November 27, 2025 • 30 mins
Wealth isn't earned; it's engineered. Join me Jan 7-9 for 3 days where we'll be engineering your complete Wealth Operating System, live, with hands-on tools, custom worksheets, and real-time coaching from me and my team. I wish I would've gone to something like this earlier. Can't wait to see you there 👉 https://go.1markmoss.com/mmyt3 There's the Thanksgiving story, you know, and then there's a major part of the story that you don't. And now, for 28 years, on Thanksgiving Day, radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh, he read part of this Thanksgiving story. It's been about four years since he's died. And I think it's time for me to bring it back, because most people have no idea how close the pilgrims came to failing. And the reason why is nothing like the version that you learned in school. And whether you live in America or you live in some other country. This story matters because every nation rises and collapses on the same principle that the pilgrims discovered out of sheer desperation. Now, what happened next didn't just save this starving settlement.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
There's the Thanksgiving story you know, and then there's a
major part of the story that you don't. And now,
for twenty eight years, on Thanksgiving Day, radio talk show
host Rush Limbaugh, he read part of this Thanksgiving story.
It's been about four years since he's died, and I
think it's time for me to bring it back because
most people have no idea how close the Pilgrims came
to failing, and the reason why is nothing like the
(00:22):
version that you learned in school. And whether you live
in America or you live in some other country, this
story matters because every nation rises and collapses on the
same principle that the Pilgrim's discovered out of sheer desperation. Now,
what happened next didn't just save this starving settlement.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
They started.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
It planted the seed of the prosperity engine that shaped
the entire modern world that we live in. Now, once
you understand it, you're going to see exactly why economies boom,
why they break, and why you're repeating the same mistakes Right.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Now now, real quick.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
If you're new here, I've spent decades building and selling companies.
I'm a partner of major bitcoin venture fund. I help
run a public and trade bitcoin company.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
So when we talk.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
About incentives and systems and prosperity, these are the same
principles that we use today and you can use them too.
So let's go back four hundred years and look at
what really happened, because the real Thanksgiving story it starts
with a system that was failing from day one. Let's
go all right now, when the Pilgrims decided to leave Europe.
(01:22):
And you have to understand something about this, right, This
wasn't like going on a road trip for us today.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
This was the seventeenth century, so.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
This would have been like us today, I don't know,
loading one hundred people into a homemade rocket and launching
for an uncharted planet. Now, almost none of them had
the money to do this because these weren't wealthy people.
They weren't aristocrats, They weren't even funded by a church
or any government. Most of them were working class Christian
believers who had already spent a decade living in exile
(01:52):
in leading Netherlands. They were fleeing religious persecution in England.
But to cross the Atlantic that required money. It required
a lot of money. So they needed, you know, ships,
they needed crews, They needed food, tools, weapons, They needed
supplies to survive months at sea, and then supplies to
rebuild a civilization from scratch when they landed. Now, the Pilgrims,
(02:15):
they couldn't afford any of this, so they did what
any startup today would do.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Right. They've got a vision, but not enough cash. They
went to investors.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
These weren't philanthropists, these weren't donors. These were hard nosed
London merchants. It's an important part of the story. These
were businessmen, and they financed risky ventures only if they
controlled the entire operation. Now, the Pilgrims they needed the money.
They needed the money badly, so of course they agreed
to this plan. Right, so they signed a contract that
(02:45):
would define their entire life in America. This contract, it
handed the investors total control over how the American colony
would function, including one very specific requirement that would turn
out to be patis. But at the time the Pilgrims
didn't realize it. They they didn't even really care. As
a matter of fact, right they were willing to endure
(03:06):
almost anything, any hardship, to escape the old world and
go build a new one.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
So they left leading.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
They selled to England, and after delays in Southampton, they
finally boarded the Mayflower in Plymouth, England, in September of
sixteen twenty. Why they started this late in the year,
I don't know, come back to that. But they left
and they were carrying nothing but faith, courage, contract and
the contract that looked good on paper, but it nearly
(03:33):
guaranteed the colony would fail. Now, they had no idea
that the biggest danger wasn't the sea, it wasn't the storms,
it wasn't even the winter that was waiting for them
when they landed. The real danger was the system they
were bringing with them, a system that almost wiped them out.
That's where the story turned. Now, just to set the
stage a little bit here, when the Pilgrims finally reached
the New World, it's important to picture like what they
(03:55):
actually landed to what they walked into, because it wasn't
like there was like some open fields and some buildings
like waiting for them. Right they arrived in December of
sixteen twenty, it was the dead of winter in New England.
It was freezing cold, the ground was frozen solid, temperatures
were brutal, and of course there was no buildings. There
was no shelter, there was nothing there, right, so they
(04:17):
had to sleep on the boat, on the Mayflower for
weeks while small groups went ashore. They left the boat,
they went ashore, they cut timber, they started building some
crude shelters in the freezing cold. And for food, well,
of course, they couldn't plant anything. That's going to take
a year, not to mention the soil was hard as
a rock. There was no harvest coming for them. They
could hunt, but that wasn't easy either, right. The animals
(04:40):
were different from the ones that they had known over
in Europe. The terrain was dense, it was icy, and
as Bradford said, the food supply quote decreased daily because
they didn't know how to fish right. The local waters
were different. Their early hunts didn't bring in much food.
On top of that, the wave of sickness hit almost immediately, pneumonia, scurvy, fevers.
(05:03):
By the end of the first winter, they had lost
forty five people out of the original one hundred and
two that left. I mean, that's almost half the entire
group gone in just a couple of months. Now, while
all this is happening, they're still trying to operate under
this economic system they agreed to back in England with
the investors. Now, the system that those investors required in
(05:24):
exchange for giving them the money for finance and the
voyage meant that everything that they produced over in the
New World belonged to the company. Nothing belonged to them individually.
So they had basically a communal system. They had communal work,
they had communal stores, they had no private property. It
was the deal that they had made, right, the price
they had to pay to get the funding that they
(05:45):
needed to leave Europe. Now, of course that arrangement it
might sound fine on paper, but when you combine a
harsh winter, constant sickness, you got starvation, you got the
stress of trying to build a shelter from scratch. The
cracks in the system all started to show up really fast. Okay,
now fast forwarding the first few years, to say the least,
they're rough sixteen twenty one, sixteen twenty two, about two
(06:08):
full years. Right, they were operating under the same communal structure. Right,
No one owned anything, no houses, no crops. Everything was
going back to the investors that gave him the money.
There's really important, really interesting piece of the story I
got to tell you about. It's sort of like this impossible,
unlikely chain of events. The Pilgrims didn't go through all
(06:29):
this alone. In March of sixteen twenty one, four months
after they arrived, they met Samoset. He was an Abernaki
who had learned broken English from fishermen up in Maine.
