[crycleascentyv]

It all starts with a Diestel Turkey as you must serve a turkey who has lived a more wholesome and glorious life than you have. Then there is cornbread stuffing with organic apple sausage, herb roasted sweet potatoes, artichoke bisque, garlic mashed potatoes, rolls, steamed green beans and peas, salad, pumpkin cheesecake, and fresh apple pie ala mode. When it comes to the cranberries, we serve it both ways. I am a whole cranberry type of gal.

The best thing is that I use the turkey carcass to make a stock for a really nice turkey minestrone.

[QysnZWB4]

I often get that reaction, from people who can't refute what the original post said. The more truculent among them, usually attack the messenger instead.

Perhaps because you make yourself the target by making the thread about your 'colourful' views, not the topic itself.

That is to say, you are using the annual Thanksgiving celebrations as a launchpad for some ideological partisan rant... that is tiresome and tends to make you the target and focus of the issue - perhaps because there is so little content to otherwise discuss... just fervent and anxious prose.

Just speculating of course...

Back to the subject:
Socialism is usually practiced by people who either don't look back into history to see what its results have been in the past, or by people who DO look back but then come to the conclusion that they can do better. That would be OK if they were simply playing with a chessboard or something. But all too frequently they try to impose their "new" experiments on entire groups of people. And when they manage to do this, horrors usually result, as they did to the colonists in the New World.

Bemused giggles. Do you actually believe this crap that you are making up? Have you ever interviewed, for example, Lenin's comrades? Or perhaps Castro's? You seem to have a remarkable knowledge of thier motivations.

Fortunately, the colonists were honest enough to see the error of their ways, and change course to a plan that worked.

And we all know the Mayflower was chock full of hard-core Marxists and Fabian Socialists... luckily America, the indians and a harsh winter taught them to repent of their evil ways... and no doubt they burnt their little manifestos to keep warm over those long winters...

But many other socialist groups have not been, from the USSR to Nazi Germany to Cuba. And the modern liberals of the U.S., from Howard to Hillary to John to Jesse, appear to have their blinders on just as rigidly. Even China, which has been allowing increasing amounts of capitalism, only did so after several bloody purges whose victims numbered in the millions.

A free press is vital to the search for past precedents that can guide us away from failures. Publishing the memoirs of such failures as the early colonies, must go on despite the sneers and slime of those who try to pretend that publishing them is wrong.

Was there a purpose to this little speech?

Like, how did you go from Pilgrims to Nazi Germany to Howard, Hillary, China and the wonders of non-regulated publishing companies all the way to 'slime'... rather remarkable if there was a point to it all...

[RotsLoado]

Canned cranberry dressing is THE Great Thanksgiving hoax!

The SPAM of Thanksgiving. Pass the gravy, please.

[MadMark]

come on down!!! I'm starving and the game will be on soon!

Go Broncos

Replay of 1978.

[leareliovag]

It all starts with a Diestel Turkey as you must serve a turkey who has lived a more wholesome and glorious life than you have. Then there is cornbread stuffing with organic apple sausage, herb roasted sweet potatoes, artichoke bisque, garlic mashed potatoes, rolls, steamed green beans and peas, salad, pumpkin cheesecake, and fresh apple pie ala mode. When it comes to the cranberries, we serve it both ways. I am a whole cranberry type of gal.

The best thing is that I use the turkey carcass to make a stock for a really nice turkey minestrone.

Artichoke bisque? For Thanksgiving? I have never had it...is it good? Artichokes aren't high on my list...

[oronozopiy]

The Jamestown and Plymouth colonies were two different type of colonies. The plymouth colony contained zero gentlemen. The plymouth colony was an egalitarian religious sect in which everyone worked. Since the plymouth colony is responsible for the Thanksgiving legend, then the events surrounding Jamestown shouldn't apply.

[PhillipHer]

Artichoke bisque? For Thanksgiving? I have never had it...is it good? Artichokes aren't high on my list...

It is terrific! Although mine is probably not as good as the artichoke bisque at this italian restaurant in Salinas we went to. OMG! It is so very tasty. We don't use the whole artichoke, just the artichoke hearts, which soaks up the lovely broth. I always like to try new things and tastes with the Thanksgiving Feast.

[kesFockplek]

Damn it Iamwhatiseem get your hands off the Seagram's - it's all mine.

[bestformaldress23]

The weather was rough during those winters, but didn't get any better for subsequent ones. Problems came because many men of the colonies were "gentlemen" - that is, men of leisure who didn't have to work, but who still expected a full share of food, shelter etc. The various colonial governors finally declared, "If you don't work, you don't eat." And things began to improve dramatically.

--------------------------

http://www.lizmichael.com/thanksgi.htm

The Great Thanksgiving Hoax
by Richard J. Marbury

Each year at this time school children all over America are taught the official Thanksgiving story, and newspapers, radio, TV, and magazines devote vast amounts of time and space to it. It is all very colorful and fascinating.

