Holy mackeral!

All those blue bloods who claim their peeps came over on the Mayflower were a buncha dirty commies…who knew!

So much for the Pilgrims coming to the New World for religious freedom, huh Dennis?

One recalls that the Mayflower Pilgrims were initially a bunch of welfare bums; the native populations saved their butts over the first winter…

Hell, they can’t be bothered to read the Constitution written about 225 years ago, much less some obscure document written 490 years ago. History has never been their strong suit, has it?

It just goes to show that you can say damned near anything about people who are too dead to defend themselves.

dakine02 @2:

Religious freedom for themselves first, then their families, then…

There’s more about the American political landscape that’s worth transforming, still, than not. But transforming our founding traditions, as the wingnuts do to Thanksgiving, to fit some crazy Russian emigre’s ideal of selfishness and greed, is not the right approach. Just because the Reds took your family’s wealth and booted them out of the country, Ms “Rand” (if that is your real name, and it’s not) is no reason for the rest of us to neglect the common weal that we’ve invested in for so long.

We’ve got to look out for one another, just like the Pilgrims of every generation have done.

I may use the Mayflower Compact as our Thanksgiving Dinner prayer.

I’ve read that the local tribes were very undecided as to whether they should feed them, or wipe them out. After observing the pitiful, starving Pilgrims for a while, they decided to help them out…mostly because they reasoned, if they were bent on warfare, they wouldn’t have brought their wives with them. That’s what a civilized people wouldn’t do, anyway.

Big mistake.

Prager would change his posture on “submission and obedience” if Sarah Palin were ordering him to do so…

“C’mon Dennis. Bark like a moose…”

Too many of them big words…

It’s a landmark document.

No preemptive strikes for them.

“The idea that people should first take care of themselves, then their family, then their neighbors and then other nations is also an American aberration.”

Actually, Denny is right; Randism is an aberration, or maybe “perversion” would be the better word, and should be treated as such by all (excluding Denny) with the intelligence to reject its nonsense.

They didn’t come here for religious freedom, they came here so they could live life they way they thought God required so they could get to Heaven. And they were persecuted in England for doing that.

There was plenty of room elsewhere on the continent for those who did not believe the way the Pilgrims/Puritans believed.

Submission??

Did Standish bow to the Indians?

Well, they ditched the Mayflower Compact after the first winter. However, the Puritan conception of ordered liberty required a great deal of individual submission to the community’s conception of the good of the community.

BT, once again you cut to the quick. Bless you for continuing to expose the wingnuts for what they are, nuts.

like the Amish live today, one is free to leave the fold.

Pay attention. David Brooks re founding values. Prager re founding values. Right wing talking (turkey) point du jour. Gonna have this one stuffed down our gullets.

Isn’t it amazing the way they celebrate the breaking of the social contract? I’m just about at the point where I say, fine. Keep to your walled in prison. If something not so nice happens should you sneak out, too bloody bad. Read your Hobbes, baby.

Founding values = kill all the Native Americans.

No thanks.

OK, I now understand the tradition of Thanksgiving.

A bunch of illegal aliens show up to “plant a colony”, steal the root crops that had not yet been harvest to supplement the rotten food that they had brought over, came close to starvation, visited a food kitchen set up by the locals, got trained in local agriculture, brought their relatives over, and violently drove the locals out of the neighborhood.

And not being able to get along with each other or without enslaving a people brought from another faraway land, had a bloody civil war. In the midst of this war, the leader of the descendants of these illegal aliens thought that there should be an official day of Thanksgiving, justifying it in these words:

In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.

And so we have a religious family ceremony created by the state.

But not to worry, family predominates and that means travel, even if just down the road. And then a commercial “consumer revolution” occurs in which advertising takes holidays and makes them into marketing opportunities. And since it’s the last decent weather in fall, schools having just acquired Greek traditions and athletics, have football games on the days that working folks have off. Before you know it, Thanksgiving become Turkey Day. But commerce is not done with it. It becomes a day for parades marketing the coming Christmas buying season. Then it becomes the day before the kickoff of the Christmas buying season. Then stores, restaurants, and other commercial facilities are open so that the folks who are not watching football games have something to do instead of hearing Uncle Ralph’s stories again.