And then the next day he brings Squanto, who didn't
just know a few words of English, he spoke fluent English.
And squad Sho's story is completely unbelievable. He had been
(06:52):
kidnapped years earlier by an English trader, taken all the
way to Spain, rescued by monks sent to England, he
learned the language, and eventually he made his way back
all the way back to the New World, only to
find his entire tribe had been wiped out by a plague.
So when the Pilgrims landed on that exact spot, Squanto
(07:13):
was the only survivor living alone. Now he becomes their translator,
He became their guide. It's miraculous, right. Even secular historians
admit the timing is astonishing. Now Bradford said, quote Squanto
was a special instrument sent of God for our good.
He taught us how to plant corn, where to take fish,
(07:33):
and how to procure other commodities. So Squanto helped them
a lot. He taught them how to plant he had
taught him, how to plant with fish fertilizer, how to
use local crops like corn, how to find eels in
the mudflats. He served as an interpreter with leather local
tribe leaders. But and this is the part that often
gets glossed over, even with the native assistance, the system
(07:54):
they were working under still didn't function well because the
problem wasn't how to farm, it wasn't how to fish.
They learned that the problem was the structure of the labor.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
You see.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
The communal arrangement that they had meant nobody had a
personal stake in how much they produced. Everything went into
the commons store. Everyone drew the same rations. Bradford writes
that during these years, especially through the sixteen twenty two
planting and harvest cycle, the younger man who were able
to work the hardest, felt it was unfair. He uses
(08:27):
the word injustice, that their extra labor would support other
families while their own families didn't receive any added benefit.
Now he's really clear about this. He says it quote
dispirited them, It made them quote slower to work. All right,
Now that's his wording, that's not mine. Now, Winslow says
the same thing, noting that quote all men have this
(08:49):
corruption in them end quote, meaning basically that men have
a natural tendency to look out for their own family first.
Not a big surprise. So this isn't a moral judgment.
He wasn't saying that. He was simply recording what he
was seeing. Now, when you disconnect effort from reward, even
good hardworking people, they naturally start doing the minimum, especially
(09:11):
when they're already exhausted, they're hungry, they're grieving the loss
of their loved ones. Right, you don't need economic theory
modern economics to explain that. The primary sources they already
tell you exactly what happened. Now, then Bradford records something
that really stands out. The women that were left they
were frustrated because under the communal system they were expected
(09:33):
to cook and clean not only for their own families,
but also for the single men in the colony. Bradford says,
they considered this quote a kind of slavery.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
End quote.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Now, again, that's his language. Now, keep in mind, these
are women who had just buried after community. They were
raising children in freezing conditions. They were being asked to
double their labor but no added benefit. So of course
that created resentment. After two full planting and harvest seasons,
by sixteen to twenty, it became obvious to everyone that
this arrangement was not working.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
It's not going to work. It wouldn't work.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Now they weren't starving quite as bad as the first
season because they had learned to fish right now, they'd planted,
they learned how to work with the local tribes. But
the underlying system it was still the same, It was
still holding the back. Bradford says very plainly that it
quote retarded much employment, meaning it slowed down, right. It
slowed people down that otherwise would have been capable, right
(10:28):
if the incentives had been aligned with their families own
well being. So now you kind of have this perfect
storm two brutal years. Half the colony's dead, they're gone.
Productivity is stuck in this in this mud. If you will,
you have constant frustration. Everyone knows that something has to
change before the next harvest cycle, or they're probably not
going to make it right. They can't keep doing this
(10:48):
for another year. They're not going to survive. And that's
what brings us to the spring of sixteen twenty three,
and this is the moment where the entire direction of
the colony changed. The colony got a visit from someone
who's in incredibly important to the story, someone you've probably
never heard about because he's not really talked about much anymore.
His name is Robert Cushman. Now Cushman was basically a deacon.
(11:09):
He was a representative of the church all the way
back over in Leaden. Now he stayed back in England.
He was helping negotiate the financial, the legal arrangements for
the voyage and he finally made it over to Plymouth
in late sixteen twenty one. And while he was there
they asked him to preach, So he does. He gives
a sermon, and we know the exact text he preached
because he later published it. It's from First Corinthians ten
(11:32):
twenty four. He said, let no man seek his own,
but every man another's wealth. Now the word wealth there,
it doesn't mean money. It means your neighbor's well being.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
It's their good right.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
This idea is basically, don't live in a way that
only prioritizes yourself, use your freedom in a way that
considers the whole community. Now, of course this hits pretty hard,
right then at that point for that group, right, they've
been through starvation, they've been through sickness, loss of family members,
a lot of stress. And here's what's important to remember
about this. Cushman wasn't telling them to stay in this
(12:07):
communal system. He wasn't defending the system that they had.
He said that people were not motivated to be working
for others' behalves with no benefit to themselves, and this
new system needed to be set up. But he was
calling out he was warning that selfishness could and it
would destroy any system. So he's addressing the heart of
(12:29):
the people, not the structure they had set up. And Bradford,
he took this sermon seriously. You can see it in
his writing. So this sermon becomes almost like this spiritual
reset for the colony.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Right.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
It doesn't change the economic system. That part comes a
little bit later, but it gets their mindset aligned around
the idea that something isn't working and if they're going
to survive, they can't afford to give into the natural
resentment that was already starting to show up there. All right,
So this is where the two forces they start to converge.
On one side, you have a system that's not produced
(13:00):
enough to sustain the colony. On the other side, you
have a pastor reminding them that even when a system's broken,
people still need each other, that motives matter. He's basically saying,
if you're gonna make change, you'd better do it with
the right heart, because otherwise the change won't help you.
So now we have fast forwarding again. We're in the
(13:20):
spring of sixteen twenty three. Now this is where the
real pivot starts to happen. Bradford says, quote. So they
began to think how they might raise as much corner
as they could and obtain a better crop than they
had done. So this wasn't some philosophical conversation about political theory, right.
They weren't debating ideology here. They were trying to survive
(13:43):
the next winner. They knew that if they repeated the
last two years, they weren't gonna make it. So the
question becomes, what can we change right now before we
start planting that might give us even a small chance
at getting a better harvest. Now, after a lot of discussion,
Bradford immediate explains the decision that followed. He said, so
they assigned to every family a parcel of land for
(14:06):
that year only, all right, So they gave them land.
