Judge thumbs her nose at the clear language of the Nevada Constitution

Here we go again.

A Clark County judge has ruled that government employees may also serve in the state Legislature, even though the Nevada Constitution clearly states in the Separation of Powers Clause: “The powers of the Government of the State of Nevada shall be divided into three separate departments,—the Legislative,—the Executive and the Judicial; and no persons charged with the exercise of powers properly belonging to one of these departments shall exercise any functions, appertaining to either of the others, except in the cases expressly directed or permitted in this constitution.”

The morning paper notes, “The ruling also points out that the Nevada Legislature has the power to block this kind of employment situation but has declined to do so.” Perhaps, that is because the Constitution has already prohibited it.

The judge made a distinction between a mere public employee and one who exercises executive power, though the Constitution clearly states “any functions.” She also found a difference between state government workers and local government workers, even though Nevada is a Dillon Rule state, meaning the state limits the power of local governments to those expressly granted by the Legislature. Local governments are basically subsidiaries of the state. Employees of local governments essentially are serving in the executive branch of state government, and should be barred from serving as a lawmaker under the Constitution.

The Nevada Policy Research Institute, the conservative think tank that filed the lawsuit seeking to enforce the Separation of Powers Clause, plans to take the case to the Nevada Supreme Court, which dithered on this topic in the past.

In a 1967 case, the Nevada Supreme Court flatly stated, “The division of powers is probably the most important single principle of government declaring and guaranteeing the liberties of the people.”

That opinion quotes liberally from a series of articles by Arthur Vanderbilt, former chief justice of the Supreme Court of New Jersey:

“Individual freedom and the progress of civilization are attainable, but only if each of the three branches of government conforms to the constitutional principles of the separation of powers. This they will do only if the people so will. The problem in the first instance thus becomes one of popular education in the fundamental principles of free government. Among these principles there is none more significant today than the doctrine of the separation of powers.”

It also quotes Montesquieu:

“Were the power of judging joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control, for the judge would be the legislator: Were it joined to the executive power the judge might behave with all the violence of an oppressor.”

The court further quotes the Latin maxim “expressio unius est exclusio alterius,” which means the expression of one thing is the exclusion of another, and noted that it had ruled in an earlier case:

“It is true that the constitution does not expressly inhibit the power which the legislature has assumed to exercise, but an express inhibition is not necessary. The affirmation of a distinct policy upon any specific point in a state constitution implies the negation of any power in the legislature to establish a different policy. `Every positive direction contains an implication against anything contrary to it which would frustrate or disappoint the purpose of that provision. The frame of the government, the grant of legislative power itself, the organization of the executive authority, the erection of the principal courts of justice, create implied limitations upon the law-making authority as strong as though a negative was expressed in each instance.’”

In 2004 then-Secretary of State Dean Heller asked the Supreme Court to remedy the ongoing skirting of the Constitution. Heller asked the court to find that service in the Legislature by unidentified executive branch employees violates the concept of separation of powers and to direct the Legislature to enforce the Separation of Powers Clause.

But the court ruled that doing so would violate — wait for it — the Separation of Powers Clause, because the Constitution also states that the Senate and Assembly are to determine the qualifications of their members, thus the judicial branch telling the legislative branch who its members may be violates the Separation of Powers Clause. Got it?

The court did allow that “declaratory relief could be sought by someone with a ‘legally protectible interest,’ such as a person seeking the executive branch position held by the legislator.”

Since then, the NPRI has filed lawsuits on behalf of people seeking the executive branch jobs of lawmakers, but to no avail.

The Nevada Separation of Powers Clause has been flouted for decades, as an assortment of bureaucrats have successfully won seats in the Legislature, including local prosecutors who enforce the laws they write.

The principle was embodied in the founding documents of this country.

James Madison wrote in Federalist Paper No. 47, “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”

Thomas Jefferson wrote in “Notes on the State of Virginia” in 1784: “All the powers of government, legislative, executive, and judiciary, result to the legislative body. The concentrating these in the same hands is precisely the definition of despotic government. … An elective despotism was not the government we fought for; but one which should not only be founded on free principles, but in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among several bodies of magistracy, as that no one could transcend their legal limits, without being effectually checked and restrained by the others.”

