From DC Shooting To The Mayflower: Gratitude, Risk, And The Roots Of Self‑Government

The night before Thanksgiving should be quiet. Instead, we woke to a grim alert from D.C.: two West Virginia Guardsmen shot while on patrol. That shock shaped our conversation—not to wallow in fear, but to ask what actually holds a country together when uncertainty hits. We walk through what’s known, what’s still unresolved, and how fast‑moving claims can outrun facts. Then we widen the lens to the holiday itself and the unlikely chain of choices that turned a brutal winter into a tradition of gratitude and self‑rule.

We trace the pilgrims’ messy, human story: failed departures, a cracked main beam in a storm, and an off‑course landing that forced a new plan. The Mayflower Compact wasn’t lofty PR—it was a survival pact for a community determined to govern itself for the common good. With Squanto’s help and a fragile alliance with the Wampanoag, a starving outpost learned to plant, trade, and defend. The first Thanksgiving followed a hard‑won harvest and three days of shared food and games. It wasn’t perfect harmony; it was a pause to affirm life amid danger.

From there we connect the dots to George Washington’s 1789 proclamation, Lincoln’s push to make Thanksgiving annual during a civil war, and Congress fixing the modern date. Across centuries, leaders named something larger—call it providence, resilience, or civic glue—that helps ordinary people face risk without losing their bearings. That’s the thread running from a D.C. sidewalk to a coastal village in 1620: gratitude as a discipline, not a distraction. It steadies judgment, honors service, and makes room to build together, even when the world feels unsteady.

If this conversation challenged you or gave you a moment of calm, share it with a friend. Subscribe for future episodes, leave a quick review so others can find the show, and tell us: what are you choosing to be grateful for today?

Chapters

• 0:00 Early Start And Thanksgiving Setup
• 3:55 Personal Thanksgiving Memories
• 10:56 Breaking News: DC Guardsmen Shooting
• 17:01 Media Clips And Open Questions
• 23:35 Politics, Immigration, And Security Claims
• 28:55 Sponsor Read And Financial Prep
• 32:48 Human Details Of The Victims
• 36:20 Why Thanksgiving Matters
• 40:08 Pilgrims’ Voyage And Survival
• 47:20 Mayflower Compact And Self‑Rule

Transcript

SPEAKER_04: 0:00

Peasants, welcome to another episode of the Peasants Perspective. I am streaming from a hotel room. Go figure, right? John Attackis, I cannot believe you're on right now. I'm an hour early. I'm in mountain time zone, which means normally we broadcast at 6:30 Pacific, 9 30 Eastern. So I'm an hour and a couple almost an hour early for a lot of you guys. So I appreciate you joining me here this early in the morning. I figured I've been up since 4 a.m. mountain time, which is 3 a.m. my time, and uh I just couldn't sit around for another hour and wait till 7:30 mountain to start the podcast. So I thought I'd finally get on and do this. I also figured out what my problem was as far as why I couldn't stream yesterday. John Atis, can you give me a five by five on my sound? I don't, I'm not getting feedback from my mic. I'm only getting it from the computer. So I don't know if I'm if you're hearing me. So if you could let me know, that'd be great. Okay, while I wait for him to confirm if my sound is any good, I'll uh oh, perfect. Great. That's excellent. Okay, so one of the things that uh I wanted to do kind of a Thanksgiving special. And the reason I wanted to do a Thanksgiving special is because it's probably my favorite holiday. The and and and the obvious the reason it's my favorite holiday is very selfish. My birthday falls on Thanksgiving sometimes, and so it's always been kind of like Thanksgiving and my birthday. In fact, there's been a couple memorable birthdays. I had one birthday where I was staying at my grandmother's house and she walked out the door to drive to my house, which was about four hours away. I'd been staying with her for the week for Thanksgiving, and then dropped me off at home and go back to school. And she stepped off out of the front door and rolled her ankle on a pine cone on her porch and then fell and rolled her other ankle, and she ended up breaking both of her ankles. So I had one memorable birthday Thanksgiving that I spent inside of a hospital with my grandmother having surgery on her ankles, and then my family came down, you know, that night to deal with grandma and that kind of stuff. So that was a memorable birthday that landed on a Thanksgiving. I had another birthday that landed on a Thanksgiving, and this one's kind of funny. I've told this story many times, and I don't tell them if you hear this story and you're a part of this story, it's not meant to be offense. It's just kind of a funny thing. But when I was, I don't remember something like that. I lived in Utah and we went over to my grandparents' house for Thanksgiving, and uh, so a lot of the family had gathered up and it had been it was my birthday. We'd kind of already celebrated it earlier in the day, you know, I'd probably opened a present or two or something like that. But I had learned, you know, when you go to these events, you don't make a big scene, it's never about yourself or anything like that. And uh, but I was a kid, right? I'm in training, anyways. My father, in completely mean, you know, sincere uh meaning, gets in there and we'd been there for 30, 45 minutes, maybe an hour, two hours. We'd been there a while. We'd like started eating. And uh my dad mentions after we'd been there for a couple of hours, oh, by the way, it's Taylor's birthday. So people look at me like, oh my gosh, we've been here a couple hours and nobody wished you happy birthday. We forgot about your birthday. And uh I'll never forget, I think it was my grandma, uh my stepgrandma, she had a pie, right? A Thanksgiving, a Thanksgiving pie. And she goes, Well, you could have a pie like for your birthday cake, we could use a pie. And it was just so funny. So, anyways, those are two really funny memories about having my birthday on Thanksgiving. Uh, the last two Thanksgivings, I was in jail for one and in prison for the other, which to you guys is just jail and prison. It's all the same. They're a little bit different, but uh I was away from my family. And so I am very grateful this year to be with my family. Last night, yesterday, there was an absolute tragedy that happened in the District of Columbia. There was two National Guardsmen from West Virginia, one male and one female, if I understand correctly at this point, who a Afghan migrant walked up to them shouting Allah Akbar and shot them both point blank, basically in the head. As of this morning, both of those victims are have undergone surgery and are hopefully recovering. I believe they're in very critical condition. We do not know if they will survive or not. This was very serious. The man who was arrested, turns out, was one of these Afghan migrants that Joe Biden in 2021 flew into the United States. And we are also finding out that he worked for the CIA and was a CIA contractor of sorts, and there's some very shady things that are going on there. So I'm gonna let Ari Hoffman, our local Seattle, one of our local Seattle radio show hosts, kind of talk about what happened yesterday. Oh, you guys are probably uh you guys are probably going to want to actually see what it is I'm watching, so let me get this shared. I'm like just staring at my screen. Oh, here we go. All right, you guys can watch this with me here.

