November 22, 2024 • 31 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
It's that time, time, time, time, luck and loud. The
Michael Arry Show is on the air. It's Charlie from
BlackBerry Smoking. I can feel a good one coming on.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
It's the Michael Berry Show.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
All two six packs, shiners, not a nine sid putee ladders,
look at track center, fifth of patrol, I down, Natty
lue cooler, take a guess at all to do?
Speaker 2 (00:50):
I can feel a good one coming on.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Throwing Rey Wily Hubbard sing along to Nick Mother any
blues I had before God, another working week is over,
no chance staying sober.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
I can feel a good woman coming awful in the week. Man,
We're gonna get the feeling ride. We're gonna keep this fire.
I can feel the break of Dolly. I can feel
a good one and coming novel.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Three blobs in a wrecktop Mustang follow us down to
the lake and didn't have to think about that too long,
skinny diving in the bright moon eye.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Situation couldn't be around. I can feel a good one
coming on. We got to get to feel around. We
gonna keep it, hide around until the break and none.
(02:20):
I can feel a good one. I can feel a
good one.
Speaker 4 (02:28):
This is the day the Friday before Thanksgiving that every
year on The Michael Berry Show we dedicate to Thanksgiving,
to the importance of literally giving thanks being grateful. It's
a humbling activity, counting our blessings, looking around at the bounty,
(02:49):
looking around at the beauty, being grateful for the people,
the themes, the animals, the natural beauty that we have
available to us. Being grateful for the simple act of life,
for God's love for our good health. May say, well,
(03:11):
not really that healthy, Michael. You're still above ground, aren't you.
It is a delightful time and we love it and
we're glad you're here with us to make this tradition
and be with us for years and years to come.
(03:32):
Our great tradition over the last few years is to
play Rush Limbaughs the meaning of Thanksgiving. And this one,
this one is very important to us. Not only because
what Rush has to say is beautiful and wonderful, and
that'll be in our next segment. We'll played in its entirety,
(03:54):
not only because we love what Rush says, but because seventeenth,
twenty twenty one is a day is a very dark
day for us. It is the day of course at
Rush Limbaugh passed and Rush Limbaugh. We wouldn't be doing
what we do but for Rush Limbaugh. And I would
(04:14):
argue that Trump never would have been elected in twenty
sixteen but for Rush Limbaugh, and Trump never would have
been elected in twenty twenty four but for Rush Limbaugh.
The leader of a movement should leave behind him a
movement that continues in his absence. Jim Collins wrote a
book called Good to Great, and he measured the great
(04:37):
leaders of American industry, and he made the point that
a great leader will have instilled a culture, like a
movement in the company. He will have brought up good people,
and he will talk, he will have taught them a
culture so that even when he's gone, And you can
see this with Steve Jobs. When Steve Jobs left, Tim
(04:58):
Cook could step in because he had them so focused
on the quality of the product and design and the
culture and the consumer and advancement and innovation. And I
think those things are critically important. So that will be
our next segment. It's the highlight of this week's show,
(05:20):
and it's been our tradition for years and it will
be for years to come, and I hope you will
join us in making those new traditions years and years
to come in the future. It's also our tradition every
single Friday to close out the first segment of the show,
(05:41):
with courtesy of the greatest executive producer in all the land,
Chattikoni Nakanishi, your wee community. Here's the white people ad
(06:03):
over here, and then here's the script for the Black people.
Burger king, Baby, you got some big old hot hips
on your as.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Could I give me a whopple back?
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Then? Why?
Speaker 1 (06:14):
Sure, honey, you can have a wopp Well, that's not all.
I want a major change for the home of the
Houston Astros. For twenty two years, this has been minim Park.
Soon that'll change. Greeting from dk In Park, dk In Park,
dke In Park.
Speaker 4 (06:29):
With dyke In, the air conditioning manufacturer getting the naming rights,
it will be called the ice Bot Solo.
Speaker 5 (06:37):
President elect Donald Trump's cabinet picks are our Capitol Hill today,
trying to shore up support among Senators for.
