What is truly remarkable is that no central planner set this organized insanity up.\u00a0 No elite intelligence manages all of the variables for each and every institution.\u00a0 Rather the invisible hand of capitalism<\/a> operates on a massive scale.\u00a0 Every step from discovering and processing raw materials, to designing a product that people want, to the manufacture, shipping, distribution, and retailing of the good, is done by an intricate, complex web of self-interested decision making<\/a>.<\/p>\n It is in this way that Black Friday really is a descendent of those first lessons from Thanksgiving: the abandonment of the ultimately destructive rot of forcing shared work and outcomes<\/a> and the embrace of achieving the satisfaction of earning your position<\/a> by hard work.\u00a0 Stated simply, the creation and participation in a free (emphasis on free) market.<\/p>\n So, it was with great disappointment that I read the Thanksgiving section (Section 3) of James W. Loewen\u2019s book Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong<\/em>.<\/p>\n Loewen starts his section with a variety of quotes, obviously intended to set the overall tone about the myth that citizens of the United States entertain about the significance of the Thanksgiving.\u00a0 The three most provocative quotes are:<\/p>\n and<\/p>\n Sigh\u2026, where to begin with the material fallacies that abound in each of these arguments.\u00a0 To start with a general observation that each of these quotations address points that have nothing to do with Thanksgiving\u2019s root but rather what each commentator perceives as a modern corruption.\u00a0 It is okay to criticize the modern corruption but it in the spirit of charitable argumentation, each of them should have discussed, at least in passing, the original reason for celebrating Thanksgiving.<\/p>\n Now on to the individual quotes.<\/p>\n Michael Dorris\u2019s quote is distinctly sloppy in failing to define \u2018standard fare\u2019.\u00a0 What exactly does he mean?\u00a0 Perhaps the Macy\u2019s day parade or the Black Friday advertisements or even something he saw on TV.\u00a0 How hard would it have been to say something like \u2018\u2026 none of the standard fare, which maintains\u2026\u2019?\u00a0 And in what way is celebrating the core fact that the Pilgrims eschewed socialism have anything to do with \u2018exploiting and debasing America\u2019s victims\u2019?<\/p>\n Francis Jennings\u2019s quote misses the point of the proper roots of Thanksgiving.\u00a0 Yes, on the surface, everything Jennings says is true; Europe could not maintain an outpost colony in the new world.\u00a0 William Bradford said as much in his writings<\/a>.\u00a0 He bemoans the fact the colony has to stand on its own two feet while trying to live under the \u2018socialist requirement\u2019 levied by the Company of Merchant Adventures of London<\/a>, who backed the enterprise.\u00a0 He recognizes the weakness of the arrangement when commenting on the colony\u2019s lack of success in 1622 and early 1623.\u00a0 Finally, Bradford directed the colony to abandon the communal property arrangement in favor of individual rights and obligation.\u00a0 Bradford goes on to say the new arrangement \u2018had very good success, for it made all hand very industrious\u2019.\u00a0 His analysis of what went wrong under the communal arrangement was that it was \u2018found to breed much confusion and discontent\u2019.\u00a0 It was the abolishment of this terrible communal arrangement and the success adopting individual rights that is the real story of Thanksgiving, a story that Jennings\u2019s quote (and all the others) ignore.<\/p>\n Simpson\u2019s quote is the most egregious of the lot.\u00a0 The Pilgrims were neither militaristic nor were they particularly religiously motivated to conquer a new land (they came to the America\u2019s because they had to escape the religious persecution they faced in Europe).\u00a0 And, as Bradford\u2019s narrative attests, they originally had no ambition and no greed under the communal arrangement.\u00a0 All of these points may apply to other colonies at other times, but they are mismatched with Thanksgiving as the subject.\u00a0 Still, I may have been able to overlook these flaws but for the last sentence.\u00a0 It defies common sense to believe his last assertion; none of the European settler\u2019s would have been happy to bring disease to the New World; it would counter-productive since they would have to worry that the disease would turn around and attack them.\u00a0 This claim is particularly baseless considering the devastation that Europe bore after the Black Plague ravaged the land.\u00a0 Judging the Pilgrims through a lens of modern biology is simply ridiculous given that the germ theory of disease<\/a> was a discovery of the late 1850s, centuries after the colonization began and at least 80 years after the ratification of the US constitution.<\/p>\n There isn\u2019t much to recommend the rest of the section as well.\u00a0 Loewen engages in a variety of material fallacies of his own, including a equivocal use of the term \u2018settler\u2019, an ad hominem attack on WASPs, and an over-emphasis on the diseases that tragically ravaged the Native American population. But, perhaps, the most tragic thing about Loewen\u2019s presentation is his failure to recognize and celebrate the triumph of individual rights over collectivism. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"![\"\"](\"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/Lies-About-Lies.png\")
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