Thanksgiving Isn't About Bulldozers

The Aspen Times ^ | 11/25/08 | Addison Gardner

[Titmouse]

With Thanksgiving two days away and family inbound from Boulder and Atlanta, I wanted to write about what this day means to me.

The idea of Thanksgiving puts a lump in my throat in a way that even Christmas doesn’t, because this is a holiday that showcases courageous individualism.

Thanksgiving celebrates people who abandoned their homes in search of freedom of worship, freedom of expression, and freedom of association and enterprise.

Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving in October and, while theirs is a more pointedly secular observance, the origins of the day are similar to ours. Canadian Thanksgiving is based upon a 16th-century explorer’s successful completion of a foray into uncharted wilderness.

So, Thanksgiving in North America is about the expression of gratitude for freedom, first and foremost. We join hands and give thanks for the purest part of North America’s genetic heritage: Ancestors who migrated across the Bering Strait, braving the frigid gales of a prehistoric Ice Age, and ancestors who followed the sun, west, across the boundless Atlantic.

Almost everything of value — every discovery, every invention and innovation — has come about because somebody rejected convention and separated from the herd. There are very few American monuments to the byproduct of committees.

[Titmouse]

A Thanksgiving column that underscores what we have to be grateful for, and it isn't "government security."

[Dilbert San Diego]

We all should count our blessings. Life has challenges, and there are difficulties in the economy,etc. but we all have things