The Lone Libertarian

The good people at the Reason Foundation have started a video series, in conjunction with Drew Carey, that highlight current issues and events with a pro-liberty slant.  I highly recommend this series to everyone.

New videos are being produced and are released on a twice-a-month schedule.  Enjoy, and spread the word.

Episode 1: Gridlock: Hell on Wheels

Episode 2: Medical Marijuana

Episode 3: National City: Eminent Domain Gone Wild

John Stossel, of 20/20 fame, wrote an article at Real Clear Politics that I think embodies one of the many lessons we can learn from the first Thanksgiving that the Plymouth colony celebrated. One could call this story, “The Thanksgiving that almost wasn’t.”

Every year around this time, schoolchildren are taught about that wonderful day when Pilgrims and Native Americans shared the fruits of the harvest. “Isn’t sharing wonderful?” say the teachers.

They miss the point.

Because of sharing, the first Thanksgiving in 1623 almost didn’t happen.

The Plymouth colony’s farms were communal, and almost lead to their starvation. The failings of socialist practices almost lead to this colony’s death.

When action is divorced from consequences, no one is happy with the ultimate outcome. If individuals can take from a common pot regardless of how much they put in it, each person has an incentive to be a free rider, to do as little as possible and take as much as possible because what one fails to take will be taken by someone else. Soon, the pot is empty and will not be refilled — a bad situation even for the earlier takers.

This starvation led to rampant theft and the consumption of horses, dogs, and cats to stay alive. This was until the Governor of the colony, William Bradford, allowed for every man to have a plot and provide for himself, and do away with the socialist farming.

“So as it well appeared that famine must still ensue the next year also, if not some way prevented,” wrote Gov. William Bradford in his diary. The colonists, he said, “began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery. At length after much debate of things, [I] (with the advice of the chiefest among them) gave way that they should set corn every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust to themselves. … And so assigned to every family a parcel of land.”

The results were nothing short of remarkable. A surplus of food was harvested the next year. Thus, the first Thanksgiving in Plymouth was held in November 1623.

So we can really attribute the first Thanksgiving to personal liberty, a free market, and property ownership. Without these concepts, the Plymouth colony would have dissolved, or died out.

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,

The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,

I know of no reason

Why Gunpowder Treason

Should ever be forgot.

Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, t’was his intent

To blow up King and Parliament.

Three-score barrels of powder below

To prove old England’s overthrow;

By God’s providence he was catch’d

With a dark lantern and burning match.

Holloa boys, holloa boys, let the bells ring.

Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!

Read about how England, and America, could have been very different.