SPEAKER_01: 5:01

Talk radio 570 KVI breaking news on the Ari Hoffman Show.

SPEAKER_03: 5:07

Before I give you the latest development, for those of you who might have just gotten in the cars to be heading out for Thanksgiving, let me update you on what is fact and what we know about the DC shooting of two National Guardsmen right now. Here are the facts. Earlier this morning, a lone gunman walked up and deliberately targeted two National Guardsmen in Washington, D.C. who were doing patrols, visibility patrols. Those are the kind of patrols where you say, hey, there's law enforcement here, don't commit any crimes. We know that the two guardsmen are still alive. They are in the hospital undergoing surgery right now. They are in critical condition. We know that the gunman was jumped by law enforcement, by local bystanders, and was taken into custody. But at some point during that, they were shot. We know that a picture of the suspect being loaded into an ambulance shows them stripped down. And there was a lot of speculation about why they were stripped down. Was it for medical reasons, or was it because they were worried about this person having explosives on them? Well, now we're finding out a lot, lot more. Those are all the facts we have, and more information is flooding in. So Bill Maluchin from Fox News is now reporting that law enforcement, federal law enforcement sources are saying that he's an Afghan national who entered the U.S. on September 8th, 2021, as part of the Biden administration Operation Allies Welcome in the aftermath of the U.S. withdrawal. Who was running that operation? Joint base Lewis McCord, JBLM. The planes for JBLM are the ones you saw in the videos of people hanging from the wheel wells, falling off the planes. Those planes that were bringing Afghans over, and nobody was checking who they were. Nobody was at all. In fact, earlier in the Trump administration, they said they are now checking all the visas issued under Operation Allies Welcome. They were checking all the visas because they have no idea who he brought into this country. This guy was living in Bellingham, Washington. So there's a lot of open questions about this. Question number one, how'd he get a gun? If he's an illegal alien, even if he's here on a visa, he is not a citizen, how did he get a gun? Question number two. With Bellingham, Washington, was he flown here by the planes from JBLM? Question number three, because he's a refugee from Afghanistan, was he put up in the homeless hotels here in Washington that Dow Constantine bought to be used for the homeless drug addicts and mental health people on the streets? Next question Did he have an ID? How do they know he's from Bellingham, Washington? They got his information pretty quickly. Did he fly to Washington, D.C.? Did he drive to Washington, D.C.? Did he take train or bus or other mass transit to Washington, D.C.? But if he flew, the only way you get on airplane is with enhanced ID. Did he get a driver's license here in Washington? Another question. If he got a driver's license here in Washington, is he registered to vote here in Washington? These are all open questions we have regarding the suspect, and that is far too many questions.