It wasn't a big farm, it wasn't private ownership in
the legal sense.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
But they had a small, defined.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
Parcel for each household to plant, one that they could
work for themselves during that season. The idea was pretty simple, right,
let each family work its own piece of land and
then keep the fruits of their own labor.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Right.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
He describes the reason for the change. He said, this
had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
And remember this.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Was still technically within this seven year contract where they
had with the investors, right, so they weren't carrying that
agreement up. They weren't abandoning the communal storehouses entirely. But
what they were doing was creating this parallel structure. This
parallel system at least for the corner anyway, because the
old structure wasn't working. It felt them twice. Now, Bradford
explains what a major shift this was. For two years
(14:59):
they had been trying to forced themselves into this structure.
It didn't match how people actually behave. And now, for
the first time since leaving Europe, they took this step forward,
something closer to personal responsibility direct incentives. And Bradford says
something that I think really captures the mindset at that moment.
He writes that this change was made to raise a
better crop. Such a simple phrase, but it shows you
(15:23):
exactly where their priorities were. Right. They weren't trying to
mad political statements, right, This wasn't a rejection of their
investor's theology, right, it was survival.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
They needed corn. So that's the shift.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Early spring sixteen twenty three, for two years of communal
label they divided the land into small plots, assigning each
one of the households. They gave each family the responsibility
to work its own acre and then keep what it produced. Now,
it's right after the decision, in the weeks in the
months that followed that everything starts to change. So the
results started coming in almost immediately. Bradford, he was really
(15:55):
clear about what happened next. He writes that this new
arrangement quote had very goods success, for it made all
hands very industrious. Now he goes even further. He says,
even the women who had been frustrated by the communal
system and all the extra work it required of them,
now went willingly into the field. That's his word, willingly.
(16:15):
And when you read that in his account, you can
almost feel the relief in the colony because for the
first time since landing back in sixteen twenty, people had
a reason to work harder than just the minimum amount
of work. Right, the effort connected directly to their own
family's survival. Right Again, this isn't ideology. This is the
governor of the colony writing down exactly what happened in
(16:38):
real time. They went from two years of almost starving,
a frustration of low productivity, to suddenly this community where
people were motivated when the work was getting done, where
the harvest was noticeably better. Now, Bradford says, this change
made all hands more industrious. Now, when you put that
alongside the previous year's journals, you see the difference. Like
(16:59):
almost immediately turns out, this one structural change giving families
responsibility for their own plots unlocked something that hadn't been
there before. Now the results of your labor fed your
own family. Now your extra effort, it mattered. Now human
nature responded exactly the way you would expect. Bradford also
uses this moment to reflect on what they had been
(17:19):
trying to do under the communal arrangement. He says, quote,
I thought this course would produce equality and the sharing
of benefits, but in practice it brought confusion and discontent. Now,
seeing the results of sixteen twenty three shift, he basically
admits that the earlier model was working against the natural
motivations of the people. The colony finally sees what's been
(17:41):
obvious through two years of hardship. Now, if you want
people to produce more, how to give them responsibility over
the results of their own labor. And for the first
time since they arrived, they have this harvest, a huge bounty.
This harvest reflected the effort they put in, and that
sets up the next major shift because the very next year,
(18:03):
sixteen twenty four, they look at how well this worked, right,
They decide, Shoot, this worked really good. Why don't we
do more of it? Why don't we take that idea
even further? They thought, if giving each family their own
plot increased productivity that much in just one season, what
would happen if they expanded that idea. Now, Bradford tells
(18:25):
us exactly what they did the very next year, in
the spring of sixteen twenty four. He says, they decided
to make those assignments, those plots of land, more permanent
because what they had was this rotating system where the
land was reassigned every year. So it made an improvement,
but it was creating another problem that they hadn't really
thought about. Right, and again, this is common sense when
(18:45):
you look backwards. Right, if you know that you're only
going to keep the farm, keep this piece of land
for one year, then you're not really going to invest.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
That much time into improving it.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
Right. You'll plant, you'll harvest, and then you're going to
move on. But if you know the land going to
stay with you, if it's going to stay with your
family over time, then you start thinking about clearing more brush,
removing more rocks, improving the soil, maybe building a fence,
maybe putting up this small structure. So Bradford explains that
they decided to set off basically take these plots and
(19:18):
make them more permanent so people had an incentive to
make long term improvements. They could start thinking longer term
instead of just doing the minimum for one season. And
this point is super important for today's context. He states
it super plainly that they saw the results and they
adjusted the system to match was actually working. Imagine that
(19:40):
what a concept doing more of what works doing less
of what doesn't. There's a lesson for all of us. Right,
Governments today could learn from this as well. Now, once
they saw the structure that worked, it committed to it
after seeing several years of results. Bradford writes one of
the strongest critiques of forced communal living that we've ever seen,
at least from that era. He says the success of
(20:01):
the new system proved quote the vanity of the conceit
of Plato's and others ancients who thought that taking away
private property and bringing everything into community would make people
happy and flourishing. And then he adds this line that
hit super hard. He said they acted quote as if
they were wiser than God. Now Bradford's not just thrown
(20:22):
around philosophy here, right, He's a governor. Right, he's also
a church leader. He's a man who's kept his colony
alive now for multiple years. So when he says something
like that, he's speaking from this lived experience he's been
going through. Right, he watched the communal system fail for
two years straight. He watched productivity explode the moment families
had control over their own plots, over their own destiny,
(20:44):
and he knew exactly what the lesson was here. And
what I like about the way Bradford writes is that
he doesn't just try to moralize, right, He doesn't try
to turn this into a sermon.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
He just lays out the facts.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
He watched a communal system fall right for two years.
They tried one model, the one required by the investors,
and it almost destroyed the colony. They tried another model,
based on direct personal responsibility, and it worked immediately.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Right.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
He's documenting the reality the same way you document evidence
in a courtroom. And in sixteen twenty four, in that season,
it shows the results.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Right.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
They had more food, they had better morale, the complaints disappeared,
People were building, improving, They were producing above, way above
previous levels. The colony was no longer the edge of collapse.
It was finally stabilized. It was growing. That's the turning point,
Not the feast, not the holiday version we hear about Thanksgiving.
The real shift, the permanent change was when they align
(21:37):
their system with human nature instead of fighting against it. Okay,
So when you step back and you look at this
whole sequence, the winter of sixteen twenty, the communal system
in sixteen twenty one and twenty two, the shift in
sixteen twenty three, the improvements in sixteen twenty four, you
start to see a pattern. It's actually pretty hard to ignore. Right,
And again, this isn't political, it's not ideological, it isn't theoretical.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
It's just what happened.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
When they had a system that disconnected effort from outcome.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Everything slowed down, people.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
Worked less, resentment built up, food production stalled. When they
finally aligned the structure with basic human behavior, when families
were responsible for their own plots and kept the results
of their own labor, productivity went up immediately. And I
think the key point here is that the Pilgrims weren't
figuring this out as some kind of philosophical exercise, right.
