Click here to say Thank You to the most moral military force in the world. Thank you, Israeli soldiers for doing the hard work most of the rest of the world refuses to do: defending the Jewish people and combating Islamic and Arab aggression head-on.
Here there is a simple rule: Everyone must dress properly -- informally, but no jeans or disheveled hair, etc. That helps a lot. They also sit properly on their chairs and don't fidget. That is absolutely necessary in a mass enterprise.
- Hannah Arendt, in a letter dated March 16, 1955
describing her classroom requirements while teaching at UC Berkeley
(from Within Four Walls)
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.Yep. And it ain't moaning for change.
To usher in the New Year, anti-Communist Titan Alexander Solzhenitsyn's 1979 Harvard Commencement Address. Some excerpts:
A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society. Of course, there are many courageous individuals, but they have no determining influence on public life.
Political and intellectual bureaucrats show depression, passivity, and perplexity in their actions and in their statements, and even more so in theoretical reflections to explain how realistic, reasonable, as well as intellectually and even morally worn it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice. And decline in courage is ironically emphasized by occasional explosions of anger and inflexibility on the part of the same bureaucrats when dealing with weak governments and with countries not supported by anyone, or with currents which cannot offer any resistance. But they get tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists. Should one point out that from ancient times declining courage has been considered the beginning of the end?
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I have spent all my life under a Communist regime and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale than the legal one is not quite worthy of man either. A society which is based on the letter of the law and never reaches any higher is taking very scarce advantage of the high level of human possibilities. The letter of the law is too cold and formal to have a beneficial influence on society. Whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relations, there is an atmosphere of moral mediocrity, paralyzing man's noblest impulses. And it will be simply impossible to stand through the trials of this threatening century with only the support of a legalistic structure.
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The defense of individual rights has reached such extremes as to make society as a whole defenseless against certain individuals. It is time, in the West, to defend not so much human rights as human obligations.
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The press too, of course, enjoys the widest freedom. (I shall be using the word press to include all media.) But what sort of use does it make of this freedom? Here again, the main concern is not to infringe the letter of the law. There is no true moral responsibility for deformation or disproportion. What sort of responsibility does a journalist or a newspaper have to his readers, or to his history -- or to history? If they have misled public opinion or the government by inaccurate information or wrong conclusions, do we know of any cases of public recognition and rectification of such mistakes by the same journalist or the same newspaper? It hardly ever happens because it would damage sales. A nation may be the victim of such a mistake, but the journalist usually always gets away with it. One may -- One may safely assume that he will start writing the opposite with renewed self-assurance.
Because instant and credible information has to be given, it becomes necessary to resort to guesswork, rumors, and suppositions to fill in the voids, and none -- and none of them will ever be rectified; they will stay on in the readers' memories. How many hasty, immature, superficial, and misleading judgments are expressed every day, confusing readers, without any verification. The press -- The press can both simulate public opinion and miseducate it. Thus, we may see terrorists described as heroes, or secret matters pertaining to one's nation's defense publicly revealed, or we may witness shameless intrusion on the privacy of well-known people under the slogan: "Everyone is entitled to know everything." But this is a false slogan, characteristic of a false era. People also have the right not to know and it's a much more valuable one. The right not to have their divine souls [stuffed with gossip, nonsense, vain talk.] A person who works and leads a meaningful life does not need this excessive burdening flow of information.
Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic disease of the 20th century and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press. Such as it is, however, the press has become the greatest power within the Western countries, more powerful than the legislative power, the executive, and the judiciary. And one would then like to ask: By what law has it been elected and to whom is it responsible?
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But should someone ask me whether I would indicate the West such as it is today as a model to my country, frankly I would have to answer negatively. No, I could not recommend your society in its present state as an ideal for the transformation of ours. Through intense suffering our country has now achieved a spiritual development of such intensity that the Western system in its present state of spiritual exhaustion does not look attractive. Even those characteristics of your life which I have just mentioned are extremely saddening.