SPEAKER_04: 8:44

It is absolutely crazy the situation that we have found ourselves in here. Like it just boggles my mind. How do I or stop sharing? There we go. So it boggles my mind. And he came, he was here in Bellingham, Washington, which by the way is like hours away from where I live. And by hours, I mean only hours because you have to cross the Puget Sound. Otherwise, it would just be up the road, literally north of me. And uh, you know, who knows how many other people were here? I have personally met people who were brought out of Afghanistan during that raid, and I have not been pr impressed with one of them, right? I don't know that I was aware that my geographic area, Washington State, took in a lot of these refugees during that time. And I also was unaware, I don't know how it escaped me, that those planes that were bringing people back actually came from Joint Base Lewis McCord, which again, just down the road from me. So super stunning. There was the guy who registered the vote in Washington State. He was getting on planes. Did he have a driver's license? Those are all questions we have to ask. He went all the way to DC to commit this killing. Now, Laura Logan, uh, reporter, she posted, she was incensed by all of this, of course, as many people are. And uh she posted a little thing. Once we found out his name, she went on to Google and said, let's do a little name search. Turns out, just prior to this event happening for a few days, there was a totally abnormal spike in searching for his name. Almost as if when she implied, people were searching for his name to see if it came up in the news yet, to see if he did something. Did something, you know what I mean? Anyways, it just looks bad. There's nothing good about this. It's just a it's a tragedy from the beginning. Carlito, you said the attack on my military brothers was horrible, praying hard for them. Yes, we're all praying for them, and you know, the whole thing is just, again, absolutely sickening. It's so sad it happened on the eve of Thanksgiving, and it does give us, you know, reason why we should be thankful. And in my opinion, one of the reasons as of when this happened yesterday, I was like, I am definitely gonna do the the Thanksgiving special because that's the thing in many ways we're missing is we're missing that love of country. And I think a lot of that starts with Thanksgiving. So I've got a I've got a full Thanksgiving program. I have a larger video that I want to watch here in a little bit with you guys, which I think you guys will enjoy a lot. But before we do that, I do want to continue to cover this story that's that happened. I want to last night, Donald Trump gave a kind of an emergency broadcast, I guess you could call it. So let's listen to Donald Trump for a couple minutes here. This event yesterday is going to absolutely change. Um, it's absolutely going to change the way we do immigration. This is a big, big deal. Like they're going to be re-vetting all of the Afghan migrants. This is not going to go away quickly. This isn't going to be one of those blowover things. This really hit at the heart of DC, and uh, it was just blocks away from the White House. So here's Donald Trump last night talking about it.

SPEAKER_08: 11:40

Afghanistan, a hellhole on earth. He was flown in by the Biden administration in September 2021 on those infamous flights that everybody was talking about. Nobody knew who was coming in, nobody knew anything about it. His status was extended under legislation signed by President Biden. A disastrous president, the worst in the history of our country. This attack underscores the single greatest national security threat facing our nation. The last administration let in 20 million unknown and unvetted foreigners from all over the world, from places that you don't want to even know about. No country can tolerate such a risk to our very survival. An example is Minnesota, where hundreds of thousands of Somalians are ripping off our country and ripping apart that once great state. Billions of dollars are lost, and gangs of Somalians come from a country that doesn't even have a government, no laws, no water, no military, no nothing, as their representatives in our country preach to us about our constitution and how our country is no good. We're not going to put up with these kinds of assaults on law and order by people who shouldn't even be in our country. We must now re-examine every single alien who has entered our country from Afghanistan under Biden, and we must take all necessary measures to ensure the removal of any alien from any country who does not belong here or add benefit to our country. If they can't love our country, we don't want them. America will never bend and never yield in the face of terror. And at the same time, we will not be deterred from the mission these service members were so nobly fulfilling. That is why tonight I can announce that I have directed the Department of War to mobilize an additional 500 troops to help protect our capital city. We will make America totally safe again, and we will bring the perpetrator of this barbaric attack to swift and certain justice if the bullets going in the opposite direction haven't already done that.

SPEAKER_04: 14:04

During this time of the year, when we gather at home with loved ones. All right, so let me ask you this question. The way he just said that, if the bullets going the opposite direction haven't already done that, does that sound like they've already taken some strikes? It does, doesn't it? And guess what? Last night there was a large-scale action in Somalia. What? That's right. There was a large-scale military action going on in Somalia with U.S. troops last night, not Afghanistan. So pretty interesting. Um, before we do that, we're finally getting around to something I've needed to do for a while because I'm actually short. I gotta read an ad. If you've been paying attention to the direction this country is headed, you already know our financial system is being intentionally sabotaged. Inflation is not a mistake, it's draining your savings while political elites consolidate power. Every doesn't that sound like me? I mean, I'm always saying that, right? Every time Washington prints another mountain of cash, your dollar becomes weaker and your future becomes more vulnerable. This is exactly why you need mygoldguy.com forward slash rumble. And get in touch with my gold guy. He isn't like the big name gold companies that bait people with free gold or silver coins while quietly inflating their prices. This is deception disguised as generosity. My Gold Guy refuses to play that game. He is a no-frills America first precious metals dealer whose mission is simple give you the best possible price so you can protect your wealth without the gimmicks and without the smoke and mirrors. Go to mygoldguy.com forward slash rumble, fill out the start form and request your complimentary complimentary consultation. He will give you real information about the economy, the instability ahead, and how physical gold and silver can anchor your future when everything else starts shaking. And when you sign up, you'll get his free gold and silver guide, which every American who cares about financial security needs to read right now. Do not wait, do not assume things will work themselves out. Protect what is yours. Visit mygoldguide.com forward slash rumble today. Get your consultation and get the guide. This is the time to act. I do love gold and silver both. Talk about them in non-stop over at 1776 Live. Those of you, Carlito, and people that are involved at 1776 Live, you guys can testify to that. I'm constantly talking about getting off the dollar for your personal reserve, and no better way to do that than gold. Another thing that we found out uh last night, or I guess this morning, whenever it was that Pam Bondi said this, is she shared with us something that just kind of makes the story very human and very tragic. So obviously, these guardsmen are coming out of West Virginia, and it turns out one of these guardsmen specifically volunteered for Thanksgiving so that other service members with families could be home with their families.

