It strikes me that thanks are, all too often, no longer enough a
part of Thanksgiving. It appalls me that many churches don’t even
hold Thanksgiving services — even though the day itself is
specifically intended to be a day of giving thanks to God for the
blessings of the American nation.
We give thanks on this day specifically as, and because we are,
Americans.
In that light, in addition to all my private thanksgivings, here
are some of the things for which I will thank God tomorrow, on
Thanksgiving Day.
I thank God for the incredible collection of genius and
foresight and learning and public-spiritedness that blessed this
nation’s founding generation. Particularly, its first six
presidents — Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and
J.Q. Adams — were men of such high character and high intellect
that they would surely have stood out in any land at any time in
human history. Combine them with Ben Franklin and Alexander
Hamilton, with George Mason and Roger Sherman, with James Wilson
and Charles Pinckney, with Robert Livingston and Robert Morris and
Gouverneur Morris and John Jay and John Dickinson and William
Paterson, along with Sam Adams and with tradesmen such as Paul
Revere, and you have a nation not just well served but
awe-inspiringly graced at its very inception. (And may we also
remember the truth of what John Adams said, that “Our Constitution
was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly
inadequate to the government of any other.”)
I thank God for American statesmen throughout our history:
statesmen (and women) and military leaders too numerous to name but
who seem always to appear whenever the most perilous times call
them forth. When we needed a George C. Marshall, he was here. When
we needed a Jeane Kirkpatrick, here she was. When we faced
economic, military, and diplomatic weakness in the late 1970s of a
sort almost unimaginable just 20 years earlier…well, there was
Ronald Reagan, with his optimism and his unyielding conservative
principles and his political and communicative skills, and his
bedrock belief in American exceptionalism.
I thank God for the hundreds of thousands of servicemen and
women who have given their lives for their country, and the tens of
millions who have risked their lives, and the thousands (John
McCain, Jeremiah Denton, Sam Johnson, and Orson Swindle among them)
who endured captivity and torture in service for our freedom. I
thank God for those who fight for us now in Afghanistan and Iraq,
winning wars and securing peace in places and times where and when
some pathetic U.S. senators say victory is unattainable and peace
unsecurable. And I thank the Lord that some senators, such as Henry
Jackson against the Soviet Communists and Joe Lieberman against
Islamic terrorists, have the courage to break with their political
party in service of the national interest.
I thank the Lord for our Constitution, for our rule of law, and
for allowing us the freedom in which civic virtue has a chance to
flourish.
Thank the Lord for our prosperity. Thank Him for our generosity
as a people. Thank him for our sense of questing, our love of
discovery, our commitments to free minds and free markets that
allow excellence to flourish, science and medicine to advance, and
art of all sorts to thrive.
Thank the Lord for our sense of play. Thank Him for our games
and our sports. Thank Him for the music that grew from our culture,
for jazz and its offspring, and R&B and its offspring, for
zydeco and Cajun and folk and country. Many nations have great
musical traditions, but none have ones so varied and rich.
Thank the Lord for our fertile soil, for the breathtaking beauty
of our coasts and mountains, for our teeming forests and our
life-filled oceans, seas, lakes, and rivers. Thank Him for the
provision of sustenance from that soil and those forests and
waters; and for the ability to labor to secure such sustenance for
ourselves and our families, whom we hold dear.
Thank the Lord for the colors of autumn. I drive down a
Washington, D.C. street or a Virginia highway and find myself
overwhelmed, almost overcome, by the phantasmagoric displays of
yellow and oranges, reds and greens, coppers and bronzes, and of
multitudinous shadings thereof. They are a balm for the spirit, and
a visual feast.
This entire land, indeed, is a Horn of Plenty, and we are the
people blessed to share its fruit. As we do, may we be ever
grateful to the Author of our blessings, and ever mindful of the
needs of others. Amen. Amen. A Great Amen.
