An American Gives Thanks

Perhaps this is just one of those “obligatory” be thankful posts as we near Thanksgiving.  I’ve not written one before and if I get flamed to heck for this one, may not write another.  Being thankful for our families, our health and food on the table is expected.  I am certainly thankful for those things and so much more.

It’s easy to look at a table full of turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce and yams and be grateful that it is so.  Looking around the table at family we don’t see often enough adds to the sentiment.  Those are the obvious things for which we should all be thankful, but are we still ungrateful?

Americans are different.  America is different.  It is, as Alexis de Toqueville said, “The great American experiment”.  A gift from our founding fathers and God himself.  The chance to finally let each individual human make his or her own path through life.  That is what we should be thankful for.  We are individuals and require individual rights, afforded us by God himself, protected with the lives of truly grateful patriots (past and present) and that should be limited by no man – none.

Before progressives started re-directing the great experiment in the ways of its failed socialistic predecessors, we did not have the government telling us what we could not eat, what toys we may or may not have in our kids happy meals, what we could or could not smoke, what poor is, or much of anything else.  Now, many Americans think it’s perfectly fine to let the government make those calls because the government provides healthcare, retirement benefits and money for the unemployed.  We have given up some of our freedoms for that security – as Benjamin Franklin put it in his letter to Jane Mecom, “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety“.

Being thankful is not as simple as saying grace before a meal or writing a thank you note.  To show gratitude for the liberties so many have fought and died to give us, we have to decide that they are worth at least that sacrifice on our part.  If we are truly grateful for such a wonderful gift, should we not be willing to give everything to keep it?  If we are willing to make the sacrifices necessary to restore our liberties, only then will we be able to offer that same gift to our children and theirs.

We must be thankful for are those things that make us unique: the opportunity given to us as Americans.  It is something that no other human on the face of the Earth can hope to have save immigration.  It is something that many try to obtain illegally because it is the greatest gift anyone can hope to hold.  Freedom – or as Ben Franklin once replied, “..  a republic if you can keep it”.