Speaker 4 (06:43):
Confirmation one, already drawing criticism from Senate Republicans Matt Gates
for Trump's pick for Attorney General. Just getting word that
Gates has taken himself out of the running to be
Donald Trump's attorney general. In order to reform our government,
you're gonna have to have some people who are gonna
go in there who were.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Devil may care. They're not just fearless, they're actually reckless.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
Are the type of people who feed off of this
intense hatred that they engender and don't care.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Who likes some of our adoption special Jeff ere up, sir, Yeah,
we adopted our two sons from Russia.
Speaker 4 (07:18):
We just celebrated the eighteenth anniversary of them being here.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
What a blessing they are. Laura, you're on the Michael
Berry Show.
Speaker 4 (07:24):
Go ahead, sweetheart, I'm gonna adopt be back from the
sixties about thirty years ago.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Did search for my birth parents. It doesn't mean anything
about how much you love your parents if you do
decide to search for your roots and your identity.
Speaker 4 (07:37):
Adoption for me is the idea that a child deserves love.
If the traditional relationships are not in place, for whatever reason,
then someone else steps in. And the words of Georgeman
(08:21):
Art Shore and the words that were taken by Robert F.
Speaker 5 (08:23):
Pain These children speak Chinese and Spanish and Michael.
Speaker 4 (08:27):
Very Shore annual tradition on our Thanksgiving edition, which is
the Friday before the following Thursday is to play rush
Limbaugh's The.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Meaning of Thanksgiving in honor.
Speaker 4 (08:43):
Of the Great the Irreplaceable rush Limbaugh, The True Story
of Thanksgiving.
Speaker 5 (08:50):
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 believed strongly in freedom
of worship were hunted down, imprisoned, and sometimes executed for
(09:14):
their beliefs. A group of separatists 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.
(09:36):
It carried a total of one 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? They came from
(09:58):
the Bible, the Pilgrim's where 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 precedent set forth in scripture, they never doubted that
their experiment would work.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
But it was no pleasure cruise. The journey to the
New World was a long and arduous one.
Speaker 5 (10:20):
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 in The sacrifice that
they had made for freedom was just beginning. During the
(10:41):
first winter, half the pilgrims, including Bradford's own wife, died
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, and this is important
(11:02):
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.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Here's the part that's been omitted.
Speaker 5 (11:22):
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 to 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
(11:44):
they 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 God.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
There's no question it was organic vegetables.
Speaker 5 (12:03):
Bradford, who had become a 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.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
He decided to take bold action.
Speaker 5 (12:18):
Bradford assigned a plot of land each family to work
and manage, thus turning loose the power in the marketplace.
Long before Carl Marx was even born, the Pilgrims had
discovered and experimented with what could only.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Be described as socialism. And what happened. It didn't work.
It nearly starved, never has worked.
Speaker 5 (12:38):
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 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.
(13:00):
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 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
(13:22):
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 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
(13:44):
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 children without being
paid for it.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
That was thought injustice. Why should you.
Speaker 5 (13:55):
Work for other people when you can't work for yourself?
What's the point, That's what he was saying. 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 unharnished the power of good old free enterprise by
invoking the undergirding capitalistic principle of private property. Every family
(14:21):
was assigned its own plot of land to work, and
permitted to market its own crops and products. What was
the result, 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.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Is it possible the supply side economics could have existed
before the nineteen eighties. Yes.
Speaker 5 (14:43):
Read the story of Joseph and Pharaoh in Genesis forty one.
Following Joseph's suggestion, Pharaoh reduced the tax on Egyptians to
twenty percent during the seven years at plenty, and the earth.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
Brought forth in heaps well.
Speaker 5 (14:55):
At no time the pilgrims found that they had more
food than they could eat themselves. Now this this is
where it gets really good if you're laboring under the
misconception that I was as I was taught in school.
They set up trading posts, they exchanged goods with the Indians.
The prophets allowed them to pay off their debts to
(15:16):
the merchants in London. And the success and the prosperity
of the Plymouth settlement attracted more Europeans and began what
came to be known as the Great Puritan Migration. But
this story stops when the Indians taught the newly arrived
suffering and socialism pilgrims how to plant corn and fish
for cod. That's where the original Thanksgiving story stops. Story
(15:40):
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
socialism caused near starvation. The bounty was shared with the Indians.