It is also very deceiving. This official story is nothing like what really happened. It is a fairy tale, a whitewashed and sanitized collection of half-truths which divert attention away from Thanksgiving's real meaning.

The official story has the pilgrims boarding the Mayflower, coming to America and establishing the Plymouth colony in the winter of 1620-21. This first winter is hard, and half the colonists die. But the survivors are hard working and tenacious, and they learn new farming techniques from the Indians. The harvest of 1621 is bountiful. The Pilgrims hold a celebration, and give thanks to God. They are grateful for the wonderful new abundant land He has given them.

The official story then has the Pilgrims living more or less happily ever after, each year repeating the first Thanksgiving. Other early colonies also have hard times at first, but they soon prosper and adopt the annual tradition of giving thanks for this prosperous new land called America.

The problem with this official story is that the harvest of 1621 was not bountiful, nor were the colonists hardworking or tenacious. 1621 was a famine year and many of the colonists were lazy thieves.

In his `History of Plymouth Plantation,' the governor of the colony, William Bradford, reported that the colonists went hungry for years, because they refused to work in the fields. They preferred instead to steal food. He says the colony was riddled with "corruption," and with "confusion and discontent." The crops were small because "much was stolen both by night and day, before it became scarce eatable."

In the harvest feasts of 1621 and 1622, "all had their hungry bellies filled," but only briefly. The prevailing condition during those years was not the abundance the official story claims, it was famine and death. The first "Thanksgiving" was not so much a celebration as it was the last meal of condemned men.

But in subsequent years something changes. The harvest of 1623 was different. Suddenly, "instead of famine now God gave them plenty," Bradford wrote, "and the face of things was changed, to the rejoicing of the hearts of many, for which they blessed God." Thereafter, he wrote, "any general want or famine hath not been amongst them since to this day." In fact, in 1624, so much food was produced that the colonists were able to begin exporting corn.

What happened?

After the poor harvest of 1622, writes Bradford, "they began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop." They began to question their form of economic organization.

This had required that "all profits & benefits that are got by trade, working, fishing, or any other means" were to be placed in the common stock of the colony, and that, "all such persons as are of this colony, are to have their meat, drink, apparel, and all provisions out of the common stock." A person was to put into the common stock all he could, and take out only what he needed.

This "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" was an early form of socialism, and it is why the Pilgrims were starving. Bradford writes that "young men that are most able and fit for labor and service" complained about being forced to "spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children." Also, "the strong, or man of parts, had no more in division of victuals and clothes, than he that was weak." So the young and strong refused to work and the total amount of food produced was never adequate.

To rectify this situation, in 1623 Bradford abolished socialism. He gave each household a parcel of land and told them they could keep what they produced, or trade it away as they saw fit. In other words, he replaced socialism with a free market, and that was the end of famines.

Many early groups of colonists set up socialist states, all with the same terrible results. At Jamestown, established in 1607, out of every shipload of settlers that arrived, less than half would survive their first twelve months in America. Most of the work was being done by only one-fifth of the men, the other four-fifths choosing to be parasites. In the winter of 1609-10, called "The Starving Time," the population fell from five-hundred to sixty.

Then the Jamestown colony was converted to a free market, and the results were every bit as dramatic as those at Plymouth. In 1614, Colony Secretary Ralph Hamor wrote that after the switch there was "plenty of food, which every man by his own industry may easily and doth procure." He said that when the socialist system had prevailed, "we reaped not so much corn from the labors of thirty men as three men have done for themselves now."

Before these free markets were established, the colonists had nothing for which to be thankful. They were in the same situation as Ethiopians are today, and for the same reasons. But after free markets were established, the resulting abundance was so dramatic that the annual Thanksgiving celebrations became common throughout the colonies, and in 1863, Thanksgiving became a national holiday.

Thus the real reason for Thanksgiving, deleted from the official story, is: Socialism does not work; the one and only source of abundance is free markets, and we thank God we live in a country where we can have them.

Some truth ...but mostly your agenda ...the problem was that the Pilgrims had first immigrated to the Netherlands where they were equally dissatisfied and had given up an agrarian life style. They were no longer farmers and not very well suited as a group for starting up a new colony.

You seem to ignore the Native Americans who had lived very successfully for generations in very socialistic communities in the very same habitats that the Pilgrims came to.

History has taught us that there are very few absolutes. Neither pure communal living nor pure free market enterprise seem to work completely …or we wouldn’t even be having this discussion.

It’s a balance of the two …that’s the debate …how much of each?

[AutoCadPhotoSHOP]

Fruit-stuffed turkey, Lemon Meringue Pie, yams, gravy, rolls, cranberry sauce (made from scratch by yours truly), and on and on. YUM! The dogs even got leftovers!