PM Show Hr 1 | Rush's History of Thanksgiving

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
It's that time time time time.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Mucking loud, So Michael Arry Show is on the air.

Speaker 1 (00:21):
It's Charlie from BlackBerry Smoking. I can feel a good
one coming on. It's the Michael Berry Show.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
Ay two six packs shiners now and nine sid putine ladders.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
Look at track center, fifth.

Speaker 4 (00:40):
Of patrol, I down added lue cooler. Take a guess
at all to do? I can feel a good one
coming off. Throwing ray Wily Hubbard sing along Nick Mother.

Speaker 5 (01:02):
Any blues I had before a goal, another working week.

Speaker 4 (01:09):
Is over, no chance to stay sober.

Speaker 1 (01:13):
I can feel a good one coming off.

Speaker 6 (01:18):
In a week.

Speaker 1 (01:20):
Man, we're gonna get to feel in a riding. We're
gonna keep this fire.

Speaker 5 (01:26):
I can feel the break of Dolly.

Speaker 1 (01:31):
I can feel a good one when coming.

Speaker 4 (01:45):
Three blobs in the wreck I mustang follow us down
to the lake and didn't have to think about.

Speaker 1 (01:53):
That too long.

Speaker 5 (01:57):
Skinny dipping in the right moon out situation could indeed more.

Speaker 4 (02:03):
I can feel a good one coming on.

Speaker 1 (02:11):
We want to get We gonna keep it hid.

Speaker 4 (02:15):
A round until the break and gone.

Speaker 5 (02:20):
I can feel a good one.

Speaker 1 (02:26):
I can feel a good one.

Speaker 6 (02:28):
This is the day, the Friday before Thanksgiving that every
year on The Michael Berry Show, we dedicate to Thanksgiving,
to the importance of literally giving thanks being grateful. It's
a humbling activity, counting our blessings, looking around at the bounty,

(02:49):
looking around at the beauty, being grateful for the people,
the themes, the animals, the natural beauty that we have
available to us, Being grateful for the simple act of life,
for God's love, for our good health. May say, well,

(03:11):
I'm not really that healthy, Michael. You're still above ground,
aren't you. It is a delightful time and we love
it and we're glad you're here with us to make
this tradition and be with us for years and years
to come. Our great tradition over the last few years

(03:36):
is to play Rush Limbaughs the meaning of Thanksgiving. And
this one, this one is very important to us. Not
only because what Rush has to say is beautiful and wonderful,
and that'll be in our next segment. We'll played in
its entirety. Not only because we love what Rush says,
but because seventeenth, twenty twenty one is a day is

(04:03):
a very dark day for us. It is the day
of course, at Rush Limbaugh passed and Rush Limbaugh, we
wouldn't be doing what we do but for Rush Limbaugh.
And I would argue that Trump never would have been
elected in twenty sixteen but for Rush Limbaugh, and Trump
never would have been elected in twenty twenty.

Speaker 1 (04:22):
Four but for Rush Limbaugh. The leader of a movement.

Speaker 6 (04:28):
Should leave behind him a movement that continues in his absence.
Jim Collins wrote a book called Good to Great, and
he measured the great leaders of American industry, and he
made the point that a great leader will have instilled
a culture, like a movement in the company. He will

(04:51):
have brought up good people, and he will tak he
will have taught them a culture so that even when
he's gone, And you can see this with Steve Jobs.
When Steve Jobs left, Tim Cook could step in because
he had them so focused on the quality of the
product and design and the culture and the consumer and

(05:11):
advancement and innovation. And I think those things are critically important.
So that will be our next segment. It's the highlight
of this week's show. And it's been our tradition for
years and it will be for years to come, and
I hope you will join us in making those new traditions.

Speaker 1 (05:27):
Years and years to come in the future.

Speaker 6 (05:31):
It's also our tradition every single Friday to close out
the first segment of the show with courtesy of the
greatest executive producer in all the land, Chattikoni Nakanishi, your
wee community. Here's the white people ad over here, and

(06:04):
then here's the script for the Black people.

Speaker 1 (06:06):
Burger Kings.

Speaker 6 (06:07):
Baby, you got some big old hot hips on your as.

