Speaker 1: We are so pleased as always to welcome the show's
official historian. He is an amazing guy. If you have
not checked out his website, I urge you to, especially
you history fans will love hisstoryauthor dot com, he is
a columnist with The New York Sun. His columns are brilliant.
I posted one today and it is dealing with the
experience that the people on the Mayflower had coming to America.
And it's just a brilliant column that's par for the course.
Dean Carrianis you are my friend, just a gem, and
thank you for joining us today.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: I guess since I'm Greek Malacca on the sky with diamonds,
I'm the diamond maybe today.
Speaker 2: Thank you for that kind intro.
Speaker 4: Quite welcome. Now.
Speaker 1: One of the things I'm also seeing, you know, there
are people on social media posting an eight minute version
of Rush with the Thanksgiving story, and I don't play
it here because I respect the copyright. Okay, good for you, so,
but that's why we talk about it. And so Dean
can first of all, brilliant column today. I love that column.
Speaker 2: Oh, thank you, thank you speak.
Speaker 4: About that for a minute ago.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you were nice to tweet it. Out. Thank you.
I appreciate it.
Speaker 4: Tell people where to go to get it.
Speaker 3: Though, Yeah, well mysun dot com. You should be going
there if you like to see some of the stuff
that we used to trade back and forth, James, you
and I and with the Boss and George Pryce over there.
Now I have to do the hard work of writing
these columns. It was much easier to hand rush the
ball and to let him turn into something brilliant. Now
I have to try to, in my poor power, do
it on my own. But that's what I write there
at m whysun dot com. And this year's column is
one that I think he would have loved, focusing on
the trials of the Pilgrims. The headline there at the
New York Sun is how a girl named Remember, age five,
and her fellow Pilgrims endured the crossing of the North
Atlantic to reach America, And it's about just the incredible
troubles that they had. Russia's story always focused on the
legitimate trials and tribulations and death and disease that the
Pilgrims faced once they got here, but just to in
that rickety ship, never designed to go on the ocean,
not designed to take passengers, a windowless cabin that they
had that they were in, no individual cabins, everyone thrown
in there. It is incredible what they endured to be
able to come here.
Speaker 1: And I have seen the replica of the Mayflower, and
the first thing that I saw is this ship is
incredibly small. This thing is it is really a tiny
comparison for the people. It's a tiny ship that got
across the Atlantic at all. Is somewhat of a miracle.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely is a miracle. They certainly saw it that way,
and I think they were less squeamish. Obviously these were pilgrims.
These were people coming for religious freedom. So they saw
God's hand and everything and gave thanks. It was one
hundred feet long, which if you go to MSG and
see the Rangers rink or any NHL rink, that's enough
to fit two of them nose to tail. That's how
small it was. And it's less wide than two zambonis
that are put nose to tail. So think about how
small it is, Think about how small an NHL rink is,
and that you're alone.
Speaker 2: They're at sister ship.
Speaker 3: The speedwell had to turn back twice because it kept
springing leaks, and they finally say, let's get on this ship.
Go down in this windowless area. There's the smell of
live stock, including pigs. Everybody's throwing up all the time.
There's no windows, there's no air. The ceiling is only
five foot high, and they go in under there, and
they know that there's going to be storms and pirates too.
Speaker 2: We don't think of pirates and pilgrims coexisting.
Speaker 3: But they worried about pirates all the time that they
came in these colder winter months. Right about now, they
would be out there in the North Atlantic. We look
out the window now at New York City. Think about
being out in the ocean right now, with wet all
the time, and rags and no fresh water, no fresh air,
no sunlight even on your face. And the food was
just whatever was salted and you could bring along. They
suffered so much, it's incredible. And they did it in
part to bring the may for our compact and kick
off our way of governing ourselves and the most liberty
for the most people.
Speaker 1: Now, for a minute, walk us through the cliff notes
of the original Christmas story that that rush brought to
so many of us. And I got to tell you.
When he first did it, it blew my mind. It
blow it blew my mind hearing him do it every year.
But I was taught so such a different story in school.
And then when Rush actually explained the true story of Thanksgiving,
it was mind blown. Help us through that with the
cliff note version.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I know he said he had been taught
the same version that you were, that I was, that
a lot of people were. In fact, it's funny because
this is the version that this Axios column that a
lot of people are talking about today because they managed
to get a few clicks by trashing America, which always
seems to work with a certain percentage of people, and
they talk about this version that, oh, it was the
wamp of noag. Native Americans came and saved the Pilgrims,
and the Pilgrims were giving thanks to them for helping
them out. And Rush believed that for a long time,
and then he went and looked at it. He did
something that certainly I always tried to do well. I
used to always try to do when I sent Rush
something a primary source, and I do that in my
New York Sun columns as well. Go back and read
what William Bradford, their historian, was writing the second governor
of the of the Plymouth Colony, and see what he
had to say, And he explained, we got there. They
suffered all that misery. They tried to have something like
a social assist them a communist system, even where everybody
got an equal share and nobody got more than anyone else.
And there's that great part in there where he says
William Bradford does and Rush used to read it that men,
single men found it very, very unjust that they should
have to labor for the wives and children of other men.
They didn't think that why should they do it and
get all sweaty and get dirty and risk risk all that,
so they would not work. And then they decided to
try capitalism. And they said, well, we'll give each person here,
each signatory of the Mayflower comp back, let's say, And
they've given them each a little bit of land, and
whatever they grew on that part of the land, they
could keep themselves or resell.