A fact which cannot be disputed is the weakening of human beings in the West while in the East they are becoming firmer and stronger -- 60 years for our people and 30 years for the people of Eastern Europe. During that time we have been through a spiritual training far in advance of Western experience. Life's complexity and mortal weight have produced stronger, deeper, and more interesting characters than those generally [produced] by standardized Western well-being....
After the suffering of many years of violence and oppression, the human soul longs for things higher, warmer, and purer than those offered by today's mass living habits, introduced by the revolting invasion of publicity, by TV stupor, and by intolerable music. There are meaningful warnings which history gives a threatened or perishing society. Such are, for instance, the decadence of art, or a lack of great statesmen.
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The American Intelligentsia lost its nerve and as a consequence thereof danger has come much closer to the United States. But there is no awareness of this. Your shortsighted politicians who signed the hasty Vietnam capitulation seemingly gave America a carefree breathing pause; however, a hundredfold Vietnam now looms over you. That small Vietnam had been a warning and an occasion to mobilize the nation's courage. But if a full-fledged America suffered a real defeat from a small communist half-country, how can the West hope to stand firm in the future?
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Western thinking has become conservative: the world situation should stay as it is at any cost; there should be no changes. This debilitating dream of a status quo is the symptom of a society which has come to the end of its development. But one must be blind in order not to see that oceans no longer belong to the West, while land under its domination keeps shrinking. The two so-called world wars (they were by far not on a world scale, not yet) have meant internal self-destruction of the small, progressive West which has thus prepared its own end. The next war (which does not have to be an atomic one and I do not believe it will) may well bury Western civilization forever.
Facing such a danger, with such splendid historical values in your past, at such a high level of realization of freedom and of devotion to freedom, how is it possible to lose to such an extent the will to defend oneself?
* * *
Read the whole thing along with a full-length audio clip of the speech.
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From one of the most influential American novels ever written:
-- Darling, you take everything too seriously. One is not supposed to be intellectual at a ball. One is simply supposed to be gay.
-- How? By being stupid?
-- I mean, for instance, didn't you enjoy meeting the young men?
-- What men? There wasn't a man there I couldn't squash ten of.
(Written during a time when "gay" meant happy, light, care-free, etc.)
Blogbuddy GM Roper was contacted last year by Tony Snow after GM revealed, bravely and humbly, that he'd been diagnosed with cancer. GM reposted the email on his site, which Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) linked to, and which Michael Barone (USN&WR) has linked to. Now Tony has revealed that his cancer has returned.
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GM, Tony, Glenn, and Michael are four of the classiest guys you'll ever come across -- in this case, where the blogs, the MSM, and even the White House meet.
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Previous on GM:
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Cathy Seipp (right) and Jackie Danicki (in LA, of course)
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Interviewer: What do you consider the most important personal quality?
Cathy: A certain large-mindedness, or generosity of spirit - because this encompasses not only extending yourself for others, but other qualities like courage, and having friends who disagree with you politically, and not constantly worrying about what other people think.
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The blogosphere's a big place. It
seems like you can be everywhere if not all the time, then eventually.
Well, in the past year of being online almost daily I never got around
to reading feisty Cathy Seipp, who, I'm learning fast, was LA media's virtual thinking cap. She
succumbed to cancer yesterday, after an on-again off-again struggle, at
age 49.
These tributes to Cathy at National Review Online's "A Fond Farewell" prove beyond any doubt that missing out on her no-fuss wit and decisive incisiveness truly was my loss. She clearly made the blogosphere, journalism, her friends and her family (and for all I know, the spiders that live on her ceiling) better. My (our) "loss" can, fairly, be remedied -- we click over to the words. As for her teen daughter, Maia, words, perhaps, can't begin to describe it. My sincere condolences.
* Update * OK, I just read some of her clips. Here's my quick take: Any publication she wrote for was changed from bottled water into a crisp martini. She was the olive -- savory, faintly intoxicating, even nourishing.
** Update ** Debbie Schlussel understands that cancer may and will strike anyone. The cure she's holding out for is a cure for Elizabeth Edwards.
Rush Limbaugh: "This is how you play the media."
Tammy Bruce on Time magazine's "nihilistic cannibalism" (anticipating Edwards's exit and Al Gore's entry into the presidential race)
Previous: "Elizabeth Edwards Awareness Month"
(I hope Cathy would have appreciated the wit of those last few sentences.)