They did sit down, they did have free range turkey
(16:02):
and organic vegetables. But it wasn't the Indians who saved
the day. It was capitalism and scripture which saved the day,
as acknowledged by George Washington in his first Thanksgiving proclamation
in seventeen eighty nine.
Speaker 4 (16:18):
You take care of it down, thankybody, Michael, 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 station wagon. People do, that's the family station wagonzinemoremon,
that's crazy. Station wagon became the minivan. The minivan became
(16:40):
the suburban explorer. And you will head off to Mammal's house.
And that is a sacred, sacred ritual. You know that
it is a sacred ritual when Barack Obama attempted to
destroy it by telling young people go home and tell
(17:04):
your grandmother she's a racist. Tearing apart the family, the
fabric of the family is the ultimate goal of the
cultural Marxist because the communist has to destroy your faith
and your family in order to control you. Faith and
(17:27):
family are rivals to communism, which is both a faith
and a community that replicates the family. It destroys the
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
(17:51):
a negative influence in your family, I encourage you to
cut them loose. You can't fix them and they'll ruin everything.
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,
(18:12):
your cars, your trucks, your speakers, your earphones. Some of
you every day, some of you on the podcast.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Literally every day of the week.
Speaker 4 (18:22):
It's a pretty intimate relationship 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, we take a moment to talk about
(18:43):
the importance of what it means to stop and give things.
And that's perhaps more important today than it has been
for a very long time. There's a beautiful gospel song
that goes, count your blessings, name them one by one,
Count your blessings, and it will surprise you what the
(19:06):
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 how many times it will be the
case that someone cannot immediately tell you something for which
(19:31):
they are grateful.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
Thankful.
Speaker 4 (19:36):
I think you have to have a thankful spirit. It's
part of humility. I think you have to be grateful.
And if you can't think of something quickly for which
you are grateful, you lack perspective, and that is unhealthy.
And I would argue that many people in this country
are winning at the ballot box losing in their lives,
(20:02):
because 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 recently.
(20:23):
I'm grateful 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 eighty four years old. He's had
severe diabetes since he was nineteen. He was discharged from
the Coastguard. They didn't believe he had survived, almost lost
his life with a diabetic attack. There wasn't treatment for diabetes.
(20:46):
He had to self 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 I remember we went to see the
Astros play and Terry Poole got the game winning hit.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
You remember that.
Speaker 4 (21:12):
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.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
She was in my life.
Speaker 4 (21:22):
And you know, when someone passes, 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
(21:46):
feel sad for them, not that 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 love that you've lost, for
the things you once had and cannot get back, for
(22:07):
the fact that you once 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 or sister, a wife,
a husband, a child. It's a great time of year
(22:31):
in a great American tradition to just stop and take stock.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Take inventory.
Speaker 4 (22:40):
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? 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 all time's day. It's
(23:01):
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 us to do something that maybe we
don't do often enough in our longing to add more
things to our lives, to accumulate more stuff, to travel
(23:27):
to more places, to make more money. Sometimes we don't
stop long enough and look around to what we do have.
If you have your health, I didn't understand this when
I was younger.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
I do now.
Speaker 4 (23:43):
If you have your health, it would 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 that you love in your life,
be grateful for that. And if they also love you, boy,
(24:06):
you've found you found it. You found the path to
riches greater than any gold. If you have children who
are healthy, be grateful for that. If they love you, well,
that's a blessing. I don't want to be too preachy,
but this is very important to me, and I have
(24:28):
an opportunity on these airwaves and I just want to
take advantage. And so for so many of you, this
is the first year you will have heard our show.
This is an annual tradition, our Thanksgiving tradition, which we
do the Friday before the next Thursday.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
And well, yeah, it's important to us.