Speaker 1 (06:11):
Could I get me a whopple back?

Speaker 2 (06:12):
Then?

Speaker 1 (06:13):
Why sure, honey, you can have a wopp Well, that's
not all.

Speaker 2 (06:17):
I want a major change for the home of the
Houston Astros.

Speaker 1 (06:21):
For twenty two years, this has been minim Park. Soon
that'll change. Greeting from dyke In Park, dyk In Park,
dyke In Park.

Speaker 6 (06:29):
With dyke In the air conditioning manufacturer getting the naming rights,
it will be called the Ice Spot.

Speaker 2 (06:37):
Solo President, like Donald Trump's cabinet picks, are our Capitol
Hill today, trying to shore up support among Senators for confirmation.

Speaker 6 (06:43):
One, already drawing criticism from Senate Republicans Matt Gates for
Trump's pick for Attorney General.

Speaker 2 (06:48):
Just getting word that Gates has taken himself out of
the running to be Donald Trump's Attorney general.

Speaker 6 (06:54):
In order to reform our government, you're gonna have to
have some people who are gonna go there who.

Speaker 1 (07:00):
Were devil may Cares.

Speaker 6 (07:01):
They're not just fearless, they're actually reckless. Are the type
of people who feed off of this intense hatred that
they engender and don't care who likes them.

Speaker 1 (07:13):
Our adoption special Jeff ere upsir.

Speaker 6 (07:15):
Yeah, we adopted our two sons from Russia.

Speaker 1 (07:18):
We just celebrated the eighteenth anniversary of them being here.
What a blessing they are. Laura, you're on the Michael
Berry Show.

Speaker 6 (07:24):
Go ahead, sweetheart, I'm gonna adopt be back from the
sixties about thirty years ago.

Speaker 1 (07:28):
Did search for my birth parents. It doesn't mean anything
about how.

Speaker 6 (07:32):
Much you love your parents if you do decide to
search for your roots and your identity. Adoption for me
is the idea that a child deserves love. If the
traditional relationships are not in place, for whatever reason, then
someone else steps in.

Speaker 1 (08:03):
Flowers and.

Speaker 6 (08:19):
The words of Gourdsman aren't shore and the words that
were taken by Robert F.

Speaker 2 (08:23):
Pain.

Speaker 1 (08:23):
These children speak Chinese and Spanish. Michael very shoes.

Speaker 6 (08:30):
Annual tradition on our Thanksgiving edition, which is the Friday
before the following Thursday, is to play rush Limbaugh's.

Speaker 1 (08:38):
The Meaning of Thanksgiving in honor.

Speaker 6 (08:43):
Of the Great the Irreplaceable rush Limbaugh The True Story
of Thanksgiving.

Speaker 2 (08:50):
The story of the Pilgrims begins in the early part
of the seventeenth century. The Church of England, under King
James the First was persecuting anyone and everyone who did
not recognize its absolute civil and spiritual authority. Those who
challenged ecclesiastical authority and those who believed strongly in freedom
of worship were hunted down, imprisoned, and sometimes.

Speaker 1 (09:13):
Executed for their beliefs. A group of separatists.

Speaker 2 (09:16):
First fled to Holland and established a community. After eleven years,
about forty of them agreed to make a perilous journey
to the New World, where they would certainly face hardships,
but could live and worship God according to the dictates
of their own consciences. On August first, sixteen twenty, the
Mayflowers set sail.

Speaker 1 (09:36):
It carried a total of one hundred.

Speaker 2 (09:37):
Two passengers, including forty Pilgrims, led by William Bradford. On
the journey, Bradford set up an agreement, a contract and
established just and equal laws for all members of the
new community, irrespective of their religious beliefs. Where did the
revolutionary ideas expressed in an eight flower compact come from?

Speaker 1 (09:57):
They came from the Bible.

Speaker 2 (09:59):
The Pilgrims, where people completely steeped in the lessons of
the Old and New Testaments. They looked to the ancient
Israelites for their example, and because of the biblical precedent
set forth in scripture, they never doubted that their experiment
would work.

Speaker 1 (10:15):
But it was no pleasure cruise.