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The Poet and the Beautiful Mariposa
If I am dreaming, do not wake me
If I am walking, do not stop me
For I am seeking the beautiful mariposa
The mariposa that is looking for me.
And when I find this beautiful mariposa
The mariposa that is looking for me
If I am walking, do not stop me
And if I am dreaming, do not wake me.
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ENDNOTES and AFTERTHOUGHTS:
* It's salvaged (savaged) from an unfinished short story. Have mercy on me, Muses -- though I know you won't!
* (Aside) What's the difference between wonder, horror, and desire?
Before wonder we say Oh! Wow!
Before horror we say Oh! No!
Before desire we say Oh! Yes!
* Scroll down for updates! *
I popped in on this irongray overcast morning only to check my email and see what's going on in the world, but lo and behold there's an acoustic kiddie concert in progress. It's the snazzy folk band Hanna Banana -- a mandolin, a banjo, a guitar or two, and a standing bass. My 15" laptop balanced precariously on bunched up knees, I'm nursing a mug of strong black coffee while desperately trying not to be pscyhed out by the inquisitive stares of the toddlers bouncing on their parents' knees and youngins spinning figure 8's around the room, but a neoconservative blogger's gotta do what a neoconservative blogger's gotta do.
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12:23 PM - "Turkey in the Straw" No way! I used to have the sheet music for this one.
I had a little monkey and his name was Tiny Tim
Put him in the tub to see if he could swim....
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12:29 PM - "The City of New Orleans" Heard Arlo Guthrie and Pete Seeger do this live 20 years ago. Can be melancholy or spirited, depends entirely on the rendition.
Good morning, America. Don't you know me, I'm your native son
I'll be gone 500 miles 'fore the day is done....
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12:37 PM - An environmental "water awareness song" Yeah, sure. At least it doesn't mention global warming.... Hmm, that strong bass rhythm is catchy.
Animals need water, people need it, too....
(12:40 PM - Uh-oh. Written by someone in Santa Cruz, CA, the song has been officially adopted by the UN.)
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12:46 PM - "Big Yellow Taxi" Joni Mitchell's "they paved paradise and put up a parking lot" anti-capitalist anthem, covered and popularized by The Counting Crows.
Hey farmer, farmer, put away your DDT
I don't care about spots on my apples
Leave me the birds and the bees
Please....
The last song was just a set-up for this one -- I knew it! Hey, Joni: DDT actually has good uses ("What the World Needs Now Is DDT," New York Times, April 11, 2004)!
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12:52 PM - "This Land Is Your Land" The signature ballad of Woody Guthrie, whom the singer introduced as "the patron saint" of folk singers. Sing along if you like, it's hard not to (as a child of course I did), but please spare us the encomiums for this patriot of the Soviet Union.
From the redwood forests to the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me.
If you can ditch the impulse for collective or state ownership, and instead focus on how to best exploit (and, when necessary, preserve) our natural resources, it's still a good song.
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* * *
Well, that was the finale. The kids are hopping in the aisles and their parents are protectively following their lead. Someone's breaking out the coloring books and markers as the band breaks down the amps and music stands.
Hey, look at that! The morning clouds are burning off ... and ... here comes the sun. Do-do-dooo-do....
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2:20 PM - * Final Update *
JMK's rule of thumb for listening to folk music:
When you hear "If I Had A Hammer," think "If I Had Armand Hammer" (Armand Hammer = capitalist enabler of the Soviet Union)
Related: A review of Engineering Communism.
Take a minute and let this 14 year-old show you how good it is to be alive. I pulled off a stunt or two on skateboards, sleds, and bicycles but they don't come close to what he pulls off in a wheelchair.
Remember this?
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Compare this: United Van Lines's "2006 Migration Study" indicates the basic trends of where Americans are moving to. It's only bare bones, not telling who's moving by age and income group, etc. (nor does it account for immigration), but the general effect is easy to read: it's a red state boost and a blue state bust. Meet the neighbors!
