgrims, led by William Bradford.
On the journey, Bradford set up an agreement, a contract,
and established just and equal laws for all members of
the new community, irrespective of their religious beliefs. Where did
the revolutionary ideas expressed in any Flower compact come from?
Speaker 1 (08:48):
They came from the Bible.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
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. Because of the biblical precedent
set forth in scripture. They never doubted that their experiment
would work, but it was no pleasure cruise. The journey
to the New World was a long and arduous one,
(09:11):
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 that
they had made for freedom was just beginning. During the
(09:32):
first winter, half the Pilgrims, including Bradford's own wife, died eater, 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, and this is important to understand because
(09:53):
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.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Here's the part that's been omitted.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
The original contract the Pilgrims had entered into with their
merchant sponsors in London called for everything they produced to
go into a common sore, and each member of the
community was entitled one common share. All of the land
that they cleared and the houses they built belonged to
the community as well, and they were going to distribute
it equally. All the land they cleared, the houses they
(10:35):
built belonged to the community. Nobody owned anything, they just
had a share in it. It was a commune. It
was the forerunner to the communes we saw in the
sixties and seventies out in California. And it was a
complete with organic vegetables, even just like the communes of
today are.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
God No, there's no question it was organic vegetables.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
Bradford, who had become a new governor of the colony,
recognized that this form of collectivism 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 in the marketplace.
(11:17):
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, but nearly starved, never
has worked. What Bradford in his community found was that
the most creative and industrious people had no incentive to
work any harder than anybody else unless they could utilize
(11:37):
the power of personal motivation. But while most of the
rest of the world has been experimenting with socialism for
well over one hundred years, trying to refine it, perfect it,
and reinvent it, the Pilgrims decided early on to scrap
it permanently. What Bradford wrote about this social experiment should
be in every school child's history lesson. If it were,
we might prevent such needless suffering in the future, such
(12:00):
as that we are enduring now. The experience that we
had in this common course and condition, This is Bradford,
the experience we had in this common course and condition,
tired or tried someday years that by taking away property
and bringing community into a commonwealth would make them happy
and flourishing as if they were wiser than God. Bradford wrote,
(12:24):
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 that worked for other men's wives and.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Children without being paid for it. That was thought injustice.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
Why should you work for other people when you can't
work for yourself?
Speaker 1 (12:48):
What's the point? That's what he was saying.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
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 unharness the power of good old
free enterprise by invoking the undergirding capitalistic principle of private property.
(13:11):
Every family was assigned its own plot of land to work,
and permitted to market its own crops and products.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
What was the result.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Bradford wrote, This had very good success, for it made
all hands industrious, so as much more corn was planted
than otherwise would have been. Is it possible that supply
side economics could have existed before the nineteen eighties? Yes,
read the story of Joseph and Pharaoh in Genesis forty one.
Following Joseph's suggestion, Pharaoh reduced the tax on Egyptians to
(13:41):
twenty percent during the seven years of plenty, and the
earth brought forth in heaps.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Well.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
In no time, the Pilgrims found that they had more
food than they could eat themselves.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
Now this this.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
Is where it gets really good if you're laboring under
the misconception that I was as I was taught school.
They set up trading posts, they exchanged goods with the Indians.
The prophets allowed them to pay off their debts to
the merchants in London, and the success and the prosperity
of the Plymouth settlement attracted more Europeans and began what
(14:16):
came to be known as.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
The Great Puritan Migration.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
But this story stops when the Indians taught the newly arrived,
suffering in socialism Pilgrims how to plant corn and fish
for cod. That's where the original Thanksgiving story stops. Story
basically doesn't even begin there. The real story of Thanksgiving
is William Bradford giving thanks to God for the guidance
and the inspiration to set up a thriving colony that
(14:41):
socialism caused near starvation. The bounty was shared with the Indians.
They did sit down, they did have free range turkey
and organic vegetables.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
But it wasn't the Indians who saved the day.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
It was capitalism and scripture which saved the day, as
acknowledged by George Washington in his first Thanksgiving Proclamation in
seventeen eighty nine.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
You take carry it down, Thank you about it, Thanks Michael.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Thought.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Today is our Thanksgiving special. We do this every year.
And the reason we do it today rather than the
day before Thanksgiving is because many of you this will
be the last day that you're in your usual routine.
You will board a plane or load up the family
(15:38):
station wagon. People have the family station wagonzinemore and on.
That's crazy. Station wagon became the minivan. The minivan became
the suburban explorer. And you will head off to Mammal's house.
