After watching a recent school play entitled, “The First Thanksgiving,” I once again realized the historical ignorance that exists today and the watering down of history that has been done by many school systems. The school play basically said that after a “hard winter” the pilgrims celebrated that the “hard winter” was over by inviting their friends, the Native Americans, to share a large feast. But there were no details on what made that winter hard and how they had enough food for a large feast.

That’s where the reference section will do us all a world of good. You see, the pilgrims had a hard winter because they experimented with communism. That’s right, communism. They shared everything evenly no matter who worked to grow or kill the food and who refused to work. Eventually there were more living off the workers than there were workers. And the workers resented that so what do you think they did? More and more of them quit working which killed the production of food until at one point the ration for each pilgrim was 4 kernels of corn per day. They were literally starving!

The solution? Free market capitalism. When everyone had to work to eat or work to provide for their families, MORE PEOPLE WORKED which meant there was more food to share — even with the natives. The pilgrims learned this lesson and it helped shape the United States. Read the fascinating story and please share it so that this Thanksgiving more people will know the true story of the “first Thanksgiving.”