Bill Federer joins us to talk about the story of why we celebrate Thanksgiving and why it's one of the most important days of the year. He talks about the pilgrims, the Puritans, and the Hebrew Republic, and why you get to be the king of your life.
00:00:34.000He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA. We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:01:05.000We have a very special guest for you today, a friend of mine, a very smart man, and also part of our team at Turning Point Academy.
00:01:13.000And I think you will all really enjoy learning about.
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00:01:42.000So, the King of England was a globalist.
00:01:44.000He was a one-world government guy with him at the top.
00:01:47.000The British Empire controlled India, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, British Kayana, Canada, Barbados, Bermuda, Jamaica, and America.
00:01:54.000It's And so America's founders wanted to break away from this globalist, one-world government king, and so they flipped it and made the people the king.
00:02:02.000And so where did they get this idea that you could rule yourself without a king?
00:02:07.000Well, it came from the pilgrims, and then it came from the Calvinist Puritans that came from the Reformation, and then they got their ideas from ancient Israel.
00:02:18.000That first 400 years out of Egypt, it's called the Hebrew Republic.
00:02:24.000And it's the first instance in recorded history of a nation with millions of people and no king.
00:02:31.000And it's around 1400 BC, up to about 1000 BC. And it worked because every single citizen was taught the law, and they were personally accountable to God to follow the law.
00:02:42.000So this period of history is called the Hebrew Republic.
00:02:47.000And these Calvinist Puritan scholars studied this so intently that they were nicknamed Christian Hebraists.
00:02:56.000So in 1517, Martin Luther starts the Reformation, and for about a century before the Age of Enlightenment, you have these scholars in Europe studying not just the Bible in their own language, but this particular first 400-year period, this Hebrew Republic, and that's why they taught Hebrew at Yale and Harvard.
00:03:15.000They were amazed at coming up with a form of government without a king, And again, it's based on this idea that you teach everybody the law, and then everybody walks around aware that they're accountable to a God who's watching them, wants them to be fair, and is going to hold them accountable in the future.
00:03:33.000We don't appreciate what makes America great is, in a sense, you get to be the king of your life, and all of us together are the king of the country.
00:03:42.000It's a bottom-up, individual-empowered country that is totally opposite of the kings of England and the kings of Europe.
00:03:52.000Anyway, so that's why one of the reasons we celebrate Thanksgiving is the birth of a country where the people get to be in charge of their lives.
00:04:00.000Can you talk about how important it is to give thanks and then go through the actual story of Thanksgiving with Squanto?
00:04:08.000And I forget some of the details, but tell us about that.
00:04:32.000The German princes have Martin Luther's German Bible that helped them to break away.
00:04:36.000Well, Henry VIII says, great, get me one.
00:04:39.000Well, it just so happens a few years earlier, Henry VIII had William Tyndall burnt at the stake for translating the Bible into English.
00:04:46.000And William Tyndall's last words were, Lord, open the king of England's eyes.
00:04:51.000And now it's a couple years later, the king wants to divorce his wife, Catherine of Aragon, because she didn't have a son after 18 years.
00:04:59.000And Mary Ann Boleyn, the Pope, won't recognize the divorce.
00:05:03.000Henry breaks from the Pope, gets this English Bible, spreads it around the country, dusts his hands, and says, that's it, we've broken from Rome.
00:05:31.000They go by different names, Baptists, Congregationalists, eventually the Quakers.
00:05:37.000But this one group we call the Pilgrims.
00:05:40.000And so they were a church group that had a congregational church model.
00:05:46.000Which is different than the hierarchical clergy-laity model.
00:05:51.000And so for most of history, you had the clergy do the ministry and the lady was lazy and watched.
00:05:56.000And the congregational model is everybody's involved.
00:06:00.000The pastor helps everyone to have their relationship with God through Jesus and then coaches them to become mature Christians and then plug into the body and do something.
00:06:08.000Because any muscle to grow has to be exercised.
00:06:12.000And so the king didn't like this congregational model, and so King James said, I will make them conform, or I will harry them out of the land.
