Thankful for Freedom and Energy
Institute for Energy Research (11/22/19) blog: "The celebration of a good harvest by 53 Pilgrims and 90 Indians at Plymouth Plantation in 1621 is a story for the ages. Three days of feast was a respite from fear and poverty. Only about half of the original Pilgrims had survived since landing. Their air and water were pristine, the food organic and free-range, the energy renewable. But abject poverty and death were the norms. Today, Thanksgiving celebrates the compound benefits of progress. But it should also be a warning against the threat of, Venezuela-style, almost unimaginable retrogression. Capitalist institutions, prominently including incentives from private property, which the early settlers stumbled upon, would institutionalize good harvests for millions of Americans. But another factor literally fueled progress: dense mineral energies to better warm, cook, and light and to run the machines of the Industrial Revolution."
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"We, whose names are underwritten...Having undertaken...a Voyage to plant the first Colony in the northern Parts of Virginia; Do by these Presents, solemnly and mutually, in the Presence of God and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation...IN WITNESS whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names at Cape-Cod the eleventh of November, in the Reign of our Sovereign Lord King James, of England, France, and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty-fourth, Anno Domini; 1620."
– Mayflower Compact
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