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This in from France's Libération (or, as JMK prefers to refer to it, Délibération): demographic decline in Japan is advancing even more rapidly than previously feared. The land of the rising sun is the land of the setting sun, with the native population expected to drop from 128 million to less than 80 million by 2055. The main cause, according to the article, is a fertile generation that has turned into célébataires parasites -- unmarried parasites -- committed to a lifestyle of career and consumption while remaining under their parents' roof. (Translate the article here.)
If you don't yet know, Fruitful Reader, all this neatly validates Mark Steyn's thesis of America Alone -- that the West (and we include G-8 member Japan as the West), as a civilization, is dying. By not reproducing heartily, we are committing passive suicide. We don't notice the overall phenomenon here in the U.S. where modestly robust fertility rate is the norm, but the norm elsewhere -- and, curiously, especially in lands that knew the 20th Century's worst totalitarianisms: Japan, Russia, Germany -- is decline.
Going ... going ....
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Infantus japanesus - endangered species
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Literary asides: This validates, somewhat, the overriding concern of the Sea of Fertility series of novels, Japanese Yukio Mishima's ultimate writing project. The opening pages of the initial novel, Spring Snow, conjure the undescribable sadness of a photograph of the newly-modernizing Japanese army, a photograph taken during the Russo-Japanese War.... See also, German Heiner Müller's prose poem, "Explosion of a Memory (Description of a Picture)," for a storm of disturbing and absorbing images on many things including relations between the sexes and also death -- death, death, and more death.... Reading these works will make clear, Gentle Reader, in its own terribly roundabout way, how good most of us have it here in America.
Hey, this is special! Tune in to Wide Awakes Radio at 8:00PM (Eastern Time; 7PM CST, etc.) on Christmas eve (tomorrow) to hear blogger GM read The Polar Express.
How can I sell you on GM's storytelling powers? In a word, he cares:
The Velvet Voice himself will be reading the Polar Express to all the good little boy's and girls. So, tune in to Wide Awakes Radio on your computer, gather the kiddies around with hot chocolate and cookies (and maybe even a sugar plum or two) and listen in.
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Long ago people gathered by the fire. Then it was the radio. Then television. Now, with the New Media, we gather by the computer....
Let Claudia Anderson's lovely reminiscence of the late Jeane ("What-a-tower-of-a-woman!") Kirkpatrick wash over you:
Jeane told me once that as a young woman she hadn't expected to
marry, so dedicated was she to the life of the mind. As a little girl,
she spent one of her first dollars on a thesaurus. "So what happened,"
I asked. "You fell in love?" She put it differently: "Kirk fell in love
with me."
Love and marriage and three sons in short order didn't derail her graduate studies in political science, but did slow them down. Jeane took till she was 40 to finish her Ph.D. and always managed her teaching and writing load so as to remain a hands-on mother.... (emphasis added)
Previous: "Goodbye, Neocon Jeane"
(Update: Fausta collects many Jeane Kirkpatrick lessons for our brave new, neoconservative 21st Century. "The more I read about JK, the more I like her, " Fausta blogs. Exactly!)
(Welcome, Right Wing News readers. Thanks, John, for the nod.)
(Updates 12/11: After you read this, see Fausta take the discussion one step beyond.... Also: Alas, poor Dottie! JMK knows her better than ever.)
Gentlemen, pay attention! It's Chris Hitchens's light refracted though Fausta's prism. Hitch ponders a so-called "humor gap" between the sexes in "Why Women Aren't Funny." (btw, another, very refractive prism here.) Fausta ripostes:
[A] guy will tell you a lot about himself and what he thinks about you, and how comfortable he is when he's with you when he says something that makes you laugh. He may not be trying to be funny, but you can find great honesty in humor.
The premium seems to be on honesty and hardly on charm. If honesty from the man -- to the woman's satisfaction, at least -- is not forthcoming, then it would seem, according to Fausta, that some manner of extracting or securing it becomes the woman's chief concern. Ah! all these mental tribulations while avoiding pain and seeking pleasure in pursuit of suitable companionship....