Let’s hope the state Supreme Court this time comes down on the side of the clear language of the Constitution and principles it embraces. To find otherwise is a farce and a canard.

Lest we forget during this holiday season what the stakes were one Christmas that changed history

“THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated. Britain, with an army to enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has a right (not only to TAX) but “to BIND us in ALL CASES WHATSOEVER” and if being bound in that manner, is not slavery, then is there not such a thing as slavery upon earth. Even the expression is impious; for so unlimited a power can belong only to God.”

— The Crisis by Thomas Paine, Dec. 23, 1776

George Washington and his tiny band of remaining soldiers did not shrink nor shirk. On Christmas, it was Victory or Death. (OK, it is a Newt Gingrich turn out the vote commercial from 2011, but the message still.)

How many today are giving up on the concept of liberty and letting the forces of overweening socialism change this nation forever into something the Founders did not intend, but rather feared and warned repeatedly against.

The stakes were life or death in 1776.

Today it is taxation without representation, again, as Congress critters head home after voting for a $1.65 trillion budget that will add still more red to the deficit that our grandchildren will inherit.

Paine concluded:

“Once more we are again collected and collecting; our new army at both ends of the continent is recruiting fast, and we shall be able to open the next campaign with sixty thousand men, well armed and clothed. This is our situation, and who will may know it. By perseverance and fortitude we have the prospect of a glorious issue; by cowardice and submission, the sad choice of a variety of evils — a ravaged country — a depopulated city — habitations without safety, and slavery without hope — our homes turned into barracks and bawdy-houses for Hessians, and a future race to provide for, whose fathers we shall doubt of. Look on this picture and weep over it! and if there yet remains one thoughtless wretch who believes it not, let him suffer it unlamented.”

Lest we forget.

A version was first posted in 2012.

Washington crossing the Delaware.

Christmas traditions: Santa, gifts, newspapers

Yes, ’tis the uniquely American season for mistletoe and holly, tinsel and toys, Santas and sleighs, carols and crèches, good cheer and anachronistic poetic contractions.

‘Twas a time when Christmas in America was a less hectic season. Why, the Puritans even banned its celebration. But the Dutch brought their bearded Sancte Claus or Sinterclaas to New Amersterdam, where the children would find candies and nuts and trifling trinkets in their shoes or stockings. The Germans brought a similar tradition with their Pelze-Nicol.

As the Colonies gained their independence and the people adopted a new Constitution and formed their own customs apart from those of Europe, few newspapers of the day took any notice of the holiday, which was more a churchly matter than one of public interest.

Occasionally, a merchant would advertise in the local newspaper, offering items for the season.

Then clergyman Clement Clarke Moore penned some whimsical doggerel for his children. A family member copied it and gave it to the Troy Sentinel newspaper, which published it on Dec. 23, 1823, under the title “A Visit from St. Nicholas.” ‘Twas the start of the plump, elfish gentleman clamoring on rooftops with his sleigh and eight tiny reindeer, slipping down chimneys with a sack full of toys, dressed in fur, the stump of a pipe protruding from a beard white as snow as he wordlessly filled stockings.

Nast’s Santa

The printing of the poem became an annual tradition in a number of newspapers — under the title “The Night Before Christmas” — continuing to this very day. It popularized the exchange of gifts on Christmas Day and retailers latched onto the idea and soon filled the newspapers with advertising for their holiday goods and gifts.

The man who put rouge on Santa’s cheeks and turned his furry suit to crimson was newspaper editorial cartoonist and illustrator Thomas Nast, who first drafted Moore’s character into the Union Army in his Harper’s Weekly drawing that depicted Santa in stars and stripes, handing out gifts to soldiers.

He continued to draw Santa for various newspapers and books for years to come.

As the holiday customs took shape it did not take long for some to bemoan how the religious nature of the day was being nudged out by the commercialism.

‘Twas Harriet Beecher Stowe among the first, writing in “The First Christmas in New England”: “And this holy time, so hallowed and so gracious, was settling down over the great roaring, rattling, seething life-world of New York in the good year 1875. Who does not feel its on-coming in the shops and streets, in the festive air of trade and business, in the thousand garnitures by which every store hangs out triumphal banners and solicits you to buy something for a Christmas gift? For it is the peculiarity of all this array of prints, confectionery, dry goods, and manufactures of all kinds, that their bravery and splendor at Christmas tide is all to seduce you into generosity.”

