Amidst the turkey and football and the pumpkin pie (or whatever else you indulge in), please remember that today is both a day of faith and a day of patriotism.

This is a day set aside to thank God for all our blessings, but particularly and specifically to thank God for our American blessings. We should take a moment, or more (church attendance, anyone) to pray.

Only you know the things for which you are or should be thankful personally.
But nationally, we should thank God for blessings unmatched in any other country.

I wish I had time to write a full essay on this today. But among the things (or people) for which I am thankful are:

  1. The most remarkable conglomeration of talent, genius, and character, in one short time period and one (relatively) small place, that may ever have existed: George Washington, Ben Franklin, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Roger Sherman, Alexander Hamilton. John Dickinson, Robert Livingston, Abigail Adams, Gouverneur Morris, Roger Morris, George Mason…. and many others (and with the wonderful help from the Marquis de Lafayette)…..
  2. Our tradition of “the rights of Englishmen” stretching back to Magna Carta, the Declaration of Arbroath, and the Glorious Revolution of 1689.
  3. Particularly our recognition of the nation’s — and mankind’s rightfully — First Freedom, namely religious liberty, drawing again upon those earlier documents mentioned above and also enshrined in the Mayflower Compact and in the growing traditions that found expression, in 1776, in the Virginia Declaration of Rights.
  4. The Declaration of Independence, relying on Divine Providence, with fealty to its principles backed by “lives, fortunes, and sacred honor.”
  5. Our Constitution, described by the Brit William Gladstone as “the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.”
  6. Patriots through the years, a relative few of them nationally known and hundreds of thousands, even millions, known only to their families, who have given life or limb for liberty and the cause of country.
  7. Great political and military leaders through the decades, including Knox, Polk, Lincoln, Cleveland, Pershing, Eisenhower, MacArthur, Bradley, Reagan, Clarence Thomas… and other statesmen of only barely lesser light, like Clay, Webster, two Tafts, Scalia, Kemp, Cheney….
  8. Our incalculable natural beauty, climate, resources, and providential geographical location.
  9. Did I mention our freedom? Oh, yes, and our freedom, our freedom, our freedom, our freedom.
  10. …. and so, so, so, so, so much more. Thank you, God, for these United States.

— Quin

 

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