(Update, Fausta clarifies: I must clarify that I place a premium not on honesty as of itself, but in the comfort zone that brings in humor, self-disclosure, and a sense of fun. You can't have fun when uncomfortable. That, and hopefully what follows, will help us all breathe easier.)
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Not exactly related (but not unrelated either and, besides, I've been wanting to blog about this for a while...):
this brings to mind Dorothy Parker's "light verse." Such verse -- which formally resembles much of Edna St. Vincent Millay's poesy (including the sonnets) -- is for the most part a continuous, lyrical lament over troubles between the sexes. Her most famous poem, "News Item," is not even remembered by most as a poem, instead having installed itself in American English as a popular quip. Gentle Reader, I bet you've heard "News Item," and you just didn't know it had appeared in Parker's collection Enough Rope (1926). It goes: "Men seldom make passes/At girls who wear glasses."
If I didn't first hear that one from my grandmother, then I do recall that she remarked it to me a while back. We were having a pleasant, sit-down conversation on her Miami Beach couch about, oh, relations between the sexes. It was in that pleasant, old-school way in which an 80 year-old brings up the subject with a 20 year-old. (Like I said, it was a while back.) Such an old-school way is, unfortunately, a way that seems to have disappeared from the face of the Earth (to everyone's loss and -- to those of us who know what we're missing -- chagrin). So my grandmother quipped away to the tune of Dorothy Parker. I might add that she quipped with, perhaps, an air of sly delight and even a little triumph. For she herself never had to wear glasses (except in her later years for reading).
The implied lesson, I figured, is to be appreciative of women whether or not they wear glasses, and, like the song says, to try a little tenderness around women who do. Now it just so happens that, yes, in the course of my life I have had occasion to offer feedback to significant women who wear glasses -- occasioned not because they have asked me to do so, but because they seem to have asked me not to do so. The occasion usually arises in a moment of grim, mumbled foreboding, something along the lines of: I have to put on my glasses now.... implying, more or less: Don't make a face! or If you love me, you won't say anything!
Then comes the moment of truth and misunderstanding. Because, really, deep down, I think glasses are cute. Not the Ray-Ban this and Ferragamo that. I mean simply a pair of specs on the face of The Most Important Woman in the World. Because, usually, when she puts them on the contacts have come out, the rest of the world is left out there, and she's settling in to her comfiest homebody self. And I'm part of what makes and keeps her homebody comfy. It doesn't get much better than that.
But then I ruin it. I ruin it simply by saying what's on my mind.
-You look wonderful in your glasses!
-Oh, please!
-Wait, I mean it, which I accent with a mild sigh.
-No, I don't.
-Oh, yes you do. You really do.... Offered in just the right tone, this should allow her to ignore, for just a little while, all that burdensome foreign matter splayed across her nose. But then I kill the moment, kill it by saying what I really feel: If you only knew how good you look right now.
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-To me! How good you look. To me.
To me, yes, but to no avail. She shakes her head, not relieved and definitely not amused, and makes a bee-line into the next room. I know the moment's passed because she's doing something practical like folding a dish towel or checking a stapler to see if it needs reloading. The charm -- if there was any -- is gone. Possibly the thrill, too. All because I was trying, sincerely trying to do right by my grandmother and by Dorothy Parker. Maybe the solution is to hook up only with women who have perfect vision (that, or entire cabinets full of contact lenses)?
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Back to the drawing board. Here are two more examples from that volume of "light verse." Frankly, they are harrowing lessons in the harm inflicted by -- to say the least -- having neglected to work on one's charm:
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De Profundis
Oh, is it, then, Utopian
To hope that I may meet a man
Who'll not relate, in accents suave,
The tales of girls he used to have?
Men
They hail you as their morning star
Because you are the way you are.
If you return the sentiment,
They'll try to make you different;
And once they have you, safe and sound,
They'll try to change you all around.
Your moods and ways they put a curse on;
They'd make of you another person
They cannot let you go your gate;
They influence and educate.
They'd alter all that they admired.
They make me sick, they make me tired.
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In conclusion, all I can say is that there must be a place for charm along with humor and honesty. There must be. I mean, there is a way to hail a woman as a star, because in that regard JMK has defied Dottie's expectations. (Not deified and not defiled them, mind you). So there must be a charming way to compliment a woman on her glasses. There must be!