(22:26):
They were figuring it out while trying not to starve
to death. They didn't have the luxury of arguing about
how people should behave. They had to work with how
people actually do behave in real time. In Bradford and Winslow.
They both described this very plainly right. People naturally take
better care of what they're responsible for. They naturally work
harder when their families benefit from the results. They naturally
(22:49):
get frustrated when their extra effort doesn't make any different. Now,
none of this was shocking to them once they actually
lived through it. But there's another side of this that's
just as important, because if you only focus on the
economic piece, the incentives and the productivity, you missed the
other piece that kept all of them together, and that
was their moral framework.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Right.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
They still believed in looking out for each other. They
still believed in charity. They believed in helping the weak
and making sure that the widows the orphans were cared for.
They believed in showing patience and grace when people struggled.
None of that ever went away. The sermon from Robert
Cushman back in remember sixteen twenty one, let no man
seek his own but every man another's wealth. It wasn't
(23:32):
telling them to keep that failing system, the communal system.
It was reminding them not to lose their humanity when
they fixed it. So what they ended up with, almost
by accident, was this balance that's actually it's pretty rare.
On one side, they embraced personal responsibility, the idea that
your work should matter. On the other side, they had
(23:52):
this moral standard right they made sure their freedom didn't
turn into selfishness. So it wasn't one or the other,
it was both. It was that combination that allowed the
colony to stabilize and eventually thrive. And this matters today
for everybody. It matters for Americans, it matters for whatever
country you live in, because this isn't a pilgrim thing,
this isn't a colonial thing.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
This is a human thing.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
Societies that ignore how people actually behave they tend to
run into the same problems, the same problems the Pilgrims
ran into in sixteen, twenty one and twenty two. And
societies that pair personal responsibility with a moral culture tend
to produce more prosper more and they stay stable longer.
You see the pattern of history again and again. And
the Pilgrims just happened to be one of the earliest
(24:35):
documented examples in the New World. So the real Thanksgiving story,
the one we never hear, is that a starving colony
discovered a formula that works everywhere every time. Freedom without
morality collapses, morality without responsibility stagnates. But when you put
both together, people flourish. And that discovery is what sets
(24:58):
the stage for what comes next in this American story.
All right, now, let's fast forward one hundred and fifty years.
The little struggling colony at Plymouth has now grown into
a nation, a nation that's just fought a war for independence,
written a constitution, and finally managed to form a stable
government under the first US President, George Washington. Now, of course, Washington,
(25:19):
he knew the early colonial history. He knew it really well,
right the founders. They read Bradford's writings. They understood what
those early settlements went through. They understood how close things
came to failing. So when Washington becomes president in seventeen
eighty nine, one of the first things Congress asked him
to do is issue a proclamation calling for a national
Day of Thanksgiving.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
And I love the way that he frames.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
This up because he doesn't talk about the harvests, he
doesn't talk about the feasts, the celebrations, doesn't talk about
any of that. Instead, he focuses on the same themes
the Pilgrims lived through, provision, survival, protection, and the idea
that a nation's prosperity is tied to something bigger than
its own effort. In the Proclamation dated October third, seventeen
(26:03):
eighty nine, Washington writes that the country ought to give
thanks to God for his quote kind care and protection
before the revolution, or his guidance during the war, and
for giving them the wisdom to establish a constitutional government afterward. Okay,
that's how we got the Thanksgiving holiday. Washington didn't invent
(26:23):
the holiday out of thin air. He formalized something the
earliest settlers understood at a visceral level that without divine help,
without some kind of moral backbone and the courage to
correct when the system is broken, there probably wouldn't be
a country at all. Now, he's doing it at a
time when the United States was young. It was fragile, right,
it was still trying to prove it could survive as
(26:44):
a self governing nation. And you can see the pattern
pretty clear when you look backwards. Right, the Pilgrims figured
out the hard way that you need to do things
to survive, people taking responsibility for themselves, a more culture
that keeps everyone grounded. And Washington is saying the same
thing on a national level, that liberty and prosperity aren't automatic.
(27:04):
They don't continue on their own. There has to be gratitude, humility,
and a willingness to recognize how dependent a society is
on both good systems and good character. So the Thanksgiving
we know today the national holiday, it's not really about
the feast in sixteen twenty one. It's about what the
country learned because of that experience and everything that followed.
(27:25):
It's about acknowledging providence in the middle of struggle. It's
about recognizing that freedom works when people are grounded morally.
It's about understanding that prosperity doesn't come from force or
central planning, but from individuals taking responsibility for their own
lives while still caring for the community around them. And
when Washington set that last Thursday of November a side
(27:48):
as the day of Gratitude, he's essentially reminding the entire
nation of that formula, the same one the Pilgrims learned
through starvation, hard winters, and years of trial and Erroritude, responsibility,
moral courage. That's the through line of the whole story,
and that brings us to the final part of the story.
What all this means for us right now today, When
(28:11):
you look at the whole story, not the school version,
not the cartoon version, what actually happened, it's hard not
to see how relevant it still is for us today.
The Pilgrims weren't trying to make a point about economics
or political theory. They were just trying to stay alive.
And what they learned in those first few years is
the same thing that every society ends up learning sooner
(28:34):
or later. Systems that ignore how people actually behave eventually
break down. Systems that give people responsibility but keep it
tied to a strong moral culture tend to work. And
I think that's why this story still matters today, even
if you're not an American, because every country is dealing
with the same tension. How do you balance freedom with responsibility?
(28:55):
How do you keep a society productive without losing sight
of compassion? How do you build It's something that lasts
longer than one generation. So what Washington reminded the country
of was prosperity isn't automatic.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
You don't get freedom and just assume it's going to
keep running on its own.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
It needs gratitude, it needs freedom, It needs a moral foundation.
But what we're seeing today is a growing trend of
governments trying to centrally manage everything. Economy is struggling under
systems that disconnect effort from outcomes, people losing sight of
the responsibilities that make freedom possible in the first place.
It's the same problem that the Pilgrims ran into in
(29:30):
sixteen twenty one and sixteen twenty two, just on a
bigger scale. But the flip side is just as true.
When families take responsibility, when people are free to build,
when communities have a moral backbone, things tend to grow,
they prosper. So when we talk about Thanksgiving, the real one,
not the sanitized version, we're talking about a hard earned lesson.