SPEAKER_00: 16:40

I'd like to add something about the young woman. She volunteered to be there on Thanksgiving, working today. She volunteered, as did many of those guardsmen and women, so other people could be home with their families. Yet now their families are in hospital rooms with them while they are fighting for their lives. So, you know, if, you know, just pray, everyone pray today for the these two soldiers, these two guards, men and the man and woman. But if something happens, I will tell you right now, I will tell you early, we will do everything in our power to seek the death penalty against that mom.

SPEAKER_04: 17:20

Um, I'd like to add so so basically, you know, because these two there was reported by the governor of West Virginia that these two people had passed away. They haven't. They were they made it through surgery. As of this morning, reporting says they're still fighting for life. So this might not be murder, it'll be, you know, all the other charges, but don't doubt for one second this guy's not gonna get 40, 50, 60 years in prison. I promise you that. Um, I served in prison. I served in prison, like I was like a military service. I I was in prison. I was incarcerated with an Al-Qaeda or alleged Al-Qaeda member, and he had a 40-year sentence, and he didn't do anything. Like, didn't do anything, just alleged basically online planning of stuff, which, you know, good or bad, take it for what it is, but he didn't do anything. This guy actually pulled out a gun and shot two people point blank, and nonetheless, guardsmen in our country, on you know, in active duty service, protecting our nation due to our own problems with crime, and here you go, as if it could have been predicted and wasn't predicted. Afghan migrant who we'd worked with for decades in Afghanistan, covert ops and whatever, bring them over here. Who knows? Disenfranchised. I've talked in previous programs about your base programming as far as religion. If you're raised a Muslim, it's hard to deconvert from that. If you're raised, you know, an evangelical Christian, it's hard to deconvert that. Catholic, all of these religions, what you learn in your first four or five years of life, it's very hard to deprogram that stuff. So it's easy for, you know, there's a scripture in the Old Testament that says, you know, teach a child young to walk in the ways of the Lord, and when he'll when he's old, he'll return to it. And this is another one of those situations where it's like, yeah, this is what happens, which then brings again the point why it's so important to celebrate Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is our very first national holiday, and it's extremely significant because of that. In fact, I had something I want to make sure I didn't uh lose it here. Okay, it looks like I did lose it, so I'm gonna have to find it real quick. I wanted to read you just a little bit about what George Washington said about uh Thanksgiving, but unfortunately, I closed the tab, so now I'm gonna find it again. So you guys are just gonna have to bear with me for a moment. I really appreciate you guys jumping on early. It's actually really fun to see people like getting on a whole hour early. Maybe we should just go early every time. There was so much news that happened yesterday. Um, and because I was traveling, I got to sit and, you know, Doom Scroll X while my teenage son drove the car, which was kind of fun. All right, I might have to find this for the after. I might have to just find it for after, which is totally fine. Okay, so let's go ahead and jump into what I wanted to really do with the Thanksgiving program. So this program is basically just going over a general history of Thanksgiving. But unfortunately, it's a history that we don't get to hear very often. We often think of Thanksgiving as just, oh, it's a day you give thanks, and you know, the pilgrims and the turkey, and then somebody, some smart ace that went to college is gonna be like, you know, they didn't really have turkey on the first Thanksgiving. You know, that was added later. Who cares? Right? The point of Thanksgiving was something much bigger than turkey, gravy, and stuffing. The point of Thanksgiving was God's hand and God's providence in leading a people to this country and what those people represented. So we're gonna watch this video. I'll pause it a couple times to add in some color commentary. One of the reasons that this is, again, not only is my birthday fall on Thanksgiving from time to time, but even more significant than that, both my wife and I have ancestry that were on the Mayflower. In fact, my wife's one of their her ancestors, not mentioned in this video, is Oceanus, who was actually the very first childborn that was leaving England for religious freedom, right? It was the first one. So uh for me, my roots go very deep into this, and I feel it deep in my bones, not just because it's my birthday. As I've gotten older and I've learned this stuff, I've recognized, you know, there's something calling out to me for these things of freedom and stuff like that. So, anyways, we'll share this with you guys, and I will jump in a couple different times to make some commentary.

