The Pilgrims Tried Socialism and It Didn't Work

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Hey everyone, welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. A little short podcast today,

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I wanted to show you something that a friend of mine, Bev Sullivan, he's been on the show once before, sent me.

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It's called Ditching Socialism in the New World, a Lesson for 21st

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Century Americans. And it is by Governor William Bradford of the

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Plymouth Settlement, but paraphrased by B. Nathaniel Sullivan. Bev is how he usually goes.

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I think his name is Bev Sullivan on Facebook. Anyway, you can go to wordfoundations .com if you want a copy of this.

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And I think he was just sending it to me for me to check out. But I actually appreciate what he's done so much.

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I figured I would just do a podcast about it. Little bit of historical background here.

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The first Thanksgiving technically was not the Pilgrims.

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The first Thanksgiving did not happen in Massachusetts in the first American Thanksgiving. I mean, the people of God have been giving thanks for thousands of years.

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So the concept of Thanksgiving isn't a new one. But in the new world, we generally think of the

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Pilgrims as that's the first Thanksgiving. Actually, the first Thanksgiving was in Virginia on December 4th, 1619, at least as far as we know.

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And this was after 10 weeks at sea. 38 English settlers arrived at Berkeley 100, about 20 miles upstream from Jamestown.

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On that day, Captain John Woodleaf held the first service of Thanksgiving as the newly landed settlers fell to their knees to thank

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God for their safe arrival. The charter of Berkeley 100 stated,

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We ordain that the day of our ship's arrival at the place assigned for plantation in the land of Virginia shall be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of Thanksgiving to Almighty God.

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And it was all about prayer. Some of the foods they ate were, and these are kind of interesting to me.

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They had bacon, peas, cornmeal, cakes. And here's the interesting one, cinnamon water.

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I've never had cinnamon water. I just put cinnamon in water, I guess. I don't know. But that was technically the first Thanksgiving.

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And the Thanksgiving that we often think of as being the first one, though, is the one that took place in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

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And it's the one that the Pilgrims were part of. And of course, there's the diary of William Bradford.

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I encourage you, by the way, if you haven't read the diary of William Bradford of Plymouth plantation, it is worth reading.

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I actually, I've listened to it before. And I think I had an abridged version when

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I was young that my parents read to me. And then just recently, last week, I decided to listen to about half of it again.

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And it's so interesting. There's so many details that you don't get in the typical retellings of Thanksgiving and the

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Pilgrims. And it is a remarkable story. I'm actually related to a number of those who were on the boat, three of them to be specific.

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I know Priscilla Mullins was one of them. And I can't remember the other two, but I have a tie to it, but so do a lot of other

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Americans. I mean, they affected the world. And so that story was the one that I was typically told, not the

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Virginia Thanksgiving. Perhaps we need more about that Thanksgiving that happened in Virginia. But I think my mind has been so captivated by the

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Pilgrim story because of what William Bradford wrote when the

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Pilgrims were trying to escape religious persecution, going to Holland, coming back. I mean, there's so much detail about the difficulties they had, the challenges they had with people that would betray them and tell them they're going to take them.

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And then they don't take them and sabotaging the ship when they try to go to the New World and then going to the

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New World and winding up in the wrong place because of a storm. They were north of where they should have been. They should have been in Virginia.

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And they're in Massachusetts, and it's cold and winter's coming. And they would have starved except for the fact that there was a

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Native American tribe that had died out. And they had corn that was there that they obviously weren't using, but they had died out from disease.

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And even, by the way, I should say this, I didn't go online to see what's being said about the Pilgrims, but I can only imagine, even the way they treated the natives is very commendable overall, especially if you understand the circumstances of the times.

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Yes, they do call them savages. They do talk about the horrible things that some of the Native tribes did, and they are horrible.

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And William Bradford talks about them, just absolute barbarism. You'd have to think demonic to do some of the things that they described.

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And of course, every tribe's different, but you do find some of that language that today is considered so racist and horrible.

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And you do find this desire to Christianize them, which of course now is considered racist and horrible. But what you do also find is, despite this language of they're savages, they're a race that needs the benefit of the gospel, and they're engaged in horrible sin, and we need to defend against them, and that kind of thing, you also see that the

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Pilgrims actually believe the natives were human. They saw them as people. They weren't just to be exploited or anything like that.