Review-Journal cartoonist and amateur historian of all things illustrated Jim Day reminds that the iconic image of Santa Claus that we see everywhere today was created in 1931 by Haddon Sundblom for Coca-Cola’s holiday print ads. The images of the jolly gentleman with Coke bottle in hand appeared through 1964.

And no nostalgic musing on this holiday season and the role of newspapers could omit the editorial response to an 8-year-old’s query that appeared in New York’s The Sun in 1897.

‘Twas Virginia O’Hanlon who asked: “Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?”

To which editorial writer Francis Church replied: “Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS.”

This Christmas morn ’twill be a good time to curl up in a cozy chair, watch the children play with their new toys, sip your coffee and read the newspaper … which, unabashedly, made it all happen.

Whatever happened to Virginia?

This first appeared in 2008.

Christmas in Las Vegas or Henderson or wherever, what a kick

On a lighter note this holiday season:

Pay no heed to the fact that this cheesy carol was actually performed in Henderson.

Happy birthday, Bill of Rights

Several years ago I penned this for the Review-Journal.

On this day in 1791 the Bill of Rights were ratified by three-fourths of the states. At the insistence of the Anti-Federalists led by Thomas Jefferson the first 10 amendments were added to the new Constitution.

They might more properly be called a Bill of Prohibitions, since they are not so much a delineation of rights as a list of things the federal government may not take away from individuals and the states and local governments.

Bill of Rights

This is our day to celebrate the First Amendment prohibition against establishing a state religion, despite odd rulings about nativity scenes and posting the Ten Commandments, and the right of free speech and press, despite McCain-Feingold limits on campaign spending and advertising. (Since somewhat overturned by Citizens United.)

This is our day to celebrate the Second Amendment, despite requirements to register handguns and other laws.

We celebrate the Fourth Amendment prohibition against unlawful search and seizure, despite the Hiibel case in which Larry Hiibel was arrested for not giving his name to a Humbolt County deputy. (Not to mention civil asset forfeitures.)

There’s the Fifth’s protection against taking of property except for public purposes that was bounced by the Kelo decision that let government take property for private development.

As for the Sixth’s right to speedy and public trial? Forget it. No explanation needed.

The right to trial by jury according to the Seventh? Try that in traffic court, buddy.

No cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth’s prohibition. Lifetime sentences for possession of pot belie that one.

The Ninth’s and 10th’s guarantees that rights not delineated are prohibited to feds? Let’s see the states try to set the drinking age or voting age or speed limits.

There’s still the Third’s prohibition against housing troops in private homes. (Right?)

Happy birthday, Bill of Rights, long may you be respected.

A couple of years ago I ran across the Cato video below. As my ol’ Pappy used to say: Great minds travel in the same plane, while fools just think alike.

Actually, the Third is also suspect as I reported here. The courts have since ruled that cops are not soldiers. They sure look alike and are armed alike.

Louise Penny’s latest mystery, ‘A World of Curiosities,’ weaves an intricate plot leading to a satisfying confrontational ending

In her 18th novel featuring the ever thoughtful and, yes, cunning Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec, prize-winning Canadian author Louise Penny delves into the past — both fictional and real.

Penny opens her “A World of Curiosities” mystery novel at a fictional murder scene at which Gamache first meets with Sûreté officer Jean-Guy Beauvoir, now his right-hand man and son-in-law. There is more than a little friction between them and some comeuppance from the chief inspector for the rookie.

As the plot unfolds in intricate detail, laced with ample introspection and intricate mind games, Penny weaves in accounts of the horrific 1989 massacre at the École Polytechnique, an engineering school in Montreal, in which 14 women were killed by an anti-feminist. In the acknowledgement section at the end of the book, Penny reveals she covered that event as a radio journalist for the CBC and had some trepidation about using the tragedy in a work of fiction, even letting a survivor of the event read her manuscript prior to publication.

Louise Penny

In addition, the author uses a quite real 1670s painting by an unknown Dutch artist called The Paston Treasure to set up clues and interplay between Gamache and his evil arch enemy, a shrewd serial killer. The original painting, on display today in England, depicted a collection of curiosities an English father and son had collected during their 17th century travels around the world. This included decorative art objects, such as mounted seashells, ostrich eggs, musical instruments, goblets, a globe and a clock — as well as a young girl and a young slave. It was dubbed by some: a world of curiosities. It is the author’s Trojan Horse into the mind of Gamache.