SPEAKER_06: 21:29

In North America, you'll notice the leaves are changing color. Pumpkin spice lattes are back, and Charlie Brown is playing on TV. That must mean it's time for Thanksgiving with family, friends, and floads of turkey. Even if you're not an American, you've probably heard of the holiday, but the image of pacifist settlers singing kumbaya alongside the natives is all wrong. The story begins on a cold pier in England in August of 1620, when 120 men, women, and children stepped onto two English merchant ships in Southampton Harbor bound for the Americas. Both vessels seemed to be held together by spit and prayers. The Speedwell was so old it had fought against the Spanish Armada in 1588, and the Mayflower was such an ungainly transport ship that it could barely sail into the wind. And since the North Atlantic in the fall and winter is nothing but westerly winds, it was the absolute worst ship to try and attempt a crossing with. But somehow the Mayflower had made it to the Americas twice before, even if it had taken twice as long as normal. Luckily, these would-be colonists were determined. They had to be. They were Brownists, religious dissenters from the Anglican Church of England. You see, the Brownist beliefs were relatively simple. The first, that only the word of the Holy Bible was infallible. The second, that individual churches and their local communities should have more say and autonomy in the goings-on of the church. Both these beliefs were aimed at jettisoning the corrupt power structure of the old Catholicism. That didn't happen. As the new church started looking more Catholic by the day, the Brownists bought themselves a printing press and began passing out leaflets that opposed it, which led to the Brownists becoming intimately familiar with the inside of London's prison system. They got such a bad rap that Shakespeare even mentions them in one of his plays, Twelfth Night, where he says, I had as gladly be a Brownist as a politician. Not exactly a flattering comparison. So the pilgrims decided to risk it all as a startup colony in the Americas, creaky boat and all. It would be an English colony, but one not bound by religious politics. So they set sail and braved the rough fall seas in August of 1620. They hadn't even made it out of the port, though, before they found that the speedwell was taking on water, so they pulled over at Dartmouth for repairs. Undaunted, they shored the leaking boards and sat out again, to a new life, and watched with glee as Land's End and Cornwall slipped away behind them. Only to turn around and immediately see it again. The speedwell had recently been refitted with a larger mast, and somebody had clearly botched the job. The ship was going nowhere. So 20 people agreed to stay behind and bring more of their congregation with them the next year, and 102 crammed onto the already overloaded Mayflower, finally leaving again on the 6th of September. Or maybe it was the 16th. No one's actually sure. The calendars in that period are a bit wonky. Their trip was mercifully dull after recent events. But halfway across the ocean, the pilgrims' good luck set back in again. A storm and strong winds hit. In the middle of the storm, a deep snap echoed through the ship. A main beam had cracked. Hey, carrots, you're gonna wait the baby.

SPEAKER_05: 24:56

I gotta get to work.

SPEAKER_02: 24:57

This is important, sir. I think your$10 worth of popsicles can wait. Huh?

SPEAKER_05: 25:02

I make$200 a day, fluff. 365 days a year since I was 12. And time is money. Hop along.

SPEAKER_02: 25:10

Please just look at the picture. You sold Mr. Otterton that popsicle, right? Do you know him?

SPEAKER_05: 25:14

I know everybody. And I also know that somewhere there's a toy store missing and stuffed animals.

SPEAKER_07: 25:54

No sound, I figured it out.

SPEAKER_04: 25:56

There's a little look like a little mute button. And sometimes when I touch my mic, I accidentally mute it. Apologize. Okay, so if you want to take off the king, right, or take off the powers that be, uh, come up with your own ideas about your own salvation, right? It's like straight to jail. Oh, you you don't think you need the king for your salvation or whatever? It's like straight to jail. I I often have made this analysis, and a lot of people don't catch it. When I got my degree in political science, I got a minor in international studies. And in part of all of this, as you're studying like specifically Western Europe, Western civilization, religion, religion, religion. Religion is the original government, religion is the original control structure. It both will set you free and it will also also bind you down, right? So religion is what they call the cathedral. As more and more civilization entered into these religious organizations, then you started to have sub-religious organizations. You had, you know, uh, when it was the Catholic Church, you've got your parishes and all your different subdivisions, and then you eventually eventually those things became civic. As money got involved, those things became more civic. Tithes became taxes and stuff like that. Or really taxes became tithes and then tithes became taxes again. But a lot of people still pay tithes and taxes. So, anyways, very interesting. But these these people that the pilgrims, right, they left because they were seeking religious freedom, but also economic freedom because the two came together. If you didn't fit in with society, you got ostracized. All right, let's continue on here with this video. I really enjoy this video. I shared it with my kids as well to ex you know, explain to them exactly how Thanksgiving is despair from the hold and tried to reinforce it.

SPEAKER_06: 27:42

But the buckling was so severe that it wouldn't stay in place. That meant it was time to turn around and go back to England again. The delays had already exhausted all the pilgrims' money, and for them, that wasn't an option. So they decided to try something else first. They had brought a great iron screw with them as cargo, likely a piece of the exact printing press that had gotten them kicked out of England in the first place, and used that to raise the new beam into place. Somehow, it held long enough to get them across the Atlantic. They sighted land on 9th November, just off Cape Cod, then turned south for the Hudson River Valley, hoping to move closer to established colonies and warm weather. But hard winter currents forced them back to Massachusetts, where they set up anchor in the natural harbor of Provincetown. Knowing that their previous claim on this new land had been dodgy at best, the settlers agreed to draw up a new contract for their colony, styling it the Mayflower Compact. It organized them as a civil body politic, created for the general good of the colony, where issues would be decided by vote. This set of rules and beliefs set down by the pilgrims has since been called the world's first written constitution.