(29:50):
That's just as true in twenty twenty five as it
was in sixteen twenty three. And if there's anything worth
giving thanks for, it's the clarity that comes from seeing
what actually works and the courage to build it. Hopefully
enjoyed that thanksgiving lesson that we have today. It's not
my typical content. If you want more people to see this,
please share it with them like comment, let me know
(30:11):
what you think. Should I continue this tradition of Rush
Limbaugh and read this out every single year so we
can keep this lesson alive. Let me know in the
comments down below. Happy Thanksgiving, Dear success, come out.
There's the Thanksgiving story you know, and then there's a
major part of the story that you don't. And now,
for twenty eight years, on Thanksgiving Day, radio talk show
host Rush Limbaugh, he read part of this Thanksgiving story.
It's been about four years since he's died, and I
think it's time for me to bring it back because
most people have no idea how close the Pilgrims came
to failing, and the reason why is nothing like the
(00:22):
version that you learned in school. And whether you live
in America or you live in some other country, this
story matters because every nation rises and collapses on the
same principle that the Pilgrim's discovered out of sheer desperation. Now,
what happened next didn't just save this starving settlement.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
They started.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
It planted the seed of the prosperity engine that shaped
the entire modern world that we live in. Now, once
you understand it, you're going to see exactly why economies boom,
why they break, and why you're repeating the same mistakes Right.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Now now, real quick.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
If you're new here, I've spent decades building and selling companies.
I'm a partner of major bitcoin venture fund. I help
run a public and trade bitcoin company.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
So when we talk.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
About incentives and systems and prosperity, these are the same
principles that we use today and you can use them too.
So let's go back four hundred years and look at
what really happened, because the real Thanksgiving story it starts
with a system that was failing from day one. Let's
go all right now, when the Pilgrims decided to leave Europe.
(01:22):
And you have to understand something about this, right, This
wasn't like going on a road trip for us today.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
This was the seventeenth century, so.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
This would have been like us today, I don't know,
loading one hundred people into a homemade rocket and launching
for an uncharted planet. Now, almost none of them had
the money to do this because these weren't wealthy people.
They weren't aristocrats, They weren't even funded by a church
or any government. Most of them were working class Christian
believers who had already spent a decade living in exile
(01:52):
in leading Netherlands. They were fleeing religious persecution in England.
But to cross the Atlantic that required money. It required
a lot of money. So they needed, you know, ships,
they needed crews, They needed food, tools, weapons, They needed
supplies to survive months at sea, and then supplies to
rebuild a civilization from scratch when they landed. Now, the Pilgrims,
(02:15):
they couldn't afford any of this, so they did what
any startup today would do.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Right. They've got a vision, but not enough cash. They
went to investors.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
These weren't philanthropists, these weren't donors. These were hard nosed
London merchants. It's an important part of the story. These
were businessmen, and they financed risky ventures only if they
controlled the entire operation. Now, the Pilgrims they needed the money.
They needed the money badly, so of course they agreed
to this plan. Right, so they signed a contract that
(02:45):
would define their entire life in America. This contract, it
handed the investors total control over how the American colony
would function, including one very specific requirement that would turn
out to be patis. But at the time the Pilgrims
didn't realize it. They they didn't even really care. As
a matter of fact, right they were willing to endure
(03:06):
almost anything, any hardship, to escape the old world and
go build a new one.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
So they left leading.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
They selled to England, and after delays in Southampton, they
finally boarded the Mayflower in Plymouth, England, in September of
sixteen twenty. Why they started this late in the year,
I don't know, come back to that. But they left
and they were carrying nothing but faith, courage, contract and
the contract that looked good on paper, but it nearly
(03:33):
guaranteed the colony would fail. Now, they had no idea
that the biggest danger wasn't the sea, it wasn't the storms,
it wasn't even the winter that was waiting for them
when they landed. The real danger was the system they
were bringing with them, a system that almost wiped them out.
That's where the story turned. Now, just to set the
stage a little bit here, when the Pilgrims finally reached
the New World, it's important to picture like what they
(03:55):
actually landed to what they walked into, because it wasn't
like there was like some open fields and some buildings
like waiting for them. Right they arrived in December of
sixteen twenty, it was the dead of winter in New England.
It was freezing cold, the ground was frozen solid, temperatures
were brutal, and of course there was no buildings. There
was no shelter, there was nothing there, right, so they
(04:17):
had to sleep on the boat, on the Mayflower for
weeks while small groups went ashore. They left the boat,
they went ashore, they cut timber, they started building some
crude shelters in the freezing cold. And for food, well,
of course, they couldn't plant anything. That's going to take
a year, not to mention the soil was hard as
a rock. There was no harvest coming for them. They
could hunt, but that wasn't easy either, right. The animals
(04:40):
were different from the ones that they had known over
in Europe. The terrain was dense, it was icy, and
as Bradford said, the food supply quote decreased daily because
they didn't know how to fish right. The local waters
were different. Their early hunts didn't bring in much food.
On top of that, the wave of sickness hit almost immediately, pneumonia, scurvy, fevers.
(05:03):
By the end of the first winter, they had lost
forty five people out of the original one hundred and
two that left. I mean, that's almost half the entire
group gone in just a couple of months. Now, while
all this is happening, they're still trying to operate under
this economic system they agreed to back in England with
the investors. Now, the system that those investors required in
(05:24):
exchange for giving them the money for finance and the
voyage meant that everything that they produced over in the
New World belonged to the company. Nothing belonged to them individually.
So they had basically a communal system. They had communal work,
they had communal stores, they had no private property. It
was the deal that they had made, right, the price
they had to pay to get the funding that they
(05:45):
needed to leave Europe. Now, of course that arrangement it
might sound fine on paper, but when you combine a
harsh winter, constant sickness, you got starvation, you got the
stress of trying to build a shelter from scratch. The
cracks in the system all started to show up really fast. Okay,
now fast forwarding the first few years, to say the least,
they're rough sixteen twenty one, sixteen twenty two, about two
(06:08):
full years. Right, they were operating under the same communal structure. Right,
No one owned anything, no houses, no crops. Everything was
going back to the investors that gave him the money.
There's really important, really interesting piece of the story I
got to tell you about. It's sort of like this impossible,
unlikely chain of events. The Pilgrims didn't go through all
(06:29):
this alone. In March of sixteen twenty one, four months
after they arrived, they met Samoset. He was an Abernaki
who had learned broken English from fishermen up in Maine.
And then the next day he brings Squanto, who didn't
just know a few words of English, he spoke fluent English.
And squad Sho's story is completely unbelievable. He had been
(06:52):
kidnapped years earlier by an English trader, taken all the
way to Spain, rescued by monks sent to England, he
learned the language, and eventually he made his way back
all the way back to the New World, only to
find his entire tribe had been wiped out by a plague.