Speaker 2 (10:17):
The journey to the New World was a long and
arduous one, and when the Pilgrims landed in New England
in November, they found, according to Bradford's detailed journal, a cold, barren,
desolate wilderness.

Speaker 1 (10:29):
There were no friends to greet them, he wrote. There
were no houses to shelter them.

Speaker 2 (10:34):
There were no inns where they could refresh themselves in
The sacrifice that they had made for freedom was just beginning.
During the first winter, half the Pilgrims, including Bradford's own wife,
died either starvation, sickness, or exposure. When spring finally came,
Indians taught the settlers how to plant corn fish for

(10:54):
cod and skin beavers for coats. Life improved for the Pilgrims,
but they did not yet prosper, and this is important
to understand because this is where modern American history lessons
often end. Thanksgiving is actually explained in some textbooks as
a holiday for which the Pilgrims gave thanks to the
Indians for saving their lives, rather than as a devout

(11:15):
expression of gratitude grounded in the tradition of both the
Old and New Testaments.

Speaker 1 (11:20):
Here's the part that's been omitted.

Speaker 2 (11:22):
The original contract the Pilgrims had entered into with their
merchant sponsors in London called for everything they produced to
go into a common sore, and each member of the
community was entitled to one common share. All of the
land that they cleared and the houses they built belonged
to the community as well, and they were going to
distribute it equally. All the land they cleared, the houses

(11:44):
they built belonged to the community. Nobody owned anything, they
just had a share in it. It was a commune.
It was the forerunner to the communes we saw in
the sixties and seventies out in California. And it was
a complete with organic vegetables, even just like the communes
of today are God.

Speaker 1 (12:01):
There's no question it was organic vegetables.

Speaker 2 (12:03):
Bradford, who had become a new governor of the colony,
recognized that this form of collectivism was as costly and
destructive to the Pilgrims as that first harsh winter which
had taken so many lives.

Speaker 1 (12:16):
He decided to take bold action.

Speaker 2 (12:18):
Bradford assigned a plot of land each family to work
and manage, thus turning loose the power in the marketplace.
Long before Carl Marx was even born, the Pilgrims had
discovered and experimented with what could only be described as socialism,
and what happened. It didn't work, but nearly starved never
has worked. What Bradford in his community found was that

(12:41):
the most creative and industrious people had no incentive to
work any harder than anybody else unless they could utilize
the power of personal motivation.

Speaker 1 (12:49):
But while most of the rest of the world.

Speaker 2 (12:51):
Has been experimenting with socialism for well over one hundred years,
trying to refine it, perfect it, and reinvent it, the
Pilgrims decided early on to scrap it permanently.

Speaker 1 (13:00):
What Bradford wrote.

Speaker 2 (13:01):
About this social experiment should be in every school child's
history lesson. If it were, we might prevent such needless
suffering in the future, such as that we are enduring now.
The experience that we had in this common course and condition,
This is Bradford, the experience we had in this common
course and condition, tired or tried Sunday years, that by

(13:25):
taking away property and bringing community into a commonwealth would
make them happy and flourishing, as if they were wiser
than God. Bradford wrote for this community, so far as
it was was found to breed much confusion and discontent,
and retard much employment that would have been to their
benefit and comfort. For young men that were most able

(13:45):
and fit for labor and service, did repine that they
should spend their time and strength that work for other
men's wives and.

Speaker 1 (13:51):
Children without being paid for it. That was thought injustice.

Speaker 2 (13:55):
Why should you work for other people when you can't
work for yourself? What's the point, That's what he was saying.
The Pilgrims found that people could not be expected to
do their best work without incentive. So what did Bradford's
community try next? They unharnished the power of good old
free enterprise by invoking the undergirding capitalistic principle of private property.

(14:20):
Every family was assigned its own plot of land to work,
and permitted to market its own crops and products. What
was the result, Bradford wrote, this had very good success,
for it made all hands industrious, so as much more
corn was planted than otherwise would have been. Is it
possible the supply side economics could have existed.

Speaker 1 (14:41):
Before the nineteen eighties.

Speaker 2 (14:42):
Yes. Read the story of Joseph and Pharaoh in Genesis
forty one. Following Joseph's suggestion, Pharaoh reduced the tax on
Egyptians to twenty percent during the seven years at plenty,
and the earth brought forth in heaps well. At no
time the pilgrims found that they had more food than
they could eat themselves.