And that is a sacred, sacred ritual. You know that
(16:01):
it is a sacred ritual. When Barack Obama attempted to
destroy it by telling young people go home and tell
your grandmother she's a racist, tearing apart the family, the
fabric of the family is the ultimate goal of the
(16:21):
cultural Marxist, because the communist has to destroy your faith
and your family in order to control you. Faith and
family are rivals to communism, which is both a faith
and a community that replicates the family. It destroys the
(16:45):
identity and makes you part of it. But let me
not get too deep into that. It is important that
we dive deep into our family love. If you have
an negative influence in your family, I encourage you to
cut them loose. You can't fix them and they'll ruin everything.
(17:06):
Don't bring them to the family occasion. But it's on
this day every year that we stop as a show,
as we like to think of ourselves as your friends.
I mean, heck, you let us come into your homes,
your cars, your trucks, your speakers, your earphones. Some of
(17:26):
you every day, some of you on the podcast, literally
every day of the week. It's a pretty intimate relationship
if you think about it. We may never meet, but
we share values, we share a lot, and so on
this day every year, our last chance to get the
entirety of our audience due to travel schedules. Next week,
(17:49):
we take a moment to talk about the importance of
what it means to stop and give things. And that's
perhaps more important today and it has been for a
very long time. There's a beautiful gospel song that goes
counter your blessings, Name them one by one, count your
(18:12):
blessings and it will surprise you what the Lord hath done.
I teach my children this, We talk about it as
a family. I often ask my friends, tell me one
thing that you're thankful for today, and I am surprised
(18:35):
how many times it will be the case that someone
cannot immediately tell you something for which they are grateful, thankful.
I think you have to have a thankful spirit. It's
part of humility. I think you have to be grateful.
(18:55):
And if you can't think of something quickly for which
you are grateful, perspective and that is unhealthy. And I
would argue that many people in this country are winning
at the ballot box but losing in their lives, because
(19:15):
when you lose perspective, then effectively they own you. It's
very important to stop and be grateful for the things
you have. When I look in my own life, I
start with my father. I lost my mother. I'm grateful
(19:37):
for my father. I'm grateful for every day I have
with him. I'm grateful for every conversation I have with him.
He's had severe diabetes since he was nineteen. He was
discharged from the Coastguard. They didn't believe he'd survived, almost
lost his life with a diabetic attack. There wasn't treatment
(19:58):
for diabetes. He had to if treat that before there
were the things, the tools that we have today, and
he did and he survived. And I'm grateful for every day,
for every shared memory. I'm grateful for every conversation where
I can call up and go, hey, Dad, you remember
when we went to this Remember we went to see
(20:18):
the Astros play and Terry Poole got the game winning hit.
You remember that. I am grateful for all the years
that I did have my mother, because she was seventy
nine years old and for fifty three years of my life,
she was in my life. And you know, when someone passes,
(20:40):
the depth of loss you experience is a mirror. It
is the converse to the wonderfulness of what you experience.
You know, when someone tells me their mom or dad
has died and they don't care, that tells me they
didn't love them. I feel sad for them, not that
(21:01):
they don't care. But if you're going to love deeply,
you're going to lose deeply. So I hope that on
this Thanksgiving week that you will be grateful for the
loves that you've lost, for the things you once had
and cannot get back, for the fact that you once
(21:23):
had them, for the fact that you had that blessing,
because I can guarantee you there are plenty of people
who didn't. If you've lost a father, lost a mother
that you love deeply, be grateful. Think how many didn't
a brother, a sister, a wife, a husband, a child.
(21:45):
It's a great time of year in a great American
tradition to just stop and take stop take inventory. You know,
as a business owner, particularly if you're in retail or hospitality,
it's very important that you stop and take an inventory.
What are your par levels for your alcohol? How long?
(22:08):
How many stocks do you have for what's coming up
for Christmas, for instance, or at Mother's Day or Father's
Day or some others Valentine's Day. It's important to stop,
to stop and see what you have already and where
you need to supplement. And I think Thanksgiving is a
great opportunity to do that. It's a true opportunity for
(22:32):
us to do something maybe we don't do often enough
in our longing to add more things to our lives,
to accumulate more stuff, to travel to more places, to
make more money. Sometimes we don't stop long enough and
(22:53):
look around to.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
What we do have.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
If you have your health, I didn't understand this when
I was younger. I do now. If you have your
help or be grateful for that, because you won't always,
and once you don't have it, you'll realize what a
blessing it was that you did. If you have someone
(23:17):
that you love in your life, be grateful for that.
And if they also love you, boy, you found you've
found it. You found the path to riches greater than
any gold. If you have children who are healthy, be
(23:37):
grateful for that. If they love you, boy, that's a blessing.
I don't want to be too preachy, but this is
very important to me, and I have an opportunity anywhere.