From a couple dozen illegal immigrants who claimed they were seeking the “glory of God, advancement of the Christian faith, and an honor of our [English] King and Country”.

Ah, yes. It does make sense.

I strongly recommend Sarah Vowell’s book The Wordy Shipmates for a funny and poignant history of the Puritans in New England.

*g* good.

She’s a genius.

Arent these radical fringe right wingers all the same?They always start to lecture the rest of us on individual responsibility once they have totally destroyed the peoples chances of doing just that.In just a short 8 years the countries wealth,jobs,and moral standing in the world,has left and has been replaced with these scumbags who got theirs at the expense of yours.

Looks like he and beck got together and shared some holiday squeezings…

If conservatives are so opposed to transformation we should probably join the British Commonwealth. The American Revolution was merely an aberration.

Once again I’m rendered nearly speechless by the idiocy and disingenuousness of these radical, dangerous ideologues.

well, this opus oughta clinch that Sulzberger gig once and for all

They will be happy again once Prince John Bush restores the Monarchy.

They’d be Tories, no doubt about it.

And if that person I am married to gets saggy or sumpthin I guess I’ll dump her and get an newer model cause I gotta take care of me. Learned me that at C street.

What an incredibly unimiginative and historically ignorant dick . The “pilgrims’ were religious seekers, not fortune seekers. the fortune seekers went to virginia, and came later to massachusett bay. They respected and practiced a very strong form of prostestantism that demanded humillity, generosity (within the group) and obedience to the community.While Idleness was punished, They made it their responsibility to clothe feed and house each other when needed. More commy than republican thats for sure.The puritan congregation eveolved into two divisons the congregationalist’s of john adams’ day, and the modern, liberal United church of christ, and the Unitaria/ Universalists who are the other most liberal congregation in modern American.

Uh . . . Prager needs to recheck The Preamble.

“to promote the General Welfare”

Idiot.

Its taken longer than 8 years but yeah the supply siders have done that.

It’s even better hearing her read it. I recommend listening to the CD version while preparing the feast or driving to the relatives. You can purchase it through i-tunes.

Its a great book. The reason prager’s “piece” is so annoyingly stupiud is because the liberal intelectual elite establishment he so despises ARE the pilgrims. Thier great grandchildren built Harvard. The abolitionist movement,the American Revolution the trancendental and environmmental movements, the new deal, were led by their decendants.

To be fair, the Pilgrims didn’t much like debt either. In fact, wasn’t debt usury. Meanwhile, current fundie preacher actually tell their flock to get indebted…

“Nearly one in four U.S. borrowers owe more on their mortgage than their home is worth”

Dmmt, this is the Matrix, and there is no ‘history’ beyond 10 seconds ago. That’s why you can say anything you want to.
Fear, Fear, Fear. That’s want we want you to feel.
Welcome to The WALL of Republicanism.

If you’ll forgive a rough generalization, the early New England settlers tended to migrate in family and community groups, and made efforts to take care of one another. The Jamestown settlers tended to be young men on the make who were determined to get rich, rich, rich and Devil take the hindmost.

Guess which colony had a lower life expectancy than even the poorest sections of England and which had a higher life expectancy than the old country???

Right. Wasn’t the failure at Jamestown specifically what the Pilgrims were trying to avoid through their, erm, collective efforts?

I mean the Compact is not exactly, “I got mine.”

And that difference in views of fellow living things remains today.

On a personal note: Living in the south all of my life I had never been able to figure out my liberal ways of looking at life and the world. Then I started doing family history and found old old letters which place me as a multi generation UUC and I know. Family examples, teaching and telling the stories do have an influence.

But… “Socialism is SOUL-STEALING!!11!!”

Or so my sister told me, just last night.