So when the Pilgrims landed on that exact spot, Squanto
(07:13):
was the only survivor living alone. Now he becomes their translator,
He became their guide. It's miraculous, right. Even secular historians
admit the timing is astonishing. Now Bradford said, quote Squanto
was a special instrument sent of God for our good.
He taught us how to plant corn, where to take fish,
(07:33):
and how to procure other commodities. So Squanto helped them
a lot. He taught them how to plant he had
taught him, how to plant with fish fertilizer, how to
use local crops like corn, how to find eels in
the mudflats. He served as an interpreter with leather local
tribe leaders. But and this is the part that often
gets glossed over, even with the native assistance, the system
(07:54):
they were working under still didn't function well because the
problem wasn't how to farm, it wasn't how to fish.
They learned that the problem was the structure of the labor.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
You see.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
The communal arrangement that they had meant nobody had a
personal stake in how much they produced. Everything went into
the commons store. Everyone drew the same rations. Bradford writes
that during these years, especially through the sixteen twenty two
planting and harvest cycle, the younger man who were able
to work the hardest, felt it was unfair. He uses
(08:27):
the word injustice, that their extra labor would support other
families while their own families didn't receive any added benefit.
Now he's really clear about this. He says it quote
dispirited them, It made them quote slower to work. All right,
Now that's his wording, that's not mine. Now, Winslow says
the same thing, noting that quote all men have this
(08:49):
corruption in them end quote, meaning basically that men have
a natural tendency to look out for their own family first.
Not a big surprise. So this isn't a moral judgment.
He wasn't saying that. He was simply recording what he
was seeing. Now, when you disconnect effort from reward, even
good hardworking people, they naturally start doing the minimum, especially
(09:11):
when they're already exhausted, they're hungry, they're grieving the loss
of their loved ones. Right, you don't need economic theory
modern economics to explain that. The primary sources they already
tell you exactly what happened. Now, then Bradford records something
that really stands out. The women that were left they
were frustrated because under the communal system they were expected
(09:33):
to cook and clean not only for their own families,
but also for the single men in the colony. Bradford says,
they considered this quote a kind of slavery.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
End quote.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Now, again, that's his language. Now, keep in mind, these
are women who had just buried after community. They were
raising children in freezing conditions. They were being asked to
double their labor but no added benefit. So of course
that created resentment. After two full planting and harvest seasons,
by sixteen to twenty, it became obvious to everyone that
this arrangement was not working.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
It's not going to work. It wouldn't work.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Now they weren't starving quite as bad as the first
season because they had learned to fish right now, they'd planted,
they learned how to work with the local tribes. But
the underlying system it was still the same, It was
still holding the back. Bradford says very plainly that it
quote retarded much employment, meaning it slowed down, right. It
slowed people down that otherwise would have been capable, right
(10:28):
if the incentives had been aligned with their families own
well being. So now you kind of have this perfect
storm two brutal years. Half the colony's dead, they're gone.
Productivity is stuck in this in this mud. If you will,
you have constant frustration. Everyone knows that something has to
change before the next harvest cycle, or they're probably not
going to make it right. They can't keep doing this
(10:48):
for another year. They're not going to survive. And that's
what brings us to the spring of sixteen twenty three,
and this is the moment where the entire direction of
the colony changed. The colony got a visit from someone
who's in incredibly important to the story, someone you've probably
never heard about because he's not really talked about much anymore.
His name is Robert Cushman. Now Cushman was basically a deacon.
(11:09):
He was a representative of the church all the way
back over in Leaden. Now he stayed back in England.
He was helping negotiate the financial, the legal arrangements for
the voyage and he finally made it over to Plymouth
in late sixteen twenty one. And while he was there
they asked him to preach, So he does. He gives
a sermon, and we know the exact text he preached
because he later published it. It's from First Corinthians ten
(11:32):
twenty four. He said, let no man seek his own,
but every man another's wealth. Now the word wealth there,
it doesn't mean money. It means your neighbor's well being.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
It's their good right.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
This idea is basically, don't live in a way that
only prioritizes yourself, use your freedom in a way that
considers the whole community. Now, of course this hits pretty hard,
right then at that point for that group, right, they've
been through starvation, they've been through sickness, loss of family members,
a lot of stress. And here's what's important to remember
about this. Cushman wasn't telling them to stay in this
(12:07):
communal system. He wasn't defending the system that they had.
He said that people were not motivated to be working
for others' behalves with no benefit to themselves, and this
new system needed to be set up. But he was
calling out he was warning that selfishness could and it
would destroy any system. So he's addressing the heart of
(12:29):
the people, not the structure they had set up. And Bradford,
he took this sermon seriously. You can see it in
his writing. So this sermon becomes almost like this spiritual
reset for the colony.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Right.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
It doesn't change the economic system. That part comes a
little bit later, but it gets their mindset aligned around
the idea that something isn't working and if they're going
to survive, they can't afford to give into the natural
resentment that was already starting to show up there. All right,
So this is where the two forces they start to converge.
On one side, you have a system that's not produced
(13:00):
enough to sustain the colony. On the other side, you
have a pastor reminding them that even when a system's broken,
people still need each other, that motives matter. He's basically saying,
if you're gonna make change, you'd better do it with
the right heart, because otherwise the change won't help you.
So now we have fast forwarding again. We're in the
(13:20):
spring of sixteen twenty three. Now this is where the
real pivot starts to happen. Bradford says, quote. So they
began to think how they might raise as much corner
as they could and obtain a better crop than they
had done. So this wasn't some philosophical conversation about political theory, right.
They weren't debating ideology here. They were trying to survive
(13:43):
the next winner. They knew that if they repeated the
last two years, they weren't gonna make it. So the
question becomes, what can we change right now before we
start planting that might give us even a small chance
at getting a better harvest. Now, after a lot of discussion,
Bradford immediate explains the decision that followed. He said, so
they assigned to every family a parcel of land for
(14:06):
that year only, all right, So they gave them land.
It wasn't a big farm, it wasn't private ownership in
the legal sense.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
But they had a small, defined.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
Parcel for each household to plant, one that they could
work for themselves during that season. The idea was pretty simple, right,
let each family work its own piece of land and
then keep the fruits of their own labor.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Right.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
He describes the reason for the change. He said, this
had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
And remember this.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Was still technically within this seven year contract where they
had with the investors, right, so they weren't carrying that
agreement up. They weren't abandoning the communal storehouses entirely. But
what they were doing was creating this parallel structure. This
parallel system at least for the corner anyway, because the
old structure wasn't working. It felt them twice. Now, Bradford
explains what a major shift this was. For two years
(14:59):
they had been trying to forced themselves into this structure.
