Month: November 2022

One thing to be thankful for this Thanksgiving is that it took the Pilgrims only a year or so to figure out that socialism was bad, both for individuals and communities as a whole.

Four centuries ago, William Bradford, the first governor of the Plymouth Colony, stated flatly in his history of Plymouth that the Pilgrims had been wrong to think the “taking away of property and commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing, as if they were wiser than God.”

According to Bradford, not long after the Pilgrims landed in 1620, they found that the collectivity they had instituted in the colony bred “confusion and discontent and retard[ed] much employment” because men did not want to work without pay for other men’s families. And so, a little more than a year after the first Thanksgiving, they decided to divide up the land they had so that everybody had a share and could grow what they wanted. Productivity increased, and the colony began to prosper, attracting more and more immigrants and ushering in the great migration from England, which soon resulted in such prosperity that New England became a wealth center for Great Britain.

It’s too bad the failed socialist experiment at Plymouth Rock is not more prominently included in the Thanksgiving story. Perhaps it would make a difference to the 65% of Democrats who have a positive view of socialism today, including about half of millennials and Generation Zers who believe it would be preferable to our capitalist system.

As it is, most public school children do not learn about the early decision by the Pilgrims to move quickly from a socialistlike economy to an economic system that provided property rights and incentives for work and productivity. They also know little of the genius of the Mayflower Compact, which called for “just and equal laws” and set the foundation for the principles that the founders employed when they established America’s government 150 years later.

Instead, too many public schools emphasize the Native American story, which is important but so riddled with leftist ideas such as critical race theory that it doesn’t even get even the basic facts right.

Edward Winslow, a Pilgrim leader who attended the first Thanksgiving at Plymouth, provided us with an eyewitness account of what actually happened that day.

Winslow reported that he and his fellow Pilgrims were very excited about hunting geese and ducks for the big dinner. According to Winslow, they called it “exercising their arms,” so perhaps we could have predicted that their descendants would be big supporters of gun rights. Winslow also bragged that Plymouth Bay was full of lobster, so that was likely on the menu, along with deer, which was brought by the Native Americans.

Missing from the traditional paintings of the first Thanksgiving is the fact that most of the people at the feast were Native Americans. It’s estimated there were about 90 Native Americans there that day. For comparison, 102 Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, but more than half of them died in the first winter, before the big feast.

It is no accident that our education system has distorted the Thanksgiving story and ignored both the Pilgrims’ failed socialist experiment and the importance of the Mayflower Compact. The “1619 Project ” produced by the New York Times, for example, was cynically named to challenge the dates we associate with the beginning of the American idea, including the 1776 signing of the Declaration of Independence and even the 1620 landing at Plymouth Rock. The goal of the “1619 Project” is not just to downplay the significance of the American founding but also to attack and destroy American capitalism. And yet it is this capitalist system that granted the Pilgrims, and millions of Americans since, the opportunity to thrive and prosper.

History is dynamic, and there is always more to learn. But one thing is certain: The fact that the Pilgrims rejected socialism and nurtured the principles of liberty and freedom is important to who we are today — and is one more reason to be thankful this holiday season.

After early voting ended on Friday night, Texas voting data guru Derek Ryan issued his final report of who voted, compiling all the information available from the Texas Secretary of State, Two telling points emerged for us to ponder while we wait for the polls to close tomorrow night. First, the number of voters who previously voted in Republican primaries leads the number of voters who previously voted in Democrat primaries by over 565,429. Second, early voter turnout is down a half-million votes from the last gubernatorial election in 2018.

Ryan reports that in 2018, 38% of registered voters cast their ballots early. This year, only 31% voted early – and we have 2 million more registered voters!

Low early vote turnout means that two things could happen on Tuesday – one or both parties could blow out their Election Day “get out the vote” efforts, producing another record turnout in Texas or 2022 will look more like 2014 when fewer people voted in the mid-term election in Texas because top of the ballot races weren’t competitive.

We can guess which will happen but nobody actually knows. However, one thing we can bet on is that regardless of the turnout, Democrats and their media allies will insist the Election Integrity reforms passed by the Texas Legislature in 2021 somehow resulted in voter suppression. I am 100% confident making that election prediction.