In the book, a hand-painted copy of the canvass is found in a bricked up room in a house in the small and quaint town of Three Pines, where Gamache lives with his wife Reine-Marie. The newly found painting has a number of alterations, including modern objects, such as a digital watch. It provides clue after clue for Gamache, Beauvoir and several of the town’s residents, who have been central to previous Penny novels.

Though I have read most, if not all, of Penny’s Gamache novels I dare say the casual reader could pickup this one or any of them in any order and be fully immersed in her thoughtful and detailed story telling. I highly recommend them all.

The book’s plot flows like a zig-zag sewing machine. Each stitch closing up another loose piece of the fabric. Mystery lovers will appreciate Penny’s ability to pull the reader along piece by detailed piece until she wraps it all together at the end in an on-the-edge climax of physical and emotional confrontation.

The Paston Treasure

On this day in 1941

“At a time in their lives when their days and nights should have been filled with innocent adventure, love, and the lessons of the workaday world, they were fighting in the most primitive conditions possible across the bloodied landscape of France, Belgium, Italy, Austria, and the coral islands of the Pacific. They answered the call to save the world from the two most powerful and ruthless military machines ever assembled, instruments of conquest in the hands of fascist maniacs. They faced great odds and a late start, but they did not protest. They succeeded on every front. They won the war; they saved the world.”    —       Tom Brokaw in “The Greatest Generation“

Herbert Aubrey Mitchell

My father joined the Army when he was 16. He lied about his age.

He knew what was coming and was there when it came. He was in Pearl City that Sunday morning in 1941 when World War II began.

He spent the rest of the war hopping from island to island with his artillery unit. He said he chose artillery because he wanted to make a lot of noise.

I know he was in the Philippines about the time the survivors of the Death March of Bataan were rescued. The rest is a blur in my memory, though I recall him telling about how they censored letters home lest they fall into enemy hands and give away troop locations — you couldn’t write that the food was “good enough,” because the ship was at Goodenough Island.

He was a decorated hero, but said he refused to wear the Purple Heart so he wouldn’t have to explain exactly where the wound was located.

When he and his war buddies got together they seldom talked about the fighting, only the antics, like climbing on the hood of a truck and stealing eggs out of the back of another truck as it slowly climbed a steep hill.

But one of his friends once let slip that Dad, a bulldozer operator, actually did that scene from a John Wayne movie in which the bulldozer operator raised the blade to deflect bullets while rescuing pinned down soldiers.

To hear him and his friends talk, it seemed like they spilled more beer than blood, but somehow still managed to win the war and save the world.

Trump advocates lawlessness, while claiming laws were broken

After Twitter released internal memos that showed how corporate execs decided to suppress on Twitter discussion of a New York Post news story about the content of Hunter Biden’s laptop, former President Donald Trump came unglued, unhinged and utterly outrageous, calling for the termination of portions of the U.S. Constitution.

Trump posted on his online account Truth Social, according to various online news accounts: “So, with the revelation of MASSIVE & WIDESPREAD FRAUD & DECEPTION in working closely with Big Tech Companies, the DNC, & the Democrat Party, do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. … Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!”

How suppression of discussion of news on one online account constitutes election theft is a leap beyond any semblance of rationality.

Trump’s call for “the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution” is the definition of lawlessness and rule by dictatorship by the one man who thinks he has all the answers. This from a man who has also practically condoned the Jan. 6 attack electoral vote counting process.

Of course the White House put out a statement condemning Trump’s remarks. According to the AP, the statement says: “You cannot only love America when you win. …

“The American Constitution is a sacrosanct document that for over 200 years has guaranteed that freedom and the rule of law prevail in our great country. Attacking the Constitution and all it stands for is anathema to the soul of our nation.”

Trump has already announced he is running for president again in 2024. This should certainly be a talking point for any Republican who has the fortitude to counter someone with such an outrageous ego and who is willing to demonstrate this by shooting off his mouth without thinking about anything but himself.