It didn't match how people actually behave. And now, for
the first time since leaving Europe, they took this step forward,
something closer to personal responsibility direct incentives. And Bradford says
something that I think really captures the mindset at that moment.
He writes that this change was made to raise a
better crop. Such a simple phrase, but it shows you
(15:23):
exactly where their priorities were. Right. They weren't trying to
mad political statements, right, This wasn't a rejection of their
investor's theology, right, it was survival.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
They needed corn. So that's the shift.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Early spring sixteen twenty three, for two years of communal
label they divided the land into small plots, assigning each
one of the households. They gave each family the responsibility
to work its own acre and then keep what it produced. Now,
it's right after the decision, in the weeks in the
months that followed that everything starts to change. So the
results started coming in almost immediately. Bradford, he was really
(15:55):
clear about what happened next. He writes that this new
arrangement quote had very goods success, for it made all
hands very industrious. Now he goes even further. He says,
even the women who had been frustrated by the communal
system and all the extra work it required of them,
now went willingly into the field. That's his word, willingly.
(16:15):
And when you read that in his account, you can
almost feel the relief in the colony because for the
first time since landing back in sixteen twenty, people had
a reason to work harder than just the minimum amount
of work. Right, the effort connected directly to their own
family's survival. Right Again, this isn't ideology. This is the
governor of the colony writing down exactly what happened in
(16:38):
real time. They went from two years of almost starving,
a frustration of low productivity, to suddenly this community where
people were motivated when the work was getting done, where
the harvest was noticeably better. Now, Bradford says, this change
made all hands more industrious. Now, when you put that
alongside the previous year's journals, you see the difference. Like
(16:59):
almost immediately turns out, this one structural change giving families
responsibility for their own plots unlocked something that hadn't been
there before. Now the results of your labor fed your
own family. Now your extra effort, it mattered. Now human
nature responded exactly the way you would expect. Bradford also
uses this moment to reflect on what they had been
(17:19):
trying to do under the communal arrangement. He says, quote,
I thought this course would produce equality and the sharing
of benefits, but in practice it brought confusion and discontent. Now,
seeing the results of sixteen twenty three shift, he basically
admits that the earlier model was working against the natural
motivations of the people. The colony finally sees what's been
(17:41):
obvious through two years of hardship. Now, if you want
people to produce more, how to give them responsibility over
the results of their own labor. And for the first
time since they arrived, they have this harvest, a huge bounty.
This harvest reflected the effort they put in, and that
sets up the next major shift because the very next year,
(18:03):
sixteen twenty four, they look at how well this worked, right,
They decide, Shoot, this worked really good. Why don't we
do more of it? Why don't we take that idea
even further? They thought, if giving each family their own
plot increased productivity that much in just one season, what
would happen if they expanded that idea. Now, Bradford tells
(18:25):
us exactly what they did the very next year, in
the spring of sixteen twenty four. He says, they decided
to make those assignments, those plots of land, more permanent
because what they had was this rotating system where the
land was reassigned every year. So it made an improvement,
but it was creating another problem that they hadn't really
thought about. Right, and again, this is common sense when
(18:45):
you look backwards. Right, if you know that you're only
going to keep the farm, keep this piece of land
for one year, then you're not really going to invest.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
That much time into improving it.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
Right. You'll plant, you'll harvest, and then you're going to
move on. But if you know the land going to
stay with you, if it's going to stay with your
family over time, then you start thinking about clearing more brush,
removing more rocks, improving the soil, maybe building a fence,
maybe putting up this small structure. So Bradford explains that
they decided to set off basically take these plots and
(19:18):
make them more permanent so people had an incentive to
make long term improvements. They could start thinking longer term
instead of just doing the minimum for one season. And
this point is super important for today's context. He states
it super plainly that they saw the results and they
adjusted the system to match was actually working. Imagine that
(19:40):
what a concept doing more of what works doing less
of what doesn't. There's a lesson for all of us. Right,
Governments today could learn from this as well. Now, once
they saw the structure that worked, it committed to it
after seeing several years of results. Bradford writes one of
the strongest critiques of forced communal living that we've ever seen,
at least from that era. He says the success of
(20:01):
the new system proved quote the vanity of the conceit
of Plato's and others ancients who thought that taking away
private property and bringing everything into community would make people
happy and flourishing. And then he adds this line that
hit super hard. He said they acted quote as if
they were wiser than God. Now Bradford's not just thrown
(20:22):
around philosophy here, right, He's a governor. Right, he's also
a church leader. He's a man who's kept his colony
alive now for multiple years. So when he says something
like that, he's speaking from this lived experience he's been
going through. Right, he watched the communal system fail for
two years straight. He watched productivity explode the moment families
had control over their own plots, over their own destiny,
(20:44):
and he knew exactly what the lesson was here. And
what I like about the way Bradford writes is that
he doesn't just try to moralize, right, He doesn't try
to turn this into a sermon.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
He just lays out the facts.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
He watched a communal system fall right for two years.
They tried one model, the one required by the investors,
and it almost destroyed the colony. They tried another model,
based on direct personal responsibility, and it worked immediately.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Right.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
He's documenting the reality the same way you document evidence
in a courtroom. And in sixteen twenty four, in that season,
it shows the results.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Right.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
They had more food, they had better morale, the complaints disappeared,
People were building, improving, They were producing above, way above
previous levels. The colony was no longer the edge of collapse.
It was finally stabilized. It was growing. That's the turning point,
Not the feast, not the holiday version we hear about Thanksgiving.
The real shift, the permanent change was when they align
(21:37):
their system with human nature instead of fighting against it. Okay,
So when you step back and you look at this
whole sequence, the winter of sixteen twenty, the communal system
in sixteen twenty one and twenty two, the shift in
sixteen twenty three, the improvements in sixteen twenty four, you
start to see a pattern. It's actually pretty hard to ignore. Right,
And again, this isn't political, it's not ideological, it isn't theoretical.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
It's just what happened.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
When they had a system that disconnected effort from outcome.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Everything slowed down, people.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
Worked less, resentment built up, food production stalled. When they
finally aligned the structure with basic human behavior, when families
were responsible for their own plots and kept the results
of their own labor, productivity went up immediately. And I
think the key point here is that the Pilgrims weren't
figuring this out as some kind of philosophical exercise, right.
(22:26):
They were figuring it out while trying not to starve
to death. They didn't have the luxury of arguing about
how people should behave. They had to work with how
people actually do behave in real time. In Bradford and Winslow.