While times are certainly harder now than years past, it still seems very appropriate to stop and realize just how lucky we are and to give thanks. It also seems like the perfect time to revisit the story of that very first Thanksgiving…….

The first Thanksgiving was held in the early 17th Century between the Pilgrims and the local Indians. The year of that first Thanksgiving had been especially bountiful and both the Pilgrims and the Indians had stored their harvest in preparation for the long, hard winter. The Pilgrims were putting the finishing touches on their little village and in fact had hired several of the Indians to help out. The work was hard and dirty but the Indians didn’t seem to mind and, fortunately, this was before OSHA, the minimum wage and…best of all… labor unions.
One day one of the Pilgrims was watching the Indians work away and thought it might be nice to invite the Indians over to their large meeting house for a big feast to celebrate how good the harvest had been. The Indians loved the idea and on the specified day the Indians arrived at the meeting house in large numbers. That was fine since the building could accommodate many people. There was a huge table in front of the fireplace and in the fireplace was a blazing fire. Only the men were allowed to sit at the large table where it was bright and warm. The women, both Indian and Pilgrim, were relegated to the far end of the room by the door where is was much darker and colder. Still, it sure beat being out in the cold.
The men sat around the table and discussed new ideas for planting they might try the next planting season while the women sat around and debated whether Oprah was gaining or losing weight.
Soon it was time to eat and after all the food was set upon the table everyone agreed they had never seen so much delicious food in one place before. They all dug in and had seconds and even thirds. Following the meal some took short naps but then a bit later the Pilgrims told the Indians they had a little surprise for them. One of the Pilgrims uncorked a barrel of whiskey and let the Indians sample it. One astute fellow said the whiskey gave him a slight burning feeling as it went down and termed the new drink “fire water.” In spite of the slight burn, the whiskey was a huge hit with the Indians and both they and the Pilgrims drank and drank.
To entertain themselves throughout the evening, the Indians did bird calls and then the Pilgrims introduced the Indians to card games. They showed them how to play five card stud and the Indians discovered the importance of being the house, a lesson that would pay off many centuries later.
Finally, the hour got very late and it was time to part. The Indian and Pilgrim men decided to get together the next weekend and go to the strip clubs down the road in Jamestown. All agreed to meet for another big party around Christmas and do a gift exchange with a $5 limit.
As the Indians were walking home that night under a full moon they couldn’t stop talking about how much fun they had and how great a host the Pilgrims had been. Meanwhile, back in the meeting house the Pilgrims had reassembled around the table to discuss ways to “steal” Manhattan from the Indians for a few dollars worth of cheap beads. The Pilgrims had had their eye on Manhattan for some time and felt it would be the perfect spot for one of their most ambitious projects: Wall Street. Once built they planned to establish investment banks along both sides of the street. The investment banks would then sell derivatives and other risky investments back to the Indians and keep them heavily in debt while enabling the Pilgrims to achieve billionaire status.
And they all lived happily ever after…especially the Pilgrims.
The End

Wow, first Brooks and now this ghoul Prager. Two dismayingly wtf moments in one day. Oy, my head!

When Praeger wrote, “My gratitude will be marred by a dark cloud” I’m sure that it was just a typo.

I’m sure he meant “marred by a darkie cloud.”

thes asshats realize that the African influence in America predates the puritan influence

right ???

even in good old Massachusetts

There were several such young men “strangers” on the Mayflower as well. It’s said that they were actually the ones to direct the ship further north, beyond the boundaries of the Virginia Colony where the colonists had been awarded a large grant of land. Just before landing these few men began arguing that they no longer were subject to the laws of the Virginia Colony or the King. The Mayflower Compact was, in fact, a statement that the colonists would not become sovereign and would self-govern much as many towns were doing in Britain under Royal Charter.

The “strangers”, the equivalent of the Randians, were voted down…despite the fact that it was the Pilgrims who were subject to the religious persecution of the Church of England and Crown.

One of the “strangers” [Randians] that started talking about breaking from the Crown was John Billington a nasty sort who was escaping his debts and was eventually executed for murder.