SPEAKER_04: 28:56

So the I wanted to talk about that for just a second. So there's this concept of providence, and I think that this is important to understand anytime we're looking at US history, world history, and it's so I put the definition in the chats. Providence means foreseeing care and guidance, most commonly referring to the care of a divine power of God over the world and its creatures. It can also refer to a prudent management of resources or whatever. But this idea that there's this divine care, that that God's hand is present in kind of all of uh his creation's activities. When the founding, when the pilgrims specifically came from England, right, they had a charter. I can't remember exactly where they were supposed to go, somewhere down further south, you know, they were supposed to land, and they had this um a charter from the king to go create a colony. Now, a colony would have been incorporated by the king. It was with his blessing, his permission, and they would have been a legitimate colony of the crown. But what happened was they got you know blown off course, storms, and they ended up up at uh Plymouth Road. Rock, not where they had a charter. So they were outside the bounds of what the king thought he could grant to his subjects. They were brought by the hand of God, this storm, to a completely different location. And when they got there, they established the first ever document of self-governance. This runs deep in our bones, right? This idea of self-governing, to be able to dictate your own beliefs based on your own conscience and then be able to come together in a free voluntary association of others and create a compact, a Mayfower compact, which is a governance agreement. We still follow the principles that these men laid down when they formed that compact. It's an incredible document. And this idea of providence, rather than God letting them go to where the king had chartered them, which would have just continued the king's undue influence over them just farther away, so it took longer for the king's orders to show up, right? Maybe there's more places to hide on the American continent. But by showing up somewhere completely different, it put them basically, to use a common phrase, outside the jurisdiction of the crown. This is a really big deal. And then as we continue on here, I want to show you something else about title. There's something unique that happened with these particular pilgrims when they came to a land that there was no owner for because they had all passed away. So let's jump back in here and continue the story of Thanksgiving.

SPEAKER_06: 31:35

And within weeks, they would all begin dying together. Scurvy and illness took hold of the boat, and as the first snows arrived, it turned the ship into an icy tomb. Exploration parties were sent out to find a suitable place to build, and any man who could still stand was put aboard with swords, armor, and matchlocks. They found a deserted landscape and found themselves strangers in an unknown land, filled with native burials and abandoned villages. But everywhere they went, eyes watched them. Going as far as they could each day, they camped on the shores, and in the dim morning they draped their jackets over a barricade to try and made to move their boats back into the water. And that's when the arrows began to rain down on them. Grabbing muskets, they fired blindly into the forest. Their leader appeared from behind a tree and fired three arrows directly at the pilgrims. The man gave a triumphant cry and then disappeared again into the forest. The pilgrims searched the area but found no bodies. Only 18 arrows, tipped with deer horn, brass, and eagle's claws. When they went to retrieve their jackets, they found them riddled with arrow holes. Guessing that as many as 30 or 40 men waited for them in the forest, the pilgrims left before they could return.

SPEAKER_02: 32:55

This is the bariatric gelatin bedtime recipe that took me from 198 to 140.

SPEAKER_07: 33:10

Oop, no sound.

SPEAKER_04: 33:11

I know I was gonna get a no-sound comment there in just a second. Again, I touched my microphone. So where they first go, they're getting attacked by Indians. So they jump back in the boat and find a different spot. Uh I would do the same thing too. I put into the chat, can you imagine showing up like this, knowing literally no one is coming to rescue you? Food, water, shelter, defense, all has to be provided by you, and you're all starving. That's I mean, the amount of hardship these people went through is is stunning. It's hard for us to comprehend this. Uh it really is.

SPEAKER_06: 33:43

They found the building place they were looking for, well suited to winter construction, already cleared of timber, with tall hills for defensive positions. But it was also full of dead bodies. Potuxet had been a village of the Wampanoag people until it had been wiped out by an outbreak of Indian fever three years earlier. The epidemic was bad enough that the colonists found unburied skeletons still inside their homes. But with more settlers dying by the second, the pilgrims were in no shape to be picky. They moved the Mayflower to join them and began construction. The first common house that was finished became a hospital for the ill, and the nineteen families then each built their own town, huddled together for defense, and by February the settlement was complete. But without food or proper shelter, they continued to die off one by one by one. And by the time the snows thawed, only forty-seven of the original 102 pilgrims were still alive, and half of the Mayflower crew had died as well. Those that survived now faced the danger of summer raiding parties, so they decided to fortify the village, bringing cannons from the ship to point outwards into the unknown wilds. Finally free of the bitter cold, they planted corn taken from the abandoned graves and storehouses of the old Wampanoag village. And with that first thaw came their first contact with the locals. A man, tall and dark skinned, boldly strode out of the forest and made to walk directly into the center of their town. The pilgrims stopped him, guns pointed. Then he opened his mouth and greeted them in English, welcoming them to the new land, and then promptly asked for a beer to drink. He was Samoset of the Eastern Abenaki, who'd spent years trading tales and supplies with English fishermen who passed through the area. And as he swapped stories over his acquired taste for English delicacies, he warned that not every tribe would be as friendly as his, but they could get little more out of him as his English was broken at best. The next week, Samoset returned with a new man, Tisquantum, known today as Squanto, who spoke fluent English. He was the last survivor of the Patuxet tribe, the very land the pilgrims now inhabited. Okay.