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But they even talk about slavery that existed, the Native Americans, by the way, engaging in the slavery, and slavery of white people and Dutch people.

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I believe it was Dutch and English in the North. It just, it shatters so many of the narratives, anyway, that we're used to just imbibing from the intelligentsia today.

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So I would just recommend that you read it. But one of the things that is interesting, and this is one of the things that Rush Limbaugh used to talk about almost every year about Thanksgiving.

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One of the things that you find when you read through William Bradford's diary is, or his journal, is that there was an experiment in socialism.

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That's right. And that's what Bev Sullivan is writing, and he's breaking it down, and he's writing it on a level that even children can understand what took place at the

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Plymouth Plantation. So I thought we would do a little story time with John today, if that's okay with you, to do a little story time.

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And we're going to read this abridged version, this paraphrased version by Bev Sullivan.

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1623. Our situation was dire, a matter of life and death. For two years, we had sought to produce our food on the land we had found in the

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New World. Thankfully, we were able to forge an alliance with the Indian tribe nearby. Also, God gave us a special Indian friend in Squanto, who lived among us and helped us in ways we couldn't have imagined.

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Some background, and if you remember, Squanto was the one who would teach them, you know, plant a fish next to your seed or something like that, you know, fertilizer.

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And he showed them how to fish in the New World and how to plant crops and how to survive.

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Some background information might help you better understand our situation. Our congregation of believers left

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England and moved to Holland. So we would be able to worship God freely. Then after 11 or so years, we felt compelled to leave

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Holland because we were concerned about how the children, how the culture was affecting our children.

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We departed for the New World in 1620. And later in the year than we ideally would have due to circumstances beyond our control.

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Our arrival here came after a rough ocean crossing on the Mayflower. We landed at Cape Cod in the

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New World on November 11th, 1620. Before we even began to explore the land, we knew there was an important matter of business we had to address.

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We were keenly aware that chaos would erupt if we didn't live together in harmony. So we drafted what is now known as the

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Mayflower Compact. It was our statement that we would unite in one civil body politic and obey the laws that were enacted.

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Unity and harmony had to be preserved. If we didn't stick together, we wouldn't survive. Even with God's help, this wasn't going to be easy, not by a long shot.

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Remember, none of us ever had been here before, nor had anyone else we knew. We had no friends to welcome us, nor were there any hotels to check into so we could rest and recover from our difficult voyage across the ocean.

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Moreover, winter's cold winds and icy storms were about to bear down upon us. Not only that, but the land before us was more than unfamiliar.

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It was desolate and inhabited by wild animals and quite probably wild men as well.

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The winter of 1621 was especially cruel. Of our party of about 102, half died.

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My beloved wife Dorothy was one of the first. You can read their names and the dates of their deaths as best as we were able to record them on this timeline.

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When winter was over and spring at last had arrived, God blessed us with an alliance with the neighboring Indians. One of them,

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Squanto, whom I mentioned earlier, became not just a friend but also a brother. His tribe, which a few years before had occupied the very land on which our settlement now was rising, had been wiped out by a plague.

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Had Squanto not been kidnapped and taken to Europe, he would have died. He was able to make it back to his home only to discover when he arrived none of the members of his tribe had survived.

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We became his new family. A dead end that would have killed us all.

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The winter turned to spring and Squanto became a great encouragement to us, but there was a real problem that would plague us during the next two years.

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I come now to the heart of our story. A number of investors in London had financed our voyage to the

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New World. In turn, they required us to work for them five days out of each week. The remaining two days per week, we would be allowed to work for ourselves.

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After seven years, all profits would be divided equally between us and them. During the five days we worked for them, all our resources had to be held in common.

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In other words, no private property. No one owned any land or resources of their own. Whatever our team of workers generated had to be put into a common store.

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And individuals would take what they needed for their livelihoods from the same pool. This is where the socialism comes in, doesn't it?

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As I said for two years, we operated this way. We faced obstacle after obstacle. Those who worked did so begrudgingly and many would offer excuses.

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After excuse not to work at all. Here are some examples. The young unmarried men. Those who were strongest and who had the most time and greatest ability to produce resented that they were in effect being made to work for other men's wives and children without any additional compensation.