00:06:22.000And so the King of England passed the Act of Uniformity of Common Prayer.
00:06:29.000You do not make up prayers because you could make up one that's wrong.
00:06:34.000And so the government wrote all the possible prayers they could think of down in a book called the Book of Common Prayer.
00:06:39.000And when you wanted to pray, you just opened it to the right page and you would read the prayer.
00:06:45.000And if you're caught having a little group at your house and you're making up your own prayers, the government, like the FBI, will kick in the door and they will arrest you and they'll drag you off to some government hearing room.
00:06:58.000It's called the Star Chamber because it had stars on the ceiling.
00:07:01.000Sort of a January 6th type hearing room.
00:07:03.000And they would interrogate you and they would make you confess to stuff you didn't do and they'd make you try to snitch on your other praying friends.
00:07:10.000And then they would brand you on the face as a heretic and even cut off your ear.
00:07:15.000And then they would stick you in a cell and let you rot away in there for days, weeks, months, years.
00:07:22.000Could you imagine the government doing this to their own citizens?
00:07:25.000And one person that was caught was named John Bunyan.
00:09:30.000I mean, they make it to the New World, and they're 500 miles away from Jamestown.
00:09:36.000And the captain, Christopher Jones, tries to sail south, but off the coast to Cape Cod, it's really shallow.
00:09:43.000If you've ever been there, it's one of those beaches where you could walk, you know, 200 yards out and it only comes up to your waist.
00:09:50.000I mean, and plus it's really cold, but these ships would get stuck on the sand like a half mile out and in a storm, the waves would beat the ship and 3,000 ships have sunk off the coast of Cape Cod.
00:11:25.000From their pastor, John Robinson, who was not an Anglican king-appointed pastor.
00:11:30.000He was one of these congregational pastors.
00:11:33.000He was one of these Calvinist Puritans that looked back to this ancient Israel, that first 400 years out of Egypt period, before King Saul.
00:11:42.000And so they formed themselves into a civil body politic, and it goes on to enact just and equal laws that shall be thought most meet, unto which we promise all due submission.
00:12:06.000And it's the difference between a dead pyramid rule top-down and a living tree where every root and every tiny capillary root sucks in nutrients to keep the tree alive.
00:12:16.000Every citizen is involved in church and every citizen is involved in the community.
00:12:21.000And so this becomes the model for the other New England colonies and eventually the U.S. Constitution.
00:12:30.000Yeah, so then let's talk about, just for a second here, Bill, they tried socialism, didn't they?
00:12:38.000So the pilgrims didn't have money, and so they approached investors in England who formed the London Company, and the company had bylaws.
00:12:48.000And they weren't really thrilled with this, and they were sort of at the very last minute already on the boat, and they come with these papers, and you say you got a shot, so they signed it.
00:12:56.000But these bylaws specified that everything would be owned in common.
00:13:02.000Everything gained by cooking, hunting, fishing, trading, you know, shall go into ye common stock.
00:13:09.000And everyone's already have their meat, drink, and apparel and all provision out of ye common stock, right?
00:13:16.000So everybody works, goes into this pot, and then everybody gets paid out of it.
00:13:19.000They tried it, and they almost starved to death.
00:13:22.000William Bradford, the governor of the pilgrims, writes,"...the failure of that experiment of communal service, which was tried for several years by good and honest men, proves the emptiness of the theory of Plato and other ancients,
00:13:38.000applauded by some of latter times, that the taking away a private property and possession of it in community would make the state happy and flourishing as if they were wiser than God." This
00:14:14.000The aged and graver men who were ranked and equalized in labor, food, clothes, etc., with the humbler and younger ones, thought it some indignity and disrespect.
00:14:22.000And then I thought this was interesting.
00:14:23.000He says, as for men's wives, who were obliged to do service for other men, such as cooking, washing their clothes, etc., they considered it a kind of slavery, and many husbands would not brook it or allow it.
00:14:37.000And William Bradford goes on, let none argue that this is due to human failing rather than due to this communistic plan of life in itself.
00:14:44.000He says, I answer that God had another plan of life fitter for them.
00:14:49.000And so they began to consider how to raise more corn.