Speaker 4 (24:49):
Me or take me to Texas because I'm ready to
get out of this state. I think Michael Barry rob
I like its. 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,
(25:12):
what does that mean? How has that manifested itself? One
of the things that 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
(25:42):
as we make it. It's all 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,
(26:05):
if I need to make this 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.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
Where there were people already.
Speaker 4 (26:26):
Now, 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
(26:49):
we're in.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
What that era will look like is up to us.
I'm not a fatalist in this sense.
Speaker 4 (26:56):
I think that the decisions we make, actions we take,
we'll determine what that history will be.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Will this be the end of a great empire, a
great republic? Or will this just be the.
Speaker 4 (27:09):
Beginning and we will see an ascendants That 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 with
the kids in the school, you know, we'd all dress
up and as turkeys, and you know, my parents would
(27:30):
do this, and my parents would do this, and my
parents would do this, And I say, all right, will
you have kids about that age?
Speaker 3 (27:35):
Now?
Speaker 1 (27:35):
Are you doing that?
Speaker 2 (27:37):
No?
Speaker 1 (27:39):
Well then what changed? What change does you so bring
back those traditions?
Speaker 4 (27:47):
Well, I just remember my grandmother would cook and d 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 and grandkids are the age you
are now, are they going to remember that Mamma and
papa made this particular thing. And Mama and Papa made
(28:08):
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. 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
(28:29):
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. But my mother would declare
that he put too much sage, and everyone would sit around,
they're too much sagent and is there too much stage?
(28:50):
In 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
(29:10):
too much sage. And that memory to this day, the
taste of my grandfather's dressing.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
Well.
Speaker 4 (29:21):
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 here because the first Thanksgiving we
just started dating.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
And I told her what it was.
Speaker 4 (29:37):
I wanted to come, you know, meet my grandparents and
all this sort of stuff. 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
(29:58):
third would be not being nagged, but that that doesn't
get its credit. So she sat next 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
(30:20):
to my childhood, to my family's history. 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.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
It's easy.
Speaker 4 (30:30):
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.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
Hi.
Speaker 4 (30:47):
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
or the human condition. These are traditions of America. If
that doesn't fire you up, woof your wood is wet.
It's that time, time, time, time, luck and loud. The
Michael Arry Show is on the air. It's Charlie from
BlackBerry Smoking. I can feel a good one coming on.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
It's the Michael Berry Show.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
All two six packs, shiners, not a nine sid putee ladders,
look at track center, fifth of patrol, I down, Natty
lue cooler, take a guess at all to do?
Speaker 2 (00:50):
I can feel a good one coming on.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Throwing Rey Wily Hubbard sing along to Nick Mother any
blues I had before God, another working week is over,
no chance staying sober.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
I can feel a good woman coming awful in the week. Man,
We're gonna get the feeling ride. We're gonna keep this fire.
I can feel the break of Dolly. I can feel
a good one and coming novel.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Three blobs in a wrecktop Mustang follow us down to
the lake and didn't have to think about that too long,
skinny diving in the bright moon eye.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Situation couldn't be around. I can feel a good one
coming on. We got to get to feel around. We
gonna keep it, hide around until the break and none.
(02:20):
I can feel a good one. I can feel a
good one.
Speaker 4 (02:28):
This is the day the Friday before Thanksgiving that every
year on The Michael Berry Show we dedicate to Thanksgiving,
to the importance of literally giving thanks being grateful. It's
a humbling activity, counting our blessings, looking around at the bounty,
(02:49):
looking around at the beauty, being grateful for the people,
the themes, the animals, the natural beauty that we have
available to us. Being grateful for the simple act of life,
for God's love for our good health. May say, well,
(03:11):
not really that healthy, Michael. You're still above ground, aren't you.
It is a delightful time and we love it and
we're glad you're here with us to make this tradition
and be with us for years and years to come.
(03:32):
Our great tradition over the last few years is to
play Rush Limbaughs the meaning of Thanksgiving. And this one,
this one is very important to us. Not only because
what Rush has to say is beautiful and wonderful, and
that'll be in our next segment. We'll played in its entirety,
(03:54):
not only because we love what Rush says, but because seventeenth,
twenty twenty one is a day is a very dark
day for us. It is the day of course at
Rush Limbaugh passed and Rush Limbaugh. We wouldn't be doing
what we do but for Rush Limbaugh. And I would
(04:14):
argue that Trump never would have been elected in twenty
sixteen but for Rush Limbaugh, and Trump never would have
been elected in twenty twenty four but for Rush Limbaugh.