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Whether strong or weak, everyone working, whether he did much or little, would wind up with the same amount of food and other resources as everyone else.

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If an individual worked at a full eight hours in a day and another worked only two, each received the same. Those carrying the greater load strongly believe this to be an extreme injustice.

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Can you blame them? Experience counted for nothing. The older men felt disrespected by those who were younger.

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Under the communal arrangement, the wives had to cook and do laundry for anyone and everyone, not just their own husbands and families.

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This angered the husbands who, along with their wives, felt it was a form of slavery.

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All of this was bad enough, but I'm convinced it would have been a lot worse if we hated each other. No one in our congregation was perfect, not by a long shot.

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Still, we were a people who had common goals and who sincerely wanted everyone among us to have the best. Our company had more than its share of honest and decent men and women.

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Sharing resources sounds so compassionate and compelling. It was a great emotional appeal. Operating this way, however, set us at one another's throats.

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It bred resentment, disrespect, ill will, selfishness, envy, and greed. It was a dead end that would have killed us all.

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On reflection, I had become convinced that it wasn't our fault that this plan didn't work. It didn't work and doesn't work because it is a faulty plan.

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The communal system, often now called socialism, does not fit human nature, and it will fail wherever and whenever it is tried.

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Few things in this life are more certain. Philosophers like Plato call for this kind of communal system, and Plato's call for it foreshadowed the thinking and writings of Karl Marx later on.

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Yet this plan works only in socialist minds. Oh, some may sincerely believe that eliminating private property and putting the state in charge of producing and managing everything will create a utopia, but it never will.

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This idea is a complete fantasy. Socialists actually are pretending to be wiser than God. We are grateful that God showed us a better way.

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We knew we couldn't continue on as we had done so, all of us would have starved to death.

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We discussed it thoroughly among ourselves, considering all our options, and in the end we decided that I as governor, taking into account the advice given by the other leaders, would assign a tract of land to each family.

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Each one in turn would be responsible to plant corn and other crops themselves. In other words, we ditched the communal system, our investors simply would have to live with that.

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What kind of return on their investments would they receive if all of us had starved? We traded the failed system for one that emphasized the benefits of private property and the responsibilities of the owners to effectively manage the resources in their charge.

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As we assigned the land, we were mindful that larger families would need more resources, so we made our decisions accordingly.

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We were thinking about inheritance or other future, weren't thinking about inheritance or other future matters, but mainly about immediate needs.

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Children who had been orphaned and other single individuals were assigned to families, and so management of work responsibilities would belong strictly to each family unit.

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Also, and this is key, so would the core they produced. In this way, laziness naturally would be penalized and hard work rewarded.

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Family was remarkable and immediate. The change was remarkable and immediate.

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Whereas before men in our company had looked for excuses not to work and had complained when they did, now they labored willingly and eagerly.

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More corn was planted. And he goes on and talks about all the great things, how the wives and children lived together in more harmony, and they weren't feeling like they were oppressed anymore.

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And says that in November of 1621, the ship Fortune arrived with about 35 new colonists, and the ship brought us mouths to feed, but no supplies, and our rations were cut in half.

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It wasn't that we wish hardship on anybody, but the additional needs among us made our task even more challenging.

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So it's easy to see how the arrival of new colonists made us wary. We limped along as best we could until 1623, when we established private property rights in the free market system

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I've described. Soon after we changed our approach, around July and August of that same year, 100 new colonists arrived on two ships, the

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Anne and the Little James. We wanted them to feel welcome, but it quickly became apparent we needed to clarify some matters with them so no unnecessary misunderstandings would occur.

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The settlers who had been around from the beginning worried that when the corn they'd planted ripened, the new members of the colony would expect that they would be entitled to some.

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With so many mouths to feed, there wouldn't be enough corn to go around. As I indicated, we'd already adopted the new system, and those who had worked hard to plant their corn had done so with the understanding that what they harvested would be theirs.

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They preferred to eat the crops that they had planted as opposed to being fed from the food supplies and ships delivered.

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So we agreed, we reached an arrangement. Agreement. The new arrivals would use the food that had come over with them, and the early members of the colony wouldn't have access to it except that for which they bargained or the food they purchased.

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This put everyone's mind at ease. You see, it wasn't just the old timers who were worried. The new arrivals actually had been afraid their food would be devoured by the settlers who had been around for a while.