Speaker 2: It if they wanted.
Speaker 3: If you were a single guy and you wanted to
sell your extra food, you could just sell it because
you were only you. And by that they made all hands.
Speaker 2: Industrious is how William Bradford recorded.
Speaker 3: It, and they had such a bounty that then there
were the Wampanoag tribe. And I think it's key that
Rush I thought of this even before we spoke today,
and then before I saw this article in Axios, and
Rush always said, this isn't to take anything away from
the Native people, but it's not the accurate story. And
it's funny that the people who presume today to take
up the mantle of Native people don't tell an accurate
version either.
Speaker 2: It's just a different version of it.
Speaker 3: It's just a I say, it's the noble savage is
just as racist a trope for Native people as just
a savage part. Right, it's just a farther I guess
a farther left one that sounds to that sounds a
little more palatable. But that wasn't it. There they were
people they had had contact before. There are other people
who had arrived Westerners. They were surprised the pilgrim to
meet Squanto, who spoke perfect English, and he said, yeah,
I've been which sounds insane, think it right, Yeah, it's yeah.
And so he spoke and they they were friends and
allies when they got there, there'd been disease that wiped
out a lot of a lot of the native people
that were there already. They were certainly being prayed of
ham by others that were in the area, other tribes
that were in the area in Massachusetts and Greater Massachusetts area.
So they made common cause. They traded with each other.
And this is where that first Thanksgiving comes from. And
you can read it in William Bradford's diary. And I
who was it. Who was the Clinton administration guy who
said I lied to my diary when they said I
forget Yes, I lied in my diary about that thing.
I said that Clinton was doing wrong. So I don't
think William Bradford when he was there just trying to
keep some rags on his back. And his wife dies
the first year that he's there, and they say the
later comers from the Gray Puritan migration are shocked and
some of them burst into tears seeing.
Speaker 2: These pilgrims in rags.
Speaker 3: This this image of them with these nice buckle shoes
and looking really stately is certainly a myth. There are
practically naked some of them. And so he didn't lie
when he recorded this, And the fact that there were
later cop Flix that we know of this class of
cultures and that there were horrible things that were done
in atrocities. We know that this occurs on both sides
when two cultures come into conflicts, and that was the
case here.
Speaker 2: And I was thinking today to.
Speaker 3: Define Thanksgiving by the worst of it, by the worst
examples of relations between native people.
Speaker 2: And the people who came from Europe, the migrants. Dare
we say seeking a better life.
Speaker 3: Is like saying Valentine's Day, I'm not buying you a Valentine, honey,
because there was the same Valentine's Day massacre and that's
the real meaning of Valentine's Day is in nineteen twenty
nine in Chicago, they gunned down all those people. So
we can't celebrate.
Speaker 2: Valentine's Day anymore.
Speaker 3: And that's what doing.
Speaker 2: This to the story of Thanksgiving is really.
Speaker 3: This was an amazing story. It has so many lessons
for us today. It's a lesson that humanity has to
keep relearning and that we have to keep teaching. As
Russia always said, the pursuit of conservatism it isn't passive.
You have to keep doing it because if anything isn't
actively conservative, it will just become liberal, will lose the.
Speaker 2: Truth in that. And I think the pursuit of truth.
Speaker 3: In general for everybody should be like that. You should
always be seeking more and more truth and find that
primary source, find the real story. And as you said,
they're respecting the copyright. Don't trust people. I would say
that are just out to get some of those clicks.
And it's funny because I was thinking of Rush that
he wouldn't care, because he would just be glad that
people were hearing the story. And I don't know how
he got that way, but you and I who we
still have that same protectiveness and defensiveness for him. But
he'd love just the story getting out there.
Speaker 4: And we're going to continue to help that story.
Speaker 1: I get out there as many years as I have breath, Dean,
and thank you. You know what we ought to do
next year, you and I ought to actually spend some
time before Thanksgiving and read the whole chapter of his book,
read it and then also talk about some of the backstory,
because there's a lot more to the backstory through the years,
Abraham Lincoln on Thanksgiving and George Washington's proclamation and how
that came to be so LEXI or next let's do
something a little different and put it maybe on a
podcast or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sounds like a great idea. I'd love it.
Speaker 3: I always like to go back and read it. And
by the way, I think it's wonderful that rush. He
could have just played that every year, but instead he
would always make it a little bit, tweak it a
little make it a little more relevant. He'd swap out
an Obama reference or a Clinton reference, and so he
would always try to keep it timely, always be teaching.
And I would invite people to go and read the
original in his second book, see I Told You So,
because of exactly what you're saying. You think about it.
It's not those empty calories. And if you're going to
go somewhere and just watch it, it's impossible to watch it,
to watch it, listen to it passively, because there's so
much in it that makes you say wow, and you
think back to those grade school teachers we talked about
and say they were just wrong.
Speaker 4: Exactly.
Speaker 1: David, thank you, my friend, for taking day some time
out of your Thanksgiving Day and spending up spending it
with us. We look forward to checking in with you
every time there's a major American holiday, and they're all
major and thank you for always being here with us.
Speaker 2: Teen thank you, well, thank you.
Speaker 3: It's an honor and happy Thanksgiving to everyone out there
in the w ABC audience. You all are really blessed
to have a great, great American station. This is a blowtowards.
It's an honor to be here with all of you.
And remember, go easy on that turkey and go Giants,
even though I know they're going to go on to
lose again.
Speaker 1: Okay, well okay, it was all good till we get
to the to the gits. Thank you, Dean appreciated