The leader of a movement should leave behind him a
movement that continues in his absence. Jim Collins wrote a
book called Good to Great, and he measured the great
(04:37):
leaders of American industry, and he made the point that
a great leader will have instilled a culture, like a
movement in the company. He will have brought up good people,
and he will talk, he will have taught them a
culture so that even when he's gone, And you can
see this with Steve Jobs. When Steve Jobs left, Tim
(04:58):
Cook could step in because he had them so focused
on the quality of the product and design and the
culture and the consumer and advancement and innovation. And I
think those things are critically important. So that will be
our next segment. It's the highlight of this week's show,
(05:20):
and it's been our tradition for years and it will
be for years to come, and I hope you will
join us in making those new traditions years and years
to come in the future. It's also our tradition every
single Friday to close out the first segment of the show,
(05:41):
with courtesy of the greatest executive producer in all the land,
Chattikoni Nakanishi, your wee community. Here's the white people ad
(06:03):
over here, and then here's the script for the Black people.
Burger king, Baby, you got some big old hot hips
on your as.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Could I give me a whopple back?
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Then? Why?
Speaker 1 (06:14):
Sure, honey, you can have a wopp Well, that's not all.
I want a major change for the home of the
Houston Astros. For twenty two years, this has been minim Park.
Soon that'll change. Greeting from dk In Park, dk In Park,
dke In Park.
Speaker 4 (06:29):
With dyke In, the air conditioning manufacturer getting the naming rights,
it will be called the ice Bot Solo.
Speaker 5 (06:37):
President elect Donald Trump's cabinet picks are our Capitol Hill today,
trying to shore up support among Senators for.
Speaker 4 (06:43):
Confirmation one, already drawing criticism from Senate Republicans Matt Gates
for Trump's pick for Attorney General. Just getting word that
Gates has taken himself out of the running to be
Donald Trump's attorney general. In order to reform our government,
you're gonna have to have some people who are gonna
go in there who were.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Devil may care. They're not just fearless, they're actually reckless.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
Are the type of people who feed off of this
intense hatred that they engender and don't care.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Who likes some of our adoption special Jeff ere up, sir, Yeah,
we adopted our two sons from Russia.
Speaker 4 (07:18):
We just celebrated the eighteenth anniversary of them being here.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
What a blessing they are. Laura, you're on the Michael
Berry Show.
Speaker 4 (07:24):
Go ahead, sweetheart, I'm gonna adopt be back from the
sixties about thirty years ago.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Did search for my birth parents. It doesn't mean anything
about how much you love your parents if you do
decide to search for your roots and your identity.
Speaker 4 (07:37):
Adoption for me is the idea that a child deserves love.
If the traditional relationships are not in place, for whatever reason,
then someone else steps in. And the words of Georgeman
(08:21):
Art Shore and the words that were taken by Robert F.
Speaker 5 (08:23):
Pain These children speak Chinese and Spanish and Michael.
Speaker 4 (08:27):
Very Shore annual tradition on our Thanksgiving edition, which is
the Friday before the following Thursday is to play rush
Limbaugh's The.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Meaning of Thanksgiving in honor.
Speaker 4 (08:43):
Of the Great the Irreplaceable rush Limbaugh, The True Story
of Thanksgiving.
Speaker 5 (08:50):
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 believed strongly in freedom
of worship were hunted down, imprisoned, and sometimes executed for
(09:14):
their beliefs. A group of separatists 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.
(09:36):
It carried a total of one 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? They came from
(09:58):
the Bible, the Pilgrim's where 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 precedent set forth in scripture, they never doubted that
their experiment would work.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
But it was no pleasure cruise. The journey to the
New World was a long and arduous one.