Speaker 1 (15:01):
Now this, this.

Speaker 2 (15:03):
Is where it gets really good if you're laboring under
the misconception that I was as I was taught in school.
They set up trading posts, they exchanged goods with the Indians.
The prophets allowed them to pay off their debts to
the merchants in London, and the success and the prosperity
of the Plymouth settlement attracted more Europeans and began what

(15:25):
came to be known as.

Speaker 1 (15:26):
The Great Puritan Migration.

Speaker 2 (15:28):
But this story stops when the Indians taught the newly
arrived suffering and socialism pilgrims how to plant corn and
fish for cod. That's where the original Thanksgiving story stops.
Story basically doesn't even begin there. The real story of
Thanksgiving is William Bradford giving thanks to God for the
guidance and the inspiration to set up a thriving colony

(15:50):
that socialism caused near starvation. The bounty was shared with
the Indians. They did sit down, they did have free
range turkey and organic vegetables.

Speaker 1 (16:04):
But it wasn't the Indians who saved the day.

Speaker 2 (16:07):
It was capitalism in scripture which saved the day, as
acknowledged by George Washington in his first Thanksgiving proclamation in
seventeen eighty nine.

Speaker 1 (16:18):
You take care of it down, Thank you about it, Michael.
Many of you, this will be the last day that
you're in your usual routine.

Speaker 6 (16:29):
You will board a plane or load up the family
station wagon. People, that's the family station wagons, amoremon, that's crazy.
Station wagon became the minivan. The minivan became the suburban explorer.
And you will head off to Mammal's house, and that
is a sacred, sacred ritual. You know that it is

(16:55):
a sacred ritual when Barack Obama attempted to destroy by
telling young people, go home and tell your grandmother she's
a racist. Tearing apart the family, the fabric of the
family is the ultimate goal.

Speaker 1 (17:14):
Of the cultural Marxist.

Speaker 6 (17:17):
Because the communist has to destroy your faith and your
family in order to control you. Faith and family are
rivals to communism, which is both a faith and a
community that replicates the family. It destroys the identity and

(17:38):
makes you part of it. But let me not get
too deep into that. It is important that we dive
deep into our family love. If you have a negative
influence in your family, I encourage you to cut them loose.
You can't fix them and they'll ruin everything. Don't bring
them to the family occasion. But it's on this day

(18:01):
every year that we stop as a show. As we
like to think of ourselves as your friends. I mean, heck,
you let us come into your homes, your cars, your trucks,
your speakers, your earphones. Some of you every day, some
of you on the podcast, literally every day of the week.

(18:22):
It's a pretty intimate relationship you think about it. We
may never meet, but we share values, we share a lot,
and so on this day every year our last chance
to get the entirety of our audience due to travel
schedules next week, we take a moment to talk about

(18:43):
the importance of what it means to stop and give things.
And that's perhaps more important today than it has been
for a very long time.

Speaker 1 (18:54):
There's a beautiful gospel song that.

Speaker 6 (18:56):
Goes, count your blessings, name them one by one, Count
your blessings, and it will surprise you what the Lord
hath done. I teach my children this, We talk about
it as a family. I often ask my friends, tell

(19:17):
me one thing that you're thankful for today, and I
am surprised how many times it will be the case
that someone cannot immediately tell you something for which they
are grateful.

Speaker 1 (19:33):
Thankful.

Speaker 6 (19:36):
I think you have to have a thankful spirit. It's
part of humility. I think you have to be grateful.
And if you can't think of something quickly for which
you are grateful, you lack perspective, and that is unhealthy.

Speaker 1 (19:52):
And I would.

Speaker 6 (19:53):
Argue that many people in this country are winning at
the ballot box losing in their lives, because when you
lose perspective, then effectively they own you. It's very important
to stop and be grateful for the things you have.

(20:16):
When I look in my own life, I start with
my father. I lost my mother recently. I'm grateful for
my father. I'm grateful for every day I have with him.
I'm grateful for every conversation I have with him. He's
eighty four years old. He's had severe diabetes since he
was nineteen. He was discharged from the Coastguard. They didn't

(20:38):
believe he'd survived, almost lost his life with a diabetic attack.