00:14:51.000After much debate, it was decided each man would plant corn for his own household.
00:15:05.000The women now went willingly into the field, took their little ones with them to plant corn, while before they would allege weakness and to have compelled them would have been thought great oppression.
00:15:13.000So here are these really religious people I mean, they're as good as you can get.
00:15:18.000They tried owning everything in common, almost starved to death.
00:15:21.000They scrap it, give you a whole plot of land.
00:15:22.000They began abundant harvest, and that's when we celebrate Thanksgiving.
00:15:26.000And this entire conversation is really kind of brought to you by Turning Point Academy.
00:15:30.000I want to encourage all of you, if you want to homeschool, start a church hybrid school.
00:15:34.000Get involved in our Educators Summit today.
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00:15:50.000Bill, continue on what you were saying and tell us about Squanto.
00:15:54.000Yeah, so the pilgrims switched from company to covenant.
00:15:58.000The company bylaws that says, okay, here's this system.
00:16:02.000We're going to take it away from you and we're going to distribute it to, look, you get your own plot of land.
00:16:07.000You grow, you become prosperous, and then you voluntarily take care of your neighbor because you're doing it as unto God.
00:16:15.000And so you have the pilgrim pastor was John Robinson.
00:16:20.000He says, we are knit together as a body in covenant of the Lord.
00:16:24.000We so hold ourselves tied to all to care for each other's good.
00:16:30.000Margaret Thatcher, she writes, your founding fathers look after one another, not only as a matter of necessity, but as a matter of duty to their God.
00:16:39.000And then the founder of the Puritan, Massachusetts, John Winthrop, gives his famous speech in 1630. This love among Christians is a real thing, not imaginary.
00:16:51.000It's absolutely necessary to the being of the body of Christ.
00:16:54.000We are accompanied, professing ourselves fellow members of Christ.
00:16:58.000We are to account ourselves knit together by this bond of love.
00:17:01.000We must make one another's condition our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together.
00:17:06.000We shall find that the God of Israel is among us.
00:17:09.000You know, people say, well, wasn't the early church socialist?
00:17:11.000No, the early church was the early church.
00:17:14.000Socialism is counterfeit early church, and the difference is between the word voluntary and involuntary, right?
00:17:21.000So you're blessed with goods, and then you voluntarily take care of your neighbor because you're doing as unto God.
00:17:52.000So the pilgrims were religious, but there were other groups that weren't, and they were pirates.
00:17:57.000So Spain had a monopoly on the New World for at least a century, and they had gold from Inca, Peru, and from Portobello, Panama, and they'd take it to Cuba and ship it.
00:18:08.000And these Dutch and French and English pirates would raid the gold, but they would also sail up the coast of North America, lure unsuspecting Indians on board, lock them below deck, take them over to Malaga, Spain, and sell them into slavery.
00:18:23.000So one of the Indians that was captured was Guanto, and the story is he was purchased by some monks in Spain who gave him his freedom.
00:18:31.000He hitchhikes his way across Europe, gets to England.
00:18:35.000He's there for a dozen years, working, learning the language, and he finally finds some business that takes him to Newfoundland, right, a fishing type outfit, and then he gets the boat to drop him off at Plymouth, Massachusetts, only to find his whole tribe is dead.
00:19:02.000Indians never left watching them and dogging them until they got the advantage, killed them all but three or four, made sport with them worse than slaves.
00:19:09.000Anyway, one of those Frenchmen must have had an illness, and the Indians didn't have immunity, and it wipes out the tribe.
00:19:16.000So sort of in a reverse sense, had Squanto not been captured and kidnapped, he most certainly would have died.
00:19:23.000But Squanto's living with the neighboring Wampanoag tribe, and then that fall is when the pilgrims show up.
00:19:31.000Half of the pilgrims die the first winter.
00:19:33.000They wouldn't have survived another year.
00:19:36.000Spring of 1621, walking into their camp is Squanto.
00:19:40.000And you can just picture the conversation.
00:19:42.000I mean, he's in his loincloth and he goes up and he goes, oh yeah, you guys from London?
