#194 Thankful for Private Property

The Christian Economist | Dave Arnott

The Pilgrims tried socialism and it failed. Then private property led to so much prosperity that they hosted the first Thanksgiving. If you have enough to eat this Thanksgiving, you should be thankful for the private property system that produced the food. We live in the most prosperous, fruitful time in human history. Let’s take a brief look at how we got here. In October of 1621, Plymouth Colony governor William Bradford called a three-day festival, inviting the ninety Indians to join the 50 Pilgrims. This feast, which included times of thanks to God as well as athletic competitions and food and fellowship, is commonly celebrated as the first Thanksgiving festival in America. So, if you celebrate it with football games and food with your neighbors, you are re-enacting this cherished Christian tradition, but who were these Pilgrims, and how did they get here? Fight or Flight That’s the basic idea from psychology that our minds are built to either change ideas we disagree with, or run from them. It’s a pretty big discussion among Christians in the United States today. Or, at least, it SHOULD be. I delve into the question in podcast #72 titled Two Worlds. Being in the world, but not of the world is becoming more difficult in post modernity. The Pilgrims response was flight, as explained by David Barton at WallBuilders: The Pilgrims are well known today for their association with the first Thanksgiving festival. The Pilgrims were Separatists — a set of Protestants who felt that they would be unable to reform the Church of England and therefore they chose “flight” over “fight.” They went to Holland and then eventually to America. But the other group who came later, were Puritans. They were “fighters” who believed they could reform the Church of England. It turned out that they were wrong, and following severe persecution, some 20,000 followed the Pilgrims to America. The Pilgrims had obtained a land grant for Virginia and set sail in the Mayflower on September 6, 1620. But after a rough ocean crossing, they landed 200 miles north of Virginia in what became known as Massachusetts. On November 11, 1620, they finally dropped anchor and came ashore. Grateful or Entitled Of the hundreds of books and articles I’ve read and the hundreds of speeches I’ve heard, the one that makes the most impact on today’s subject is a little five-minute video by Dennis Prager, titled The Key to Unhappiness. He says there are two groups of people: Those who are grateful and those who are entitled. The grateful will always be happy, the entitled will never be happy. And here’s the strange part: Dennis is a Jew, who does not believe Jesus died for him. Think about it: A Jew is telling a Christian that HE should be grateful. Kinda backward, isn’t it? I’m the one who should be telling HIM to be grateful. Jesus had to die for your sins because there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Somebody had to pay. And it wasn’t you. That’s why Christians are grateful, and why we celebrate Thanksgiving. We have a lot to be grateful for. You’re welcome to feel sorry for atheists during this season. They have no one to be grateful TO. I don’t know how you can be grateful FOR, without being grateful TO. Oh, then the non-believer has to suffer through Christmas, and not celebrate the birth of Christ. You know, for all we complain about the difficulty of being a Christian, this time of year, it’s quite a blessing. Our grandkids sometimes tell each other, “You get what you get, and you don’t throw a fit.” Actually, that’s a pretty good Christian economic philosophy. Be happy for what you have. After all, being happy is not having what you want, it’s wanting what you have. In our book Biblical Economic Policy, Sergiy Saydometov and I mention this concept as one of the Ten Commandments of Economics, which we borrowed from the list by Moses. It’s #4 for us, and it’s called “Don’t Covet.” If you Don’t Work