-By Warner Todd Huston
Like most conservatives, I felt Election Day was the end of the United States of America. I am not convinced going forward that it isn’t, either. But on this day of giving thanks for what we do have, it would be a mistake not to be grateful for the things with which we have, in our good fortune, been blessed. There are things that we should and must be thankful for.
What are those things? What should we be thankful for? Well, certainly there are all manner of things we should be thankful for as individuals. Our loved ones, friends, perhaps our health and good fortunes. But, as a nation, there are many things to be thankful for, even if those things seem fleeting. Granted, there are many things other than what I list below that we should be thankful for. I have no intention of claiming this list is comprehensive.
So, first and foremost, as a nation we should be thankful for our founders’ vision of a nation created on the premise of self-government, freedom and liberty.
This one sticks in the left’s craw. They point to slavery and say that the existence of that “peculiar institution” invalidates the claim that the nation was built on freedom. They say that because women and the poor weren’t allowed to vote, well that proves that freedom and liberty was not an American founding principle.
To put it kindly, I am not thankful for the left’s poor education.
After all, one cannot judge using today’s standards the founder’s amazing deviation from the whole of human history up to that point, a history that saw the strong trampling the weak since men first started gathering together in groups.
Anyway, we should be thankful that the founders set the stage for the freedoms we enjoy today. Without their ideals, their plans, their debates, we would not have become the leader of the free world and the best nation on earth.
We should also be thankful for the many millions who immigrated to this country, those veritable masses of the world yearning to be free. Grateful for and, frankly, proud of those who have come here from elsewhere from before we were a country to today, peoples who came here to become Americans, accept our basic tenets, and partake of our freedoms while adding their genius to our culture.
We should be thankful for the robust debate we have almost always had in this country (the Alien and Sedition Act and the Gag Rule aside). Our freedom of political speech is one of the geniuses from our founders and we must be thankful for it.
We must all be thankful for our military. After all, in many other countries the military is a thing that the people fear. In many countries the military hangs like the Sword of Damocles over the heads of the people and the government alike, poised and ready to strike down upon the country whenever it feels things are not going to its advantage. In the U.S.A. we are thankful that our military has been there for our defense but otherwise observe both the rule of law and their subservience to civilian control.
Finally, for this article, we must be thankful that we, the people, have the power to guide this nation onward both politically and socially.
Oh, and chocolate cream pie. Well, it is Thanksgiving.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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