In the past month, we’ve both eaten turkeys and voted them out of office—but the roots between Thanksgiving, politics, war, and the Nutmeg State go deeper than that.

Connecticut is known as the Constitution State because it was the home of the first written constitution in the history of the world, but it could also equally well be called the Thanksgiving State because it was the home of the first adoption of an annual day of general thanksgiving.

The funny thing is, both happened in the same year.

What was so special about 1639? We had just defeated the Pequot Indians, whose name translates either as “the destroyers” or “a shallow body of water.” No one knows for sure. (In 350 years, how will “al Qaeda” be translated?) The war was fought over our ability to trade fur freely, or at least that’s what I wish it were about. There had been violence from both sides and one attack in particular, their version of our 9/11, was blamed on the Pequots, though apparently another tribe altogether was responsible.

Nevertheless, we fought the Pequots and essentially wiped them out. We won the war in 1637.

Note that September, 1637 was not “the end of major combat operations” but the end of the war .

We won.

It was over.

The next year, Connecticut started forming a government. It took several months to write a constitution, called the Fundamental Orders. It was a document that would later serve as a template for the American constitution, and one whose text is still included as Article 1 in the current Connecticut constitution, adopted in 1965, as the “Declaration of Rights.”

They knew what they were doing in deciding to write down how they wished to be governed. It kept those in charge from changing the rules of the game. It secured freedoms.

The constitution was adopted January 14, 1639, and eight months later, on September 18, 1639, Connecticut proclaimed the adoption of an annual day of general thanksgiving.

Peace bore fruit.

Peace meant feasts.

What’s going on with Iraq? If we won the war, why are we still fighting? What does it mean to have won if we won’t be governing the province as a territory but giving it back to the same people we took it from? What if the Iraqis elect basically the same government we overthrew? Do we have to come back?

If our military took its cues from our Connecticut forefathers, we would have won the war in Iraq convincingly. We would have established a constitution for the region, whose primary aim is protecting property rights. And the resulting freedom would have been celebrated with a feast for all.

Could the constitution been written correctly? Sure. A constitution is not hard to write when you have such excellent models as the American version. But the Iraqis, guided by the Americans, chose a different direction. They chose to essentially copy the Communist platform.

What a mistake. The Iraqi constitution guarantees employment at a decent wage for every citizen of Iraq. It guarantees education “at all levels,” presumably including everything from a videotape of Sesame Street to a particle accelerator. The Iraqi constitution guarantees housing, health care, retirement and disability benefits, and everything else you could imagine. The oil is owned by all Iraqis, managed by the central government, and its profits distributed to the various ethnicities based, quite literally, on “need.”

Could we have afforded a monstrous feast?

Sure.

We’ve spent much more than $300 billion on the war. There are about 30 million Iraqis. That’s $10,000 for every Iraqi man, woman, and child. A few years ago, before we devastated their economy, the median income in Iraq was about $250 per year. That means half the people earned less. Instead of the war, we could have paid every Iraqi the equivalent of 40 years of salary.

If we had just taken a cue from our Connecticut forefathers, we would have won the war, created a proper constitution, and celebrated with an annual feast for many centuries.

We continue to celebrate, in freedom, our annual Thanksgiving here in the Constitution State. We’ve just done so. We could have given the same gift to Iraq. Instead we’ve established the next Soviet Union. The Iraqis won’t be able to feed themselves or pump enough oil until their constitution is rewritten, because Communism doesn’t work.

We didn’t learn from the success of our Connecticut forefathers, and so it may be another century before there is a feast in Iraq.

phil@maymin.com
Phil Maymin was the Libertarian candidate for congress in Connecticut’s Fourth Congressional District this fall.
This article originally appeared in the Fairfield County Weekly on November 30, 2006