What's so funny about that?
It's a time of the year when many of us get around to making a contribution to alleviate the hardships or sufferings of others. The contribution isn't necessarily financial, though that's often the simplest (if not the most rewarding) way to make a little difference. Anyway, I'll spare you the moralistic lecture. If you're in the giving spirit, or if you're open to being in the giving spirit, here are a few suggestions:
* Wounded Warriors - for wounded American veterans (read GM's nod to them!)
* Jewish United Fund - for rebuilding and other assistance in northern Israel
* Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund - for long-term philanthropic planning
And when you hear someone cursing about "corporate greed," please point them to "the only international forum of business CEOs and Chairpersons pursuing a mission focused exclusively on corporate philanthropy," the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy
Well, it's time to start taking stock of the year that's almost past, to reflect, appreciate, and thank the many wonderful people that make life better and worth living, worth savoring, worth preserving, and worth creating. So, Happy Thanksgiving to all JMK readers -- thank you for making the time and energy of blogging worth it.
Here's a reminder of the harsh origins of the holiday by which we celebrate our plenty, no matter how great or small be our plenty. OK, end of speech.
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Mammas, read this one to your children this year (by Caroline Baum):
Pilgrims' Progress, or the Story of Thanksgiving
Nov. 26 (Bloomberg) -- It is the tradition of this column every year at this time to relate the story of Thanksgiving. For source material, I am grateful to the accounts of William Bradford, governor of the Plymouth Bay Colony beginning in 1621. (Bradford's History ``Of Plimoth Plantation'').
Most Americans think of Thanksgiving as a day off from work, a time to gather with friends and family and celebrate with a huge feast. If children know anything about the origins of this national holiday, declared each year by presidential proclamation, it's that the Pilgrims were grateful for a good harvest in their new land and set aside this day to give thanks.
What they and many adults don't know is that things weren't always good for the Pilgrims, a group of English Separatists who came to the New World to escape religious persecution. Their first winters after they landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620 and established the Plymouth Bay Colony were harsh. The weather and crop yields were poor.
Half the Pilgrims died or returned to England in the first year. Those who remained went hungry. Despite their deep religious convictions, the Pilgrims took to stealing from one another.
Finally, in the spring of 1623, Governor Bradford and the others ``begane to thinke how they might raise as much corne as they could, and obtaine a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery,'' according to Bradford's History.
Old-World Baggage
One of the traditions the Pilgrims had brought with them from England was a practice known as ``farming in common.'' Everything they produced was put into a common pool, and the harvest was rationed among them according to need.
They had thought ``that the taking away of property, and bringing in community into a common wealth, would make them happy and flourishing,'' Bradford recounts.
They were wrong. ``For this community (so far as it was) was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much imployment that would have been to their benefite and comforte,'' Bradford writes.
Young, able-bodied men resented working for others without compensation. Incentives were lacking.
After the Pilgrims had endured near-starvation for three winters, Bradford decided to experiment when it came time to plant in the spring of 1623. He set aside a plot of land for each family, that ``they should set corne every man for his owne particular, and in that regard trust to themselves.''
A New Way
The results were nothing short of miraculous.
Bradford writes: ``This had very good success; for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corne was planted than other ways would have been by any means the Govr or any other could use, and saved him a great deall of trouble, and gave far better content.''
The women now went willingly into the field, carrying their young children on their backs. Those who previously claimed they were too old or ill to work embraced the idea of private property and enjoyed the fruits of their labor, eventually producing enough to trade their excess corn for furs and other desired commodities.
Given appropriate incentives, the Pilgrims produced and enjoyed a bountiful harvest in the fall of 1623 and set aside ``a day of thanksgiving'' to thank God for their good fortune.
``Any generall wante or famine hath not been amongst them since to this day,'' Bradford writes in an entry from 1647, the last year covered by his History.
With the benefit of hindsight, we know that the Pilgrim's good fortune was not a matter of luck. In 1623, they were responding to the same incentives that have been adopted almost universally four centuries later.