00:20:19.000Taught them how to take the corn and put it in a pot, shake it and make popcorn, right?
00:20:24.000And then he taught them how to go down to the riverbank, squeegee in the mud and catch eels and clams and lobsters and Then, how to catch beaver skins.
00:20:33.000It took 40 years worth of beaver skins to pay off their debt for the boat ride.
00:20:39.000It wasn't like Latin in South America with gold.
00:20:57.000And so it became a craze in London where doctors would prescribe tobacco.
00:21:02.000Anyway, but that was Virginia's cash crop.
00:21:05.000Massachusetts didn't have anything other than beaver skins, and it took 40 years of beaver skins for these pilgrims to pay off those investors for their boat ride.
00:21:14.000But Squanto was their interpreter, put them on good terms with the Indians, and they had an abundant harvest, and they had their first Thanksgiving.
00:21:25.000Now, half the pilgrims died the first winter, so there's 102 of them, so you're basically down to 51. 90 Indians show up.
00:21:33.000Nearly twice as many Indians were at the first Thanksgiving than pilgrims.
00:21:38.000And the Indians show up with deer and turkey, and at the end of the day, the Indians roll up in their blankets and go to sleep.
00:21:45.000And the next day, they're there, and Thanksgiving goes on a second day.
00:21:49.000And they're doing foot races and arm wrestling, and then they roll open their blankets, go to sleep, and the next day they're still there.
00:21:56.000So the first Thanksgiving went on for three days.
00:22:00.000So it's just an interesting aspect that they were at peace with each other.
00:22:07.000Matter of fact, a year later, the chief Massasoit gets sick.
00:22:13.000And the pilgrim, Edward Winslow, goes and doctors him up, and he recovers.
00:22:20.000And so that turned into a 50-year peace that the pilgrims and the Indians had.
00:22:48.000Yeah, so to kind of summarize all that, what do you think, Bill, are some of the one or two big lessons from all that that apply to today and that we can really kind of pry away from them and internalize for what we're living through?
00:23:04.000Well, personally, the thought of Squanto being sold into slavery and then rescuing the pilgrims, you got the Bible story of Joseph being sold into slavery by his brothers, but then he goes down to Egypt and becomes right hand of the Pharaoh, and he provides for the other children of Israel to survive.
00:23:22.000So sometimes the pains that you go through in your life, the good Lord can use those to later have you be able to minister to somebody else that's going through struggles.
00:23:32.000One of the things I point out in history is there's two threads, greed and the gospel.
00:23:38.000And you always have people motivated by the gospel.
00:23:40.000And they're the ones that want to be friends with the Indians.
00:23:43.000And today, you know, they dig wells and villages and start hospitals and medical clinics and schools.
00:23:49.000Most of the schools and universities were started by churches.
00:23:51.000But then you always have people motivated by greed.
00:23:54.000And they're the ones that take land from the Indians, sell people into slavery, and vote for candidates they think will help their pocketbook, even though they stand for immorality.
00:24:02.000Those two threads go through each of our hearts every single day.
00:25:14.000I mean, this British have the most powerful military in the world, and we capture 6,000 of their soldiers, so we have a national day of Thanksgiving.
00:25:21.000And then George Washington has a day of Thanksgiving when we Finally, do the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
00:25:29.000So he's thanking God for our form of government.
00:25:32.000You come up to, oh, the War of 1812, James Madison has a day of fasting, and then after the war has a day of Thanksgiving.
00:25:40.000But Lincoln's the one who made the day of Thanksgiving an annual event.
00:25:44.000And then every president from Lincoln up to the present has had a national day of Thanksgiving.
00:25:50.000But it's, you know, it's important for us to be grateful.
00:25:55.000You know, when you are thankful that it is something that the good Lord will bless you even more if you're thankful for what he's given you.
00:26:07.000I tell people, you know, in a sense, just sort of simplifying, God has plan A and plan B. Plan A is he blesses us so much and we turn to him out of gratefulness.
00:26:18.000If that doesn't work, there is plan B. He withholds his blessings, right?
00:26:23.000And he hides his face is what it says.
