Today, in America is Thanksgiving Day. It is a day of celebration of what we have made of God’s gift to us all. Its history reaches all the way back to our Pilgrim forebearers, who felt called to thank God that they had survived the first year in the Massachusetts Bay.
Now it is a day of parades, football, serious overeating, and sleeping off that overeating by sleeping through the football on TV. But I think we all deep in our hearts do remember to thank “The Big Guy” for all we have, and the freedom to enjoy it.
President Washington certainly knew something about dark days, far darker than ours are today, and he (and Congress) thought it fit to remember the Author of our blessings. So should we.
From the Heritage Foundation
Thanksgiving Proclamation
Issued by President George Washington, at the request of Congress, on October 3, 1789By the President of the United States of America, a Proclamation.
Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor; and—Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me “to recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness:”
Now, therefore, I do recommend and assign Thursday, the 26th day of November next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favor, able interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquillity, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted; for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and, in general, for all the great and various favors which He has been pleased to confer upon us.
And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations, and beseech Him to pardon our national and other trangressions; to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shown kindness to us), and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and, generally, to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best.
Given under my hand at the City of New York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789.
Go. Washington
That’s the reason for the day put as well as anyone has, ever.
My family’s traditional table grace is this
In the press of daily events, it is not always easy to remember just how good we have it. Perry Metzger at Samizdata sums it up well.
We live lives of such astonishing wealth that we scarcely notice it. Only a fool would rather be an Emperor in 1600 than a poor person living today. Compared to a king of several centuries ago, poor people in the developed world live in astonishing luxury. In the developed world, we eat fresh vegetables in midwinter, our homes are heated toasty warm in the winter and cooled and dehumidified in the summer, we travel in enormous comfort (no wooden wheeled carriages without shock absorbers for us, and indeed, we can fly to the other side of the world for a quite modest sum of money), our medical care is incomparably better, our beds more comfortable, our entertainment options beyond any potentate’s wildest dreams. This is true even of quite poor people, at least in developed countries.
Whence comes this bounty? It is not because of union organizing, or minimum wage laws, or the triumph of the proletariat over the evil factory owners. Indeed, a few centuries ago, there were few mass production factories to triumph over.
No, the source of this bounty is productivity, and the engines of productivity are deferred consumption being invested in improved infrastructure (that is, capital accumulation), improved technology, and specialization. Thanks to our better means of making things and the sacrifices needed to construct those means, productivity per worker is orders of magnitude higher, and thus there’s more stuff to go around.
Read it all, but realize this is the characteristic Anglo-American achievement, that we have shared with all the world, along with the freedom to enjoy it. Not to mention the freedom to create it, which is why it started with our peoples.
It is indeed meet that we thank our God for our Blessings.
Arkenaten said:
I’ll spare a thought for the millions of turkeys unnecessarily slaughtered just so you can remember a bunch of Christians who fled Europe to avoid persecution from other Christians, and later, some of whose descendants would lie, cheat, steal, and be responsible for one of the worse genocides in human history.
Jesus would be proud!
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jim- said:
When Europe arrived in America, it was pristine. Now you have to pay at a toll booth to see pristine. Some doctrines are just damaging from their core.
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NEO said:
You do that, as you should for birds that are by far your intellectual superior. It is time for you to take the sex and travel option. You’ve polluted this neighborhood for too long.
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Scoop said:
I guess the American Indian’s revenge on the Europeans was syphilis. I wonder if the Indians would ever have found a cure were it not for the white Europeans? Of course they also died from parasites and microorganisms that were common as were the deaths caused by anemia as they had little to no iron in their diet.
Funny how they love the idea of evolution and the survival of the species and yet when it is one of their favorite groups of people they are outraged that those who were not survivors of the previous European epidemics introduced diseases they had no resistance to. We underwent the same thing many centuries before and these were the survivors. That’s life in the fast lane for you survival of the fittest types. The fit will survive and must endure the toll of the first outbreaks. Time for them to get over it.
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NEO said:
Yep, and the Wampanoag were bloody glad to see the Pilgrims, they got along for a reason. The Iroquois had almost depopulated Massachusetts of all the other indigenous tribes, always torturing the captives to death. It wasn’t nearly as cut and dried as modern fools like to say. Good and ad on all sides, as always.
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Arkenaten said:
Are you truly suggesting I f**k off?
Oh, how very Christian of you!
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NEO said:
I am indeed. Somebody once said something about casting pearls at swine, I follow that guy.
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Arkenaten said:
The pig has more integrity than many humans I could name.
You could learn a thing or two from the lowly pig.
And I don’t eat them either.
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Charlie said:
When I was an atheist, I had to point out to my fellow atheists in my godless meetup group that the body count argument was a bad one for us because of Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot whose slaughters eclipse anything done by Christians. They tried to make the pathetic argument that communism was a “religion.” If so, it was certainly a godless religion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_communist_regimes
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Arkenaten said:
Bad people do bad things.
Religion makes good people do bad things.
Somehow Christians seem to think they can justify their actions by playing the numbers game.
Why on earth did you feel the need to be part of a ”godless meetup group”.
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Arkenaten said:
Test
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