Speaker 5 (10:20):
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 in The sacrifice that
they had made for freedom was just beginning. During the
(10:41):
first winter, half the pilgrims, including Bradford's own wife, died
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, and this is important
(11:02):
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.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Here's the part that's been omitted.
Speaker 5 (11:22):
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 to 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
(11:44):
they 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 God.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
There's no question it was organic vegetables.
Speaker 5 (12:03):
Bradford, who had become a 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.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
He decided to take bold action.
Speaker 5 (12:18):
Bradford assigned a plot of land each family to work
and manage, thus turning loose the power in the marketplace.
Long before Carl Marx was even born, the Pilgrims had
discovered and experimented with what could only.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Be described as socialism. And what happened. It didn't work.
It nearly starved, never has worked.
Speaker 5 (12:38):
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 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.
(13:00):
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 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
(13:22):
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 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
(13:44):
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 children without being
paid for it.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
That was thought injustice. Why should you.
Speaker 5 (13:55):
Work for other people when you can't work for yourself?
What's the point, That's what he was saying. 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 unharnished the power of good old free enterprise by
invoking the undergirding capitalistic principle of private property. Every family
(14:21):
was assigned its own plot of land to work, and
permitted to market its own crops and products. What was
the result, 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.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Is it possible the supply side economics could have existed
before the nineteen eighties. Yes.
Speaker 5 (14:43):
Read the story of Joseph and Pharaoh in Genesis forty one.
Following Joseph's suggestion, Pharaoh reduced the tax on Egyptians to
twenty percent during the seven years at plenty, and the earth.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
Brought forth in heaps well.
Speaker 5 (14:55):
At no time the pilgrims found that they had more
food than they could eat themselves. Now this this is
where it gets really good if you're laboring under the
misconception that I was as I was taught in school.
They set up trading posts, they exchanged goods with the Indians.
The prophets allowed them to pay off their debts to
(15:16):
the merchants in London. And the success and the prosperity
of the Plymouth settlement attracted more Europeans and began what
came to be known as the Great Puritan Migration. But
this story stops when the Indians taught the newly arrived
suffering and socialism pilgrims how to plant corn and fish
for cod. That's where the original Thanksgiving story stops. Story
(15:40):
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
socialism caused near starvation. The bounty was shared with the Indians.
They did sit down, they did have free range turkey
(16:02):
and organic vegetables. But it wasn't the Indians who saved
the day. It was capitalism and scripture which saved the day,
as acknowledged by George Washington in his first Thanksgiving proclamation
in seventeen eighty nine.
Speaker 4 (16:18):
You take care of it down, thankybody, Michael, 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 station wagon. People do, that's the family station wagonzinemoremon,
that's crazy. Station wagon became the minivan. The minivan became
(16:40):
the suburban explorer. And you will head off to Mammal's house.
And that is a sacred, sacred ritual. You know that
it is a sacred ritual when Barack Obama attempted to
destroy it by telling young people go home and tell
(17:04):
your grandmother she's a racist. Tearing apart the family, the
fabric of the family is the ultimate goal of the
cultural Marxist because the communist has to destroy your faith
and your family in order to control you. Faith and
(17:27):
family are rivals to communism, which is both a faith
and a community that replicates the family. It destroys the
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
(17:51):
a negative influence in your family, I encourage you to
cut them loose. You can't fix them and they'll ruin everything.
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,
(18:12):
your cars, your trucks, your speakers, your earphones. Some of
you every day, some of you on the podcast.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Literally every day of the week.
Speaker 4 (18:22):
It's a pretty intimate relationship 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, we take a moment to talk about
(18:43):
the importance of what it means to stop and give things.
And that's perhaps more important today than it has been
for a very long time. There's a beautiful gospel song
that goes, count your blessings, name them one by one,
Count your blessings, and it will surprise you what the
(19:06):
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 how many times it will be the
case that someone cannot immediately tell you something for which
(19:31):
they are grateful.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
Thankful.
Speaker 4 (19:36):
I think you have to have a thankful spirit. It's
part of humility. I think you have to be grateful.
And if you can't think of something quickly for which
you are grateful, you lack perspective, and that is unhealthy.