SPEAKER_04: 36:01

This is so significant. The fact that Squanto, as we now call him, shows up, and he is the last survivor of the Indian tribes that controlled and lived in this area where the pilgrims landed. Back to this concept of providence. One of the accusations that natives or progressives or you know revisionist people want to look at is they say, Well, America, you came here and you took stolen land. It's all stolen land. It might have been construed as stolen land had Squanto not shown up to basically give it to this particular set of pilgrims in exchange for help doing other things. This is like you, as a matter of law, this is incredibly important. That the hand of Providence not only steered these pilgrims off course from their original dubious charter, right? That they weren't certain was going to be truly enforced correctly and may not have been great. They were remember, they were running from persecution. So, you know, oh, here's a charter. Well, we'll run over to America. It'll take them 20 years to figure out we're not supposed to be there, right? Um, but they end up in Rhode Island, dead villa, you know, an Indian tribe's dead. They'd had a virus wipeout. What are the odds that someone who speaks English was the last surviving member of this tribe? Uh, anybody that has a Mormon background, there's a very similar story to this in the Book of Mormon, where there's a last surviving member of a tribe that passes on, you know, title to the land to the next group of people. That's what's going on here. This is wildly sus, you know, if you understand Providence, this is one of the reasons why it constantly comes up in the conversation with American history. What are the odds that these pilgrims who've been blown off course show up at Pilgrim Rock, make their own charter for self-governance, then show up with the one guy who can essentially hand them the title to the land, right? Which then justifies their existence on the land. It's a it's a big deal. And if anybody understands law and how that works, like if you hear this story, you're just like, God is funny. It was like he was prepping for you know future challenges to who owns the land. Clearly, if you've got, you know, ties to this, you have title. It was handed over by a previous title holder. So it might feel a little abstract for some people to hear that, but it's kind of a big deal. Okay, let's jump back in here.

SPEAKER_06: 38:21

Now inhabited, who'd been taken by slavers as a boy and had lived in Spain and England before escaping back home again, only to find his own people had been wiped out by disease. He had been taken captive, a useful tool to deal with the continuing English encroachment. Squanto heralded the arrival of sixty armed warriors and their chief, the Wampanog. The pilgrims grabbed their muskets and ran to the walls and waited for the worst. But neither side wanted to make the first move. With a bit of back and forth from Squanto, their chief, Asasuit, agreed to sit down with the pilgrim's governor, and after a healthy amount of liquor to loosen up both sides, they set about with the business of peace. See, the Wampanog found themselves beset on all sides by enemy tribes, with plenty of land but no power to hold them back. Where others saw the English settlers as a threat, Masaswit saw an opportunity. And so began an unlikely friendship, where Squanto passed on his knowledge of the land. Under his tutelage, the pilgrims learned how to plant corn, bean, and squash in a way that ensured that each would thrive. When they weren't planting, to agree to mutual peace, and took time to knock the heads of anyone who threatened their native allies. So by the time the fall came and the harvest ready to be brought in, they found themselves looking quite optimistically to the new year, especially in comparison to the last. It was in this spirit that the men were sent into the forest to shoot a few game birds, likely turkeys and waterfowl, for a feast to give thanks to the Lord for their bounty and good luck. Masasuit joined them with 90 of his people and brought along five deer for the occasion. Add to that a few eels, some fish, crabs, and a lobster or two, and of course their freshly harvested corns, beans, and squash, and you got yourself the first Thanksgiving dinner. It was a celebration that lasted for three days, a harvest festival with sport, games, and friends, like so many others around the world. Days of Thanksgiving. Thankful that there will be enough food to eat, and another year survived. Sure, the new land wasn't perfect. It wasn't harmony between man and beast, or a permanent peace between settler and native. But for a time, people set aside their differences and gave their thanks for a chance at life. And many other harvest festivals appear around the world today for just the same thing. And that's the story of the first Thanksgiving.