This ain’t my first rodeo

Trevor Brazile ropes and ties a calf in 8 seconds in 2009.

When National Finals Rodeo returns to Las Vegas this Thursday, I won’t be in the press box as I have in years past feeling the dirt kicked up by bucking broncos in the Thomas & Mack arena.

The closest I ever came to rodeoing was the time Grandpa Hicks put me on his horse Skeeter and sent me down to the lower pasture to bring back the cows for the evening milking.

Now, I say pasture in the kindest North Texas sense — a relatively open area dotted by scrub oak, mesquite, nettles, sandburs, cockleburs, goatheads and Johnson grass, populated with scorpions, red ants, sidewinders, diamondbacks, jackrabbits and coyotes. It was a place where the butcherbirds hung their prey, young snakes, on the barbed wire (I was a grown man before I learned it was barbed wire and not Bob wire.) fence to keep the other vermin from stealing their victuals. Etched throughout this verdant landscape were gullies as deep as a man on horseback.

It hadn’t changed a whole heck of a lot since Gen. Philip Sheridan rode through in 1866 and panegyrized the place by proclaiming, “If I owned Texas and Hell, I would rent Texas and live in Hell.”

My grandparents churned their own butter and smoked their own meat. Grandma Hicks could snag a fleeing pullet by the leg with a length of wire and wring its neck in seconds, leaving the headless bird to run around for a minute or so till it could be picked up and plunged into boiling water, then plucked for a fried chicken dinner with biscuits, gravy and all the fixin’s.

At night as we listened to radio with the glowing De Forest tubes, the only thing to read was the Bible and the Sears & Roebuck’s catalog, which, when the new one arrived, would be, shall we say, recycled out in the outhouse.

Every year we’d go to the Chisholm Trail Roundup in Nocona. This was back when the factory still made boots and leather goods, like my three-fingered baseball mitt that had to be oiled and tied around a baseball to form anything resembling a pocket. Every year they’d introduce Miss Enid Justin, the owner of the boot company. It was always “Miss” Enid Justin.

The Chisholm Trail Roundup had no lasers or fireworks or ear-splitting rock music, like the NFR in Vegas, but it did have a booming-voiced, smart aleck announcer who would trade snappy patter with the rodeo clown during the bull riding events. We sat on cold, splintering wooden bleachers in boots and jeans and hats. Not in an 18,000-seat arena.

This was back when the stars of the sport were Casey Tibbs and Jim Shoulders.

In 2009 at the National Finals Rodeo at the Thomas & Mack the star was then 33-year-old Wise County, Texas, roper Trevor Brazile. Unlike most in the sport Brazile earned a couple million dollars in prize money over the years, as well as a barnful of gold buckles. Most cowboys are lucky to cover their expenses — pickups, horse trailers, horses, tack and gear, as well as fuel for vehicles, horses and selves.

On that Saturday, the morning newspaper rodeo reporter Jeff Wolf, who also covered auto racing, wrangled me a press pass and took me down to the pressroom in the bowels of the T&M to meet the assorted rodeo officialdom. Along the way we bumped into Clark County Commissioner Tom Collins and T&M manager Pat Christensen. I was just there to show the flag for the paper as its editor, to show the rodeo the newspaper welcomed them, so maybe they’d think of us when there were news scoops to reveal.

I shook hands with and joked with everyone from the head honcho to the doctor to the hangers on. But I had one boon to ask. If Trevor Brazile happened by, might I get a chance to shake his hand and say hello?

Just before the rodeo was to start, they brought through the pressroom mild-mannered, soft-spoken, polite-as-hell Brazile. I shook his hand and wished him luck from a Wise County expatriate, who, like a kid collecting autographs, could now tell his family back home he’d actually met the star of the rodeo circuit. He was from Decatur. I was from Bridgeport, 11 miles down the road, and Decatur’s arch rival in high school sports. Perhaps, this being Las Vegas and all, you’ve heard that old craps shooter’s plea: “Eighter from Decatur, county seat of Wise.”

As a lagniappe, I also shook the tiny, soft, splayed hand of bashful 2-year-old Treston, who, like his dad, was dressed in black from hat to boot. If I live so long, perhaps someday I can say I met him when …

Wolf talked the rodeo communications director into letting me sit in the press box up at arena side for a couple of go-rounds, where I dusted bits of arena floor kicked up by passing riders off my program and watched poor Trevor Brazile finish almost out of the money in both calf (I refuse to call it tie-down roping as a sop to the animal rights whiners.) and team roping.