The Daily Caller published this op-ed over the weekend about the voter suppression scam in Texas and I want to share it with you: 

Sylvester: Harris County Texas Wants Biden’s DOJ to Monitor Its Elections. Here’s Why:

Have a great election night!

There’s a political tactic called “inoculation” that came into mainstream parlance in the Bill Clinton era—it’s a kind of pre-emptive strike designed to protect against expected attacks and allegations.

Going down to the wire to Election Day on Nov. 8, Texas Democrats have begun an inoculation strategy, deploying their strongest resource, the Texas press, to help blunt the reprisals that are sure to come when Texas voters once again reject their woke, left-leaning candidates.

Texas Democrats never reflect on what they did wrong when they lose. They never ask why Texans don’t vote for their big spending, anti-business, teacher-union backed, anti-fossil fuel candidates. Instead, many of them, particularly those in the media, will insist without evidence that Democrats were defeated by “voter suppression.” They will ignore the fact that 85% of Texans, including a majority of Democrats, support election accountability reforms.

We know there will be long, post-election analyses explaining that the deck is stacked against Democrats—because they have been delivering the same message since 2011 when photo voter ID passed. The media provides the groundwork for them to make these outrageous claims.

This year, after the primary election in March, Ross Ramsey at the Texas Tribune claimed that voter suppression was responsible for the fewer than 1% of mail-in ballots that may have been rejected because new reforms require those who vote by mail to have the same identification as those who vote in person. Most voters who had problems corrected their mail-in ballots or voted in-person.

There was a drop in mail-in ballots in March, but not because Democrat votes were being “suppressed.” About the same number of Democrats cast their ballots by mail in the 2022 primary as did in the last gubernatorial election in 2018, but in the largest 15 counties, Republicans who had voted by mail in the past decided to vote in person—a 40% drop.

It was no surprise to hear Ramsey echo President Joe Biden, who called election accountability reforms “Jim Crow 2.0” and likened Republican reformers to southern segregationists and even Jefferson Davis.

The Houston Chronicle won a Pulitzer Prize for making the same allegation, insisting that Texas politics has been rooted in racism and voter suppression since Reconstruction.  Its award winning editorial claims:

“[Election] Integrity is no more the goal for them [Texas Republican leadership] than it was for the white primary associations of the 1900s. Only today’s voter fraud warriors have laser pointers.”

Despite the Houston Chronicle’s big award, no serious evidence of voter suppression has emerged. States that have passed reforms, most notably Texas and Georgia, have seen voter turnout dramatically increase. Turnout in Texas increased 40% in the 2020 presidential election and 76% in the 2018 gubernatorial election.

Biden spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre recently waived away that data saying bluntly that increased voter turnout and voter suppression can happen at the same time.  That is roughly equivalent to saying the sky is green.

During the 2020 election, a left-leaning group called the Election Protection Coalition reported 267 reports of voter intimidation in Texas but even they admit what their study reveals—almost all of those reports were in response to campaign rallies, not instances of people actually being prevented from voting.

Where are the victims of the election accountability reforms? A Texas Association of Business poll conducted during the 2021 legislative session found that fully 95% of Texans say it is easy to vote in this state. That’s Democrats, Republicans, and Independents—virtually everybody. Among the reforms in 2021, the two-week early voting period, one of the longest in the country, was extended to include more hours.

On October 20—two and a half weeks before the election, the liberal Brennan Center issued a big flashy report boldly proclaiming Massive Disenfranchisement and Racial Disparities in Texas giving the Texas press a hook to follow up with more matter-of-fact stories of voter suppression they insist are happening in Texas. Again, no victims emerge.

The Houston’s Chronicle’s Pulitzer Prize winning insistence that if it weren’t for voter suppression, Texas would be a Democrat state seems out of touch with reality. Still, you can expect to hear cries of “voter suppression” coming from Texas media analysts on Election Night—because press coverage of things like the Brennan Center report have teed it up for them. That’s how inoculation works.

A poll this fall from the University of Texas at Tyler and the Dallas Morning News found that fewer than 20% of Texans get their political news from the Texas media. This is why.