They both described this very plainly right. People naturally take
better care of what they're responsible for. They naturally work
harder when their families benefit from the results. They naturally
(22:49):
get frustrated when their extra effort doesn't make any different. Now,
none of this was shocking to them once they actually
lived through it. But there's another side of this that's
just as important, because if you only focus on the
economic piece, the incentives and the productivity, you missed the
other piece that kept all of them together, and that
was their moral framework.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Right.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
They still believed in looking out for each other. They
still believed in charity. They believed in helping the weak
and making sure that the widows the orphans were cared for.
They believed in showing patience and grace when people struggled.
None of that ever went away. The sermon from Robert
Cushman back in remember sixteen twenty one, let no man
seek his own but every man another's wealth. It wasn't
(23:32):
telling them to keep that failing system, the communal system.
It was reminding them not to lose their humanity when
they fixed it. So what they ended up with, almost
by accident, was this balance that's actually it's pretty rare.
On one side, they embraced personal responsibility, the idea that
your work should matter. On the other side, they had
(23:52):
this moral standard right they made sure their freedom didn't
turn into selfishness. So it wasn't one or the other,
it was both. It was that combination that allowed the
colony to stabilize and eventually thrive. And this matters today
for everybody. It matters for Americans, it matters for whatever
country you live in, because this isn't a pilgrim thing,
this isn't a colonial thing.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
This is a human thing.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
Societies that ignore how people actually behave they tend to
run into the same problems, the same problems the Pilgrims
ran into in sixteen, twenty one and twenty two. And
societies that pair personal responsibility with a moral culture tend
to produce more prosper more and they stay stable longer.
You see the pattern of history again and again. And
the Pilgrims just happened to be one of the earliest
(24:35):
documented examples in the New World. So the real Thanksgiving story,
the one we never hear, is that a starving colony
discovered a formula that works everywhere every time. Freedom without
morality collapses, morality without responsibility stagnates. But when you put
both together, people flourish. And that discovery is what sets
(24:58):
the stage for what comes next in this American story.
All right, now, let's fast forward one hundred and fifty years.
The little struggling colony at Plymouth has now grown into
a nation, a nation that's just fought a war for independence,
written a constitution, and finally managed to form a stable
government under the first US President, George Washington. Now, of course, Washington,
(25:19):
he knew the early colonial history. He knew it really well,
right the founders. They read Bradford's writings. They understood what
those early settlements went through. They understood how close things
came to failing. So when Washington becomes president in seventeen
eighty nine, one of the first things Congress asked him
to do is issue a proclamation calling for a national
Day of Thanksgiving.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
And I love the way that he frames.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
This up because he doesn't talk about the harvests, he
doesn't talk about the feasts, the celebrations, doesn't talk about
any of that. Instead, he focuses on the same themes
the Pilgrims lived through, provision, survival, protection, and the idea
that a nation's prosperity is tied to something bigger than
its own effort. In the Proclamation dated October third, seventeen
(26:03):
eighty nine, Washington writes that the country ought to give
thanks to God for his quote kind care and protection
before the revolution, or his guidance during the war, and
for giving them the wisdom to establish a constitutional government afterward. Okay,
that's how we got the Thanksgiving holiday. Washington didn't invent
(26:23):
the holiday out of thin air. He formalized something the
earliest settlers understood at a visceral level that without divine help,
without some kind of moral backbone and the courage to
correct when the system is broken, there probably wouldn't be
a country at all. Now, he's doing it at a
time when the United States was young. It was fragile, right,
it was still trying to prove it could survive as
(26:44):
a self governing nation. And you can see the pattern
pretty clear when you look backwards. Right, the Pilgrims figured
out the hard way that you need to do things
to survive, people taking responsibility for themselves, a more culture
that keeps everyone grounded. And Washington is saying the same
thing on a national level, that liberty and prosperity aren't automatic.
(27:04):
They don't continue on their own. There has to be gratitude, humility,
and a willingness to recognize how dependent a society is
on both good systems and good character. So the Thanksgiving
we know today the national holiday, it's not really about
the feast in sixteen twenty one. It's about what the
country learned because of that experience and everything that followed.
(27:25):
It's about acknowledging providence in the middle of struggle. It's
about recognizing that freedom works when people are grounded morally.
It's about understanding that prosperity doesn't come from force or
central planning, but from individuals taking responsibility for their own
lives while still caring for the community around them. And
when Washington set that last Thursday of November a side
(27:48):
as the day of Gratitude, he's essentially reminding the entire
nation of that formula, the same one the Pilgrims learned
through starvation, hard winters, and years of trial and Erroritude, responsibility,
moral courage. That's the through line of the whole story,
and that brings us to the final part of the story.
What all this means for us right now today, When
(28:11):
you look at the whole story, not the school version,
not the cartoon version, what actually happened, it's hard not
to see how relevant it still is for us today.
The Pilgrims weren't trying to make a point about economics
or political theory. They were just trying to stay alive.
And what they learned in those first few years is
the same thing that every society ends up learning sooner
(28:34):
or later. Systems that ignore how people actually behave eventually
break down. Systems that give people responsibility but keep it
tied to a strong moral culture tend to work. And
I think that's why this story still matters today, even
if you're not an American, because every country is dealing
with the same tension. How do you balance freedom with responsibility?
(28:55):
How do you keep a society productive without losing sight
of compassion? How do you build It's something that lasts
longer than one generation. So what Washington reminded the country
of was prosperity isn't automatic.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
You don't get freedom and just assume it's going to
keep running on its own.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
It needs gratitude, it needs freedom, It needs a moral foundation.
But what we're seeing today is a growing trend of
governments trying to centrally manage everything. Economy is struggling under
systems that disconnect effort from outcomes, people losing sight of
the responsibilities that make freedom possible in the first place.
It's the same problem that the Pilgrims ran into in
(29:30):
sixteen twenty one and sixteen twenty two, just on a
bigger scale. But the flip side is just as true.
When families take responsibility, when people are free to build,
when communities have a moral backbone, things tend to grow,
they prosper. So when we talk about Thanksgiving, the real one,
not the sanitized version, we're talking about a hard earned lesson.
(29:50):
That's just as true in twenty twenty five as it
was in sixteen twenty three. And if there's anything worth
giving thanks for, it's the clarity that comes from seeing
what actually works and the courage to build it. Hopefully
enjoyed that thanksgiving lesson that we have today. It's not
my typical content. If you want more people to see this,
please share it with them like comment, let me know
(30:11):
what you think. Should I continue this tradition of Rush
Limbaugh and read this out every single year so we
can keep this lesson alive. Let me know in the
comments down below. Happy Thanksgiving, Dear success, come out.
Host
Mark Moss
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