00:26:25.000And he lets us experience the consequences of our selfish decisions.
00:26:29.000And when it gets bad, we cry out to him out of desperation and then he delivers us.
00:26:33.000His goal is to have us turn to him and it's a whole lot easier.
00:26:36.000He blesses us, and we turn to Him out of gratefulness.
00:26:41.000Everybody, email us freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:26:43.000Also, check out Bill Federer's American Minute at americanminute.com.
00:26:48.000I also want to reinforce, for those of you that might be in the car right now on Thanksgiving or watching, On Real America's Voice or listening on podcasting, if you are upset with your child's school or if you want to have an alternative, we at Turning Point USA are really building something substantial and real.
00:27:05.000The church hybrid model, the homeschool, the pod schooling, all the resources we have for you guys at turningpointacademy.com.
00:27:12.000You guys can fill out an inquiry form there and contact us right there.
00:27:16.000The team at Turning Point Academy is working very hard.
00:27:20.000Bill, what did you see that is giving you hope that historically shows us that the citizen is rising and that the authoritarianism is going to finally be put on its heels?
00:27:30.000Well, it is a crisis that causes people to wake up.
00:27:35.000I tell people it's in times of crisis that people turn to Christ, but it's also in times of crisis that leaders are raised up.
00:27:41.000And what are the stories in the Bible that we love the most?
00:27:46.000You got the Pharaoh charging in with his chariots, and you got an 80-year-old man, Moses, that stands up, or you have a huge Goliath, and it looks hopeless, and God raises up a teenager, David.
00:27:58.000There's 100,000 Midianites coming in, and here, you know, Gideon with 300 defeats him.
00:28:03.000It's almost like the good Lord likes to wait until things look hopeless, and then he raises up little nobodies with faith and courage to turn things around, and this is just our turn.
00:28:13.000But I do see that, for example, that COVID causes parents to look over the shoulder of their kids and see what they're being taught, all this transgender type stuff, and they're like, wait a second, and now parents are beginning to say, maybe I do need to take more of an interest in what my kids are being taught.
00:28:34.000Use a little illustration that you are a spirit, mind, and body.
00:28:38.000So your mind, in a sense, is like a super fancy computer.
00:28:43.000It's more than that, but it's at least that.
00:28:46.000And your body's like the computer case, which makes it silly for people to argue over what color the computer case is.
00:28:52.000Imagine if I were to say blue computers are better than red computers, right?
00:28:55.000It doesn't really matter what color the case is, but it matters what software is running on it.
00:29:00.000And so the battle is, who gets to load the software on the next generation's brains?
00:29:05.000And is it, you know, love your enemies, do good to them that bless you, or is it cancel them, get them to lose their job?
00:29:10.000And the other side wants to put their malware and their viruses and their corrupted files on these little kids' brains, right?
00:29:16.000And so the battle is, who gets to teach the next generation?
00:29:28.000Bill, tell us about, you know, historically you write a lot about this, about how sometimes your back is up against the wall and, you know, there's the odds seem against you, but we as Americans never give up.
00:30:45.000We're not talking dominionism or theocracy or shoving stuff down your throat.
00:30:49.000No, our founders were dedicated to you having the freedom of conscience.
00:30:55.000goes back to the concept that God is love and he wants you to love him.
00:30:58.000But for love to be loved, it must be voluntary.
00:31:00.000The moment it's forced, it evaporates.
00:31:02.000Jesus never forced anybody to follow him.
00:31:05.000We can't force anybody to follow him, but we want to have an atmosphere where there's the freedom for people to choose.
00:31:10.000And we don't want kids being indoctrinated with something that's anti faith.
00:31:14.000And, um, but, uh, but we're a country.
00:31:17.000So you have us breaking away, um, You look at the War of 1812. The British had invested a lot of money in the Bank of the United States, and they were beginning to control our politics, sort of these globalist bankers.
00:31:33.000And you had James Madison cancel the charter.
00:31:37.000Of the Bank of the United States because it had, you know, a good percentage of it was European and English investments.
00:31:45.000And then they decided, well, they weren't happy.