Rush Limbaugh: The True Story of Thanksgiving

Rush Limbaugh: George Washington's Thanksgiving address

Happy Starvation Day?

by John Stossel

Had today's political class been in power in 1623, today's holiday would have been called "Starvation Day" instead of Thanksgiving. Of course, most of us wouldn't be alive to celebrate it.

Every year around this time, schoolchildren are taught about that wonderful day when Pilgrims and Native Americans shared the fruits of the harvest. But the first Thanksgiving in 1623 almost didn't happen.

Long before the failure of modern socialism, the earliest European settlers gave us a dramatic demonstration of the fatal flaws of collectivism. Unfortunately, few Americans today know it.

The Pilgrims at Plymouth Colony organized their farm economy along communal lines. The goal was to share the work and produce equally.

That's why they nearly all starved.

When people can get the same return with less effort, most people make less effort. Plymouth settlers faked illness rather than working the common property. Some even stole, despite their Puritan convictions. Total production was too meager to support the population, and famine resulted. This went on for two years.

"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."

In other words, the people of Plymouth moved from socialism to private farming. The results were dramatic.

Read More...

Soros: China Has ‘Better Functioning Government’ Than the U.S.

by Meredith Jessup

In accepting his Globalist of the Year award from the Canadian International Council Monday evening, billionaire and far-left political activist George Soros announced that China‘s grip on the global economy is getting tighter and compared the United States’ recent economic woes to the decline of the United Kingdom following World War II.

Because global economic power is shifting, Soros says China will need to change focus. “China has risen very rapidly by looking out for its own interests,” he said. “They have now got to accept responsibility for world order and the interests of other people as well,” The Globe and Mail reports.

“[The Chinese] have now got to accept responsibility for world order and the interests of other people as well,” he said. “Today, China has not only a more vigorous economy, but actually a better functioning government than the United States,” he said, condemning political gridlock on Capitol Hill for stalling U.S. economic reforms.

Read More...

How Liberalism self-destructed

by Joel Kotkin

Democrats are still looking for explanations for their stunning rejection in the midterms — citing everything from voting rights violations and Middle America’s racist orientation to Americans’ inability to perceive the underlying genius of President Barack Obama’s economic policy.

What they have failed to consider is the albatross of contemporary liberalism.

Liberalism once embraced the mission of fostering upward mobility and a stronger economy. But liberalism’s appeal has diminished, particularly among middle-class voters, as it has become increasingly control-oriented and economically cumbersome.

Today, according to most recent polling, no more than one in five voters call themselves liberal.

This contrasts with the far broader support for the familiar form of liberalism forged from the 1930s to the 1990s. Democratic presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Bill Clinton focused largely on basic middle-class concerns — such as expanding economic opportunity, property ownership and growth.

Modern-day liberalism, however, is often ambivalent about expanding the economy — preferring a mix of redistribution with redirection along green lines. Its base of political shock troops, public-employee unions, appears only tangentially interested in the health of the overall economy.

Read More...