Thanksgiving: a story unfolds
From "Old England" the Pilgrims barely made it to America through treacherous waters. They established the Plymouth Colony in today's New England in 1620.
As reflected in their Mayflower Compact, the first instinct of the surviving Pilgrims was to go on surviving collectively. All for one and one for all. Sharing and caring sounded so promising. Soon enough, the Colony turned itself into a collective farm. An authority came into being, centrally planning and regulating everything for everybody. A people's commune debuted in the name of God.
Playing God, the authority ran afoul of human nature. Folks fought central planning like hell. They insisted on keeping what they labored for---after tax. That way, they reasoned, free producers would be much more able to help the less fortunate. After all, as the proverb goes, "charity begins at home." With it, a homegrown idea of small government loomed big. Personal liberty became respectable.
That's when and where the spirit of free enterprise was coming into play among the Pilgrims, which in due course underlied the Declaration of Independence of 1776
Happy Thanksgiving!
Author: renqiulan
