1 Boring Old Man

…Later, Governor William Bradford made a decision. Instead of the colonists sharing their crops equally, he assigned a parcel of land to each family and told them they could keep whatever they produced for themselves."

"Then what happened?" asked Sam.

"At last the Pilgrims began to prosper. Governor William Bradford wrote in his book ‘Of Plimoth Plantation,’ ‘This had very good success, for it made all hands industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been.’ "

"Shoot! If you can keep everything you make, of course you’re going to work harder. Everybody knows that."

Grandpa answered, "The first seed had been planted for the American Revolution. People were free to practice their religions as they saw fit and were free to keep the fruits of their labor. This had never happened before in the history of mankind. In the words of William Bradford, ‘As one small candle may light a thousand, so the light here kindled hath shone unto many, yea in some sort to our whole nation.’ "

"That William Bradford sounds like a pretty cool guy," said Sam.

"He was a pretty cool guy," Grandpa said with a chuckle.

CALLER: Well, the lesson that day was about a word and the meaning of the word "incentive," and he used that to illustrate what incentive could do.  So, anyway, I work at the Los Angeles Times and edit a page called The Kids’ Reading Room page and it’s on the website right now…  I also want to thank you for this. I started doing research on the Bradford book, and the Pilgrims were fantastic!  I mean, they were very young; they were courageous; they were ingenious.

RUSH: And they were fleeing Obama-type tyranny from the mother country.

CALLER: That’s exactly right.  It was like the first time in the history of mankind that anything so extraordinary had happened; and it was contagious because the Massachusetts Bay Colony copied that model that they had initiated…