Speaker 1 (20:44):
There wasn't treatment for diabetes.

Speaker 6 (20:46):
He had to self treat that before there were the things,
the tools that we have today. And he did and
he survived. And I'm grateful for every day, for every
shared memory. I'm grateful for every conversation where I can
call up and go, hey, Dad, you remember when we
went to this I remember we went to see the
Astros play and Terry Poole got the game winning hit.

Speaker 1 (21:10):
You remember that.

Speaker 6 (21:12):
I am grateful for all the years that I did
have my mother, because she was seventy nine years old
and for fifty three years of my life. She was
in my life. And you know, when someone passes, the
depth of loss you experience.

Speaker 1 (21:31):
Is a mirror.

Speaker 6 (21:32):
It is the converse to the wonderfulness of what you experience.
You know, when someone tells me their mom or dad
has died and they don't care, that tells me they
didn't love them. I feel sad for them, not that
they don't care. But if you're going to love deeply,
you're going to lose deeply. So I hope that on

(21:55):
this Thanksgiving week that you will be grateful for the
love that you've lost, for the things you once had
and cannot get back, for the fact that you once
had them, for the fact that you had that blessing,
because I can guarantee you there are plenty of people
who didn't. If you've lost a father, lost a mother

(22:20):
that you love deeply, be grateful. Think how many didn't
a brother or sister, a wife, a husband, a child.
It's a great time of year in a great American
tradition to just stop and take stock. Take inventory. You know,

(22:40):
as a business owner, particularly if you're in retail or hospitality,
it's very important that you stop and take an inventory.
What are your par levels for your alcohol, how long?
How many stocks do you have for what's coming up
for Christmas, for instance, or at Mother's Day or Father's
Day or some other Avalentimee's Day.

Speaker 1 (23:01):
It's important to stop.

Speaker 6 (23:02):
To stop and see what you have already and where
you need to supplement. And I think Thanksgiving is a
great opportunity to do that. It's a true opportunity for
us to do something that maybe we don't do often
enough in our longing to add more things to our lives,

(23:24):
to accumulate more stuff, to travel to more places, to
make more money. Sometimes we don't stop long enough and
look around to what we do have. If you have
your health, I didn't understand this when I was younger.

Speaker 1 (23:42):
I do now.

Speaker 6 (23:43):
If you have your health, it would be grateful for that,
because you won't always and once you don't have it,
you'll realize what a blessing it was that you did.
If you have someone that you love in your life,
be grateful for that. And if they also love you, boy,

(24:06):
you've found You've found it. You've found the path to
riches greater than any gold. If you have children who
are healthy, be grateful for that. If they love you well,
that's a blessing. I don't want to be too preachy,
but this is very important to me. And I have

(24:28):
an opportunity on these airwaves and I just want to
take advantage. And so for so many of you, this
is the first year you will have heard our show.
This is an annual tradition, our Thanksgiving tradition, which we
do the Friday before the next Thursday. And well, yeah,
it's important to us.

Speaker 1 (24:49):
Or take me to Texas because I haven't ready to get.

Speaker 3 (24:52):
Out of this state.

Speaker 1 (24:53):
I think Michael Barry robs Michael very show. I like its.

Speaker 6 (25:00):
People often tell me, especially our older listeners, that it
feels like the thing that the America they grew up
in has changed. And when I asked them, what does
that mean? How has that manifested itself? One of the
things that will come up is we don't celebrate Easter

(25:22):
the way we used to. We don't celebrate Christmas the
way we used to. We don't celebrate Thanksgiving the way
we used to. Well, you understand those are not self
celebrating holidays.

Speaker 1 (25:36):
It is as.

Speaker 6 (25:38):
Highly or unanticipated as we make it. It's all human
emotion and the problem is or the challenge or the
opportunity is it has to be replicated year in and
year out. What's important about Thanksgiving it's a uniquely American tradition.

(26:04):
I mean, if I need to make this political to
get some people's attention, because some people are only driven
by the political stuff. The left wants to destroy Thanksgiving
because everything that Thanksgiving represents the white man coming to
a nation.