Before Biden came into office, we had a legal immigration
at a record loan.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
It will be my policy to take down.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
The cartels, just as I took down the Califate. People
often tell me, especially our older listeners that it feels
like the thing that the America they grew up in
has changed. And when I asked them, what does that mean?
How has that manifested itself? One of the things that
(24:20):
will come up is we don't celebrate Easter the way
we used to. We don't celebrate Christmas the way we
used to. We don't celebrate Thanksgiving the way we used to. Well,
you understand those are not self celebrating holidays. It is
as highly or unanticipated as we make it. It's all
(24:45):
human emotion. And the problem is, or the challenge or
the opportunity is it has to be replicated year in
and year out. What's important about Thanksgiving? It's a uniquely
American tradition. I mean, if I need to make this
(25:08):
political to get some people's attention, because some people are
only driven by the political stuff. The left wants to
destroy Thanksgiving because everything that Thanksgiving represents the white man
coming to a nation where there were people already. Now,
(25:29):
those people had displaced other people who had displaced other
people who had displaced other people. So it's not that
they're the original inhabitants indigenous people, but just as has
happened throughout the world. You know, one hundred five hundred
years ago from now, they will describe the era we're in.
(25:52):
What that era will look like is up to us.
I'm not a fatalist in this sense. I think that
the decisions we make, actions we take will determine what
that history will be. Will this be the end of
a great empire, a great republic or will this just
be the beginning and we will see an ascendance that
(26:13):
will be up to us, not Donald Trump, all of us.
But it is important that we remember our history, and
we celebrate our history, and that we perpetuate our history.
People will see. You know, when I was growing up,
the kids in the school, you know, we'd all dress
up and as turkeys, and you know, my parents would
do this, and my parents would do this, and my
(26:34):
parents would do this, And I say, all right, will
you have kids about that age? Now?
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Are you doing that? No?
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Well then what changed? What change does you so bring
back those traditions? Well, I just remember my grandmother would
cook And well, now your wife is the grandmother. Is
she cooking like that? No, we ordered it in from
somewhere else. Okay, well that's fine, But when your kids
(27:02):
and grandkids are the age you are now, are they
going to remember that Mamma and Papa made this particular thing,
and Mamo and Papa made this particular thing. One of
my greatest memories is that my grandfather would make the
dressing every year. He was a big bear of a man.
(27:23):
He was a bus driver, he was a maintenance worker.
He was a hard drinker. He smoked his entire life
till he finally quit and went to smokeless as it
was called back then, which was tobacco. Red man was
his choice. But boil boy could he cook. And he
would make dressing that was delicious, I mean, just delicious dressing.
(27:47):
But my mother would declare that he put too much sage,
and everyone would sit around, they're too much sage in?
Is there too much stage?
Speaker 1 (27:52):
In?
Speaker 2 (27:52):
All afternoon there would be complaints that there had been
that there was too much sage, and now everyone had
well they referred to as intergestion, which is indigestion and
it's an unpleasant thing. And there would be talk that
there had been too much sage, and he'd say, I
put too much sage, and no, it didn't do too
(28:13):
much stage. And that memory to this day. The taste
of my grandfather's dressing. Well, lo and behold my wife,
being the saint that she is. When we met and
I told her what Thanksgiving was because she's from India,
she was an immigrant to the country, new to the country.
And I told her by that second Thanksgiving she was
(28:36):
here because the first Thanksgiving we just started dating. And
I told her what it was. I wanted to come,
you know, meet my grandparents and all this.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
Sort of stuff.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
And I told her all about that, and she figured out, Ladies,
listen to this. She figured out, you know, the way
that this man's heart is through his belly, and many
men are that way. There's two things that drive most
of us, one or the other or both, and just
know that. And the third would be not being nagged.
But that doesn't get its credit. So she sat next
(29:05):
to my grandmother and my grandfather, and she learned how
to make their dressing, how to make their chili, how
to make their corn bread. And so every day when
I sit down to our dining table at night for supper,
I feel this connection to my childhood, to my family's history.
(29:26):
So you've got time, it's not too late. And if
you don't, if you don't have a good recipe, go
find one. It's easy. It's easier, it's never been. Today,
it's easier than it's ever been to find the recipe
for what will become the Baker family or Jackson family,
or Roblist family, whatever that's going to be dressing blueberry Hi.
(29:49):
We've got to talk about these things. We have to
preserve our traditions. Thanksgiving is America. I mean, it's July
fourth and Thanksgiving. That's your distinctly American traditions, not a
tradition that we share with the rest of the world
for the human condition. These are traditions of America. If
that doesn't fire you up, your wood is wet.
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