And I would argue that many people in this country
are winning at the ballot box losing in their lives,
(20:02):
because 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 recently.
(20:23):
I'm grateful 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 eighty four years old. He's had
severe diabetes since he was nineteen. He was discharged from
the Coastguard. They didn't believe he had survived, almost lost
his life with a diabetic attack. There wasn't treatment for diabetes.
(20:46):
He had to self 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 I remember we went to see the
Astros play and Terry Poole got the game winning hit.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
You remember that.
Speaker 4 (21:12):
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.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
She was in my life.
Speaker 4 (21:22):
And you know, when someone passes, 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
(21:46):
feel sad for them, not that 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 love that you've lost, for
the things you once had and cannot get back, for
(22:07):
the fact that you once 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 or sister, a wife,
a husband, a child. It's a great time of year
(22:31):
in a great American tradition to just stop and take stock.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Take inventory.
Speaker 4 (22:40):
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? 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 all time's day. It's
(23:01):
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 us to do something that maybe we
don't do often enough in our longing to add more
things to our lives, to accumulate more stuff, to travel
(23:27):
to more places, to make more money. Sometimes we don't
stop long enough and look around to what we do have.
If you have your health, I didn't understand this when
I was younger.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
I do now.
Speaker 4 (23:43):
If you have your health, it would 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 that you love in your life,
be grateful for that. And if they also love you, boy,
(24:06):
you've found you found it. You found the path to
riches greater than any gold. If you have children who
are healthy, be grateful for that. If they love you, well,
that's a blessing. I don't want to be too preachy,
but this is very important to me, and I have
(24:28):
an opportunity on these airwaves and I just want to
take advantage. And so for so many of you, this
is the first year you will have heard our show.
This is an annual tradition, our Thanksgiving tradition, which we
do the Friday before the next Thursday.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
And well, yeah, it's important to us.
Speaker 4 (24:49):
Me or take me to Texas because I'm ready to
get out of this state. I think Michael Barry rob
I like its. 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,
(25:12):
what does that mean? How has that manifested itself? One
of the things that 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
(25:42):
as we make it. It's all 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,
(26:05):
if I need to make this 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.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
Where there were people already.
Speaker 4 (26:26):
Now, 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
(26:49):
we're in.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
What that era will look like is up to us.
I'm not a fatalist in this sense.
Speaker 4 (26:56):
I think that the decisions we make, actions we take,
we'll determine what that history will be.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Will this be the end of a great empire, a
great republic? Or will this just be the.
Speaker 4 (27:09):
Beginning and we will see an ascendants That 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 with
the kids in the school, you know, we'd all dress
up and as turkeys, and you know, my parents would
(27:30):
do this, and my parents would do this, and my
parents would do this, And I say, all right, will
you have kids about that age?
Speaker 3 (27:35):
Now?
Speaker 1 (27:35):
Are you doing that?
Speaker 2 (27:37):
No?
Speaker 1 (27:39):
Well then what changed? What change does you so bring
back those traditions?
Speaker 4 (27:47):
Well, I just remember my grandmother would cook and d 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 and grandkids are the age you
are now, are they going to remember that Mamma and
papa made this particular thing. And Mama and Papa made
(28:08):
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. 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
(28:29):
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. But my mother would declare
that he put too much sage, and everyone would sit around,
they're too much sagent and is there too much stage?
(28:50):
In 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
(29:10):
too much sage. And that memory to this day, the
taste of my grandfather's dressing.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
Well.
Speaker 4 (29:21):
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 here because the first Thanksgiving we
just started dating.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
And I told her what it was.
Speaker 4 (29:37):
I wanted to come, you know, meet my grandparents and
all this sort of stuff. 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
(29:58):
third would be not being nagged, but that that doesn't
get its credit. So she sat next 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
(30:20):
to my childhood, to my family's history. 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.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
It's easy.
Speaker 4 (30:30):
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.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
Hi.
Speaker 4 (30:47):
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
or the human condition. These are traditions of America. If
that doesn't fire you up, woof your wood is wet.
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