Speaker 1 (26:23):
Where there were people already.

Speaker 6 (26:26):
Now, those people had displaced other people, who had displaced
other people, who had displaced other people. So it's not
that they're the original inhabitants indigenous people, but just as
has happened throughout the world, you know, one hundred, five
hundred years ago from now, they will describe the era

(26:49):
we're in. What that era will look like is up
to us. I'm not a fatalist in this sense. I
think that the decisions we make, actions we take, we'll
determine what that history will be. Will this be the
end of a great empire, a great republic? Or will
this just be the beginning and we will see an

(27:11):
ascendance that will be up to us, not Donald Trump,
all of us. But it is important that we remember
our history and we celebrate our history, and that we
perpetuate our history.

Speaker 1 (27:24):
People will see.

Speaker 6 (27:24):
You know, when I was growing up with the kids
in the school, you know, we'd all dress up and
as turkeys, and you know, my parents would do this,
and my parents would do this, and my parents would
do this. And I say, all right, well you have
kids about that age, now are you doing that? No?
Well then what changed? What change does you so bring

(27:46):
back those traditions? Well, I just remember my grandmother would cook.
And well, now your wife is the grandmother, is she
cooking like that? No, we ordered it in from somewhere else. Okay,
well that's fine. But when your kids and grandkids are
the age you are now, are they going to remember
that Mamma and Papa made this particular thing. And Mama

(28:08):
and Papa made this particular thing. One of my greatest
memories is that my grandfather would make the dressing every year.
He was a big bear of a man. He was
a bus driver, He was a maintenance worker. He was
a hard drinker. He smoked his entire life till he

(28:28):
finally quit and went to smokeless as it was called
back then, which was tobacco.

Speaker 1 (28:33):
Red man was his choice. But boil boy could he cook?

Speaker 6 (28:37):
And he would make dressing that was delicious, I mean,
just delicious dressing. But my mother would declare that he
put too much sage, and everyone would sit around, they're
too much sagent?

Speaker 1 (28:49):
Is there too much stage?

Speaker 6 (28:50):
In in all afternoon there would be complaints that there had
been that there was too much sage and now everyone
had well they referred to as intergestion, which is indigestion
and it's an unpleasant thing. And there would be talk
that there had been too much sage, and he'd say,
I put too much sage, and no, it didn't.

Speaker 1 (29:10):
Do too much stage.

Speaker 6 (29:12):
And that memory to this day, the taste of my
grandfather's dressing.

Speaker 1 (29:20):
Well. Lo and behold my wife, being the saint that
she is.

Speaker 6 (29:24):
When we met and I told her what Thanksgiving was,
because she's from Indius, she was an immigrant to the country,
new to the country. And I told her by that
second Thanksgiving she was here because the first Thanksgiving we
just started dating.

Speaker 1 (29:36):
And I told her what it was. I wanted to come,
you know, meet my grandparents and all this sort of stuff.

Speaker 6 (29:40):
And I told her all about that, and she figured out, Ladies,
listen to this. She figured out, you know, the weight
of this man's heart is through his belly, and many
men are that way. There's two things that drive most
of us, one or the other or both, and just
know that. And the third would be not being nagged,
but that that doesn't get its credit. So she sat

(30:03):
next to my grandmother and my grandfather, and she learned
how to make their dressing, how to make their chili,
how to make their corn bread. And so every day
when I sit down to our dining table at night
for supper, I feel this connection to my childhood, to
my family's history. So you've got time, it's not too late.

(30:26):
And if you don't, if you don't have a good recipe,
go find one.

Speaker 1 (30:29):
It's easy.

Speaker 6 (30:30):
It's easier it's never been today, it's easier than it's
ever been to find the recipe for what will become
the Baker family or Jackson family or Robliss family, whatever
that's going to be, dressing, blueberry pie. We've got to
talk about these things. We have to preserve our traditions.

(30:51):
Thanksgiving is America. I mean, it's July fourth and Thanksgiving.
That's your distinctly American traditions, not a tradition that we
share with the rest of the world.

Speaker 1 (31:03):
For the human condition.

Speaker 6 (31:04):
These are traditions of America. If that doesn't fire you up,
who your wood is wet,