SPEAKER_04: 43:54

It is it is not a Darn it, every time I touch this mic, my sound goes out. See, there's this little you guys can't see it, it's fleshed out, but there's a little button. Uh yeah, it is a really, really nice story. Okay, so okay, so when the United States, oh, we've got sound back. I'm still watching these here. Okay, so when the United States uh created Thanksgiving, this is kind of how it went. George Washington decl uh proclaimed Thanksgiving the first national holiday. Before July 4th was celebrated, Thanksgiving was celebrated. It was not yet an annual holiday, that came later, but here's how it kind of worked out. October 3rd, 1789, Washington's Thanksgiving proclamation. Shortly after the new U.S. Constitution went into effect and he became the first president, George Washington issued a proclamation declaring Thursday, November 26, 1789, as a national day of Thanksgiving. The key points from his proclamation that came out were it was a one-time event and not an annually reoccurring holiday. This got changed later. He recommended that Americans dedicate the day to the service of the great and glorious being who is the beneficent author of all good that was, that is, or will be, giving a lot of props to the hand of Providence. He urged people to give thanks for the successful conclusion of the Revolutionary War, the peaceful establishment of the new government under the Constitution, civil and religious liberty, and general blessings like peace and plenty. It was explicitly non-sectarian, not to mention Jesus, no mention of Jesus for Christianity, in keeping with Washington's public style. This is kind of important, right? Our country is not a non-religious country. There's a separation of church and state, which simply means the state cannot endorse a church. That's all it means. It doesn't mean that, you know, the state can't have religious overtones and things like that. It's just the state cannot endorse religion. So George Washington understood this. Thomas Jefferson understood it really well. One of his greatest achievements was um the religious freedom bill that he passed in Virginia. So uh they don't they don't mention Jesus or Christianity, but the idea is to understand the hand of province. If we all look to the hand of the Creator, no matter what name we give them, eventually it's my belief the creator will draw us into unison with each other. That's my belief. So uh the full excerpt from what he said, he says, Do I not I do not recommend that an assigned Thursday, the 26th of November, to uh next to be devoted by the people of the United States to the service of that great glorious being who is the beneficent author of all that good good that of all the good that was, that is, or that will be, and that we may all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks. So the Thanksgiving-style days of prayer started happening. Fasting and Thanksgiving were common in colonial America, especially in New England, where they were close to this kind of original Thanksgiving. And they was often declared by governors or local authorities after harvests, military victories, or to ask for rain. Yes, Thanksgiving was America's original ring dance. Washington himself had proclaimed several days of Thanksgiving during the Revolutionary War. In 1789, the proclamation was first, uh was the first to apply to the entire new nation under the federal government. The Thanksgiving holiday that that Washington established was the first national holiday. It was the first time that all the colonies united in a day of remembrance. However, after 1789, Washington did not issue another national Thanksgiving proclamation, and the practice largely fell back to the states. In 1863, Abraham Lincoln stepped in and proclaimed Thanksgiving a national holiday every year, largely thanks to the persistent campaigning of magazine editor Joseph, uh Sarah Josepha Hale. And in 1941, Congress finally made it official, a federal law setting it as the fourth Tuesday, Thursday in November. So we didn't get with the annual official Thanksgiving until the 1941. Abraham Lincoln at least made it annual, and uh, but Washington really got it started. So really interesting. And the whole point of it was to look back at the hand of Providence, right? To look back at all the little divine things that happened in order to get us where we were as a nation. Without calling out Jesus or Christianity, but at the same time recognizing that hand of Province. This is, I've, you know, I there probably are books written about it. I should go find some of these books. Our founding fathers had such a unique uh theology. Some of them were very dogmatic, no doubt about it, but some of them were very progressive in their theology, and it enabled us to have an absolute um personalization of religion on the American continent that had not happened except in a few small instances up till then. I mean, let me just make this clear. Church was used as a form of government, and then when civil governments existed, those civil governments used religions as a form of control. Okay. There were independent thinkers, your Martin Luther King's, your Wesley Tensdell's, your John Calvin, a lot of your reformers. It was a hard road for those guys to hoe. They were up against not only the religious zeitgeist, but they were up against the state apparatus itself who wanted to maintain their control with whatever they were doing. And so when we come over here to America, and all of a sudden you take the mantle of belief upon yourself, and the civil government will not impose, restrict, or punish you for your beliefs. Imagine how liberating that is for the soul, to where you can go find your own path. That is very unique. This, in my opinion, begins kind of an entrepreneurial journey for the average American. I mean, not only did you have to like work really hard in the early colonies to survive, but it starts this idea of thinking for yourself. What works for me? The individual starts to arise and come forth, which is a tradition that we get from far back, but America creates this breeding ground for it. And a lot of it starts with this original Thanksgiving. Thank God for getting us here. Thank God for helping us survive. Thank God for helping us get through the Revolutionary War. And thank God for the harvest every year. Literally, bring the rain. So I love it so much. It's just wonderful. Okay, so now I'm kind of concerned because I did that last ad read and apparently it was on muted. So I'll probably get punished for that by Rumble. Not punished, they don't really punish you for anything. They just won't count the ad, uh, which is totally fine because, you know, it was like four cents. Um, not a big deal. All right, guys, thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate it. Now I've got to clip off some extra time streaming between now and the end of the month because we've had so many transitions this month and so many short uh windows of being able to do this that I'm gonna have to jump back on at other points and basically add more show. So watch for the show. If you can catch it live, I'd really appreciate it. If you can, that really helps me because then I can get some um traction on these ad campaigns. I have maybe two or three more that I have to read before the end of the month. We only bored you with like five the whole month, so it wasn't even that bad. And uh, and with that, so I'll be around this weekend. Um, watch for the stream to go live. Um, please, you know, catch up on the videos if you can. And uh, at one point I'm gonna have to string a bunch in private. I might just put the camera up in the backyard and let it watch the dog play or something like that. Anyways, uh, so anyways, appreciate you guys being out here with us. I will be streaming again tomorrow morning, and we'll see if I can even pull off a Saturday show. Who knows? I am technically on vacation. So, all right, you guys, thank you very much. I appreciate you joining us and sitting through this with me, and I hope you have a wonderful, wonderful Thanksgiving with your loved ones. Bye.