The closest I ever came to that kind of rodeo action was because I did not know Skeeter was a cutting horse. I think I was about 10. For the purposes of this story and an aversion to too much self-embarrassment, I’ll not admit to being any older. Only my mother could proffer a contrary accounting, and she never owned a computer.

So, when I got down to the pasture where that half dozen or so head of docile milk cows were grazing, either through some unintended signal from me or his own instincts, Skeeter decided that one suckling calf keeping devotedly near its mother just had to be cut out of the herd for purposes only Skeeter could fathom.

In the Texican lexicon skeeter is short for mosquito, another blood-sucking denizen of those parts, which darts about in the air, changing directions so fast as to defy the laws of physics. If you’ve not had the pleasure of seeing one work, that’s what a good cutting horse does. It dashes and stops and cuts back, doing whatever it takes to prevent that calf from doing what it instinctively wants to do, rejoin the rest of the herd.

Normally, most people get to see this performance in a nice flat arena from comfortable seats. Did I mention the gullies? Somehow I managed to stay on Skeeter’s back instead of flying off under the force of kinetic energy as he made all those hair-pin turns and stops.

After awhile, Skeeter decided I did not know what the heck I doing and allowed me to point him toward the barn, leaving behind that calf and all the milk cows with bulging udders. Grandpa was so angry I almost wished I’d tumbled off into a gully so I could at least have Grandma’s sympathy.

As I told the NFR communications director back in 2009: “This ain’t my first rodeo.”

This first appeared as a column in the morning newspaper in 2009.

The real meaning of Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is rich in traditions. The turkey. The dressing. The pumpkin pie. The family assembled in prayerful reverence in remembrance of the plight of the early settlers of this country — much of which is complete fiction.

The Plymouth colonists set out to live in an idealistic communal fashion. Everyone would share equally in the products of the colony. But after nearly starving to death in 1621 and 1622, Gov. William Bradford abandoned the social experiment and gave each family its own plot of land, and whatever was produced on it was the rightful property of the owner to consume or trade.

The result was a prosperous harvest in 1623 followed by a feast of Thanksgiving.

Capitalism saved the colony.

The American Institute of Economic Research has posted online its own retelling of the Thanksgiving story, along with passages from Bradford’s recollections from “Of Plymouth Plantation,” translated into more modern spelling.

The AIER notes that the colony was attempting to live in the manner described in Plato’s Republic in which all would work and share goods in common, ridding themselves of selfishness and achieving higher social state. The problem was that hard work was not rewarded and laggardness and sloth went unpunished.

William Bradford

Bradford wrote:

“For the young men that were able and fit for labor and service did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children, without recompense. The strong, or men of parts, had no more division of food, clothes, etc. then he that was weak and not able to do a quarter the other could; this was thought injustice. The aged and graver men to be ranked and equalized in labor, and food, clothes, etc. with the meaner and younger sort, thought it some indignant and disrespect unto them. And for men’s wives to be commanded to do service for other men, as dressing their meat, washing their clothes, etc. they deemed it a kind of slavery, neither could man husbands brook it.”

Before the colony could die off from starvation, Bradford divvied up the land and introduced private property.

The governor wrote:

“And so assigned to every family a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number for that end. … This had a very good success; for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted then otherwise would have been by any means the Governor or any other could use, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better content. The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little-ones with them to set corn, which before would a ledge weakness, and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.”

And the result was, again in Bradford’s words:

“By this time harvest was come, and instead of famine, now God gave them plenty, and the face of things was changed, to the rejoicing of the hearts of many, for which they blessed God. And the effect of their planting was well seen, for all had, one way or other, pretty well to bring the year about, and some of the abler sort and more industrious had to spare, and sell to others, so as any general want or famine hath not been amongst them since to this day.”

This is the real lesson of the first Thanksgiving: Capitalism always triumphs over communist utopian fantasies. Humans will work for their own self interest and, instead of it being greedy and rapacious, all benefit and prosper.

But Americans elected Joe Biden and Kamala Harris anyway.

A version of this blog was first posted in 2011