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Isn't it interesting how all of us tend to view others, even friends and potential friends, with a mutual kind of skepticism?

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And there's an editor's note here. Don't let this section mislead you. This incident doesn't indicate that a free market system breeds selfishness.

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Not at all. The tendency is to look out for oneself and to view others skeptically are natural. But the other side of the same coin is that with enough to go around, generosity can be encouraged and joyfully practiced.

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And it goes on, talks about Ephesians 4, let him who stole steal no longer, but rather let him labor.

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So it continues. After the newcomers joined us, it wasn't that long until it was time to harvest our crops.

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We reaped a bountiful harvest that year, certainly because God had been good to us, but also because the members of the colony had worked hard in both planting and harvesting.

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In fact, we enjoyed more than enough. Some members of the colony even were able to benefit others because they had enough to sell through their transactions.

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So with God's help, we had turned a corner. We knew we had much for which to be grateful. And we celebrated that year of Thanksgiving, thanking

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God for his abundant blessings. Despite the hardships of the past, and despite the hardships that were yet to come, the future looked bright.

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A new day had dawned, I shudder to think what would have become of us if we hadn't ditched socialism,

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William Bradford, governor of the Plymouth Colony. This is a nice little paraphrase of just that little section of William Bradford's journal.

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And you can go to wordfoundations .com and find it. In fact, if Bev, if you're listening, I would suggest maybe putting out a version of this with some illustrations for kids.

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I think it would be very helpful in teaching them a great lesson. But that's what I have for you this

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Thanksgiving. I hope you are thankful for the things God's put in your life. I know there's a lot of things, trials, tribulations that we have that we focus on often because of the political climate.

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And then there's the personal things that hit even closer to home. But God is still faithful. God is still there.

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Even when he doesn't feel like it at times, he still is providing food and shelter. And with these, we shall be content.

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So I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving. Don't forget that Christianity and Social Justice is going on sale,

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Black Friday through Cyber Monday, if you wanna get that book. I'm also putting on sale A .D. Robles' book, which is, what's it called?

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Social Justice Pharisees. I have a copy of it right here. Social Justice Pharisees, A .D.

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Robles. And I'm also putting on sale this book, Social Justice Goes to Church.

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That's the first book I wrote about the social justice issue. And so you can get either of these books and you can also get this one,

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Christianity and Social Justice. All three of these books you can get. Now it's this one that is going to be $10 on Amazon, as well as $10 if you go to christianityandsocialjustice .com.

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I've slashed the price just for this very limited amount of time. This one is also reduced in price but it's not gonna be $10.

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I've reduced it to $12 .50. So I don't have as many of these.

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So I didn't put it down. I didn't reduce the price quite as much. And then of course, A .D. Robles' book, Social Justice Pharisees also reduced down to $10.

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So that's a really good deal. I mean, normally this goes for 20, this goes for 15 and this goes for 15 as well.

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But now $12 .50 for Social Justice Goes to Church, $10 for Social Justice Pharisees, $10 for Christianity and Social Justice.

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Six bucks for shipping. No matter how many you get, it's just six bucks for shipping.

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And I think these are very beneficial for you, especially Christianity and Social Justice.

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I wrote it to really help people. But all of them compliment each other.

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And so I would recommend, if you're gonna get them, now is the time to get them and you'll get them in time for Christmas. One final thing,

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I do autograph Christianity and Social Justice and Social Justice Goes to Church. You're getting autographed versions with my name and the date by it.

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So you're not gonna wanna miss out on that. You're gonna, trust me, even if you're on the fence, you're gonna want these books and especially

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Christianity and Social Justice. You're gonna want that. You can even give it to your pastor. It's a great book.

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And look, if you think that it would be, this is a little bit of a different style. If you think

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A .D. Robles' book would be a little better, it's more conversational style. Probably, I would say this book is probably a little more academic,

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Christianity and Social Justice. So it's probably on maybe an upper high school level.

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This one is probably a lower high school, the junior high level. You can get through it a little easier.

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But whoever you're planning on getting it for, there is a book that will help. And so I wanted to advertise that as well.

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And if you're interested in this version, this paraphrase of Plymouth Plantation and just this section on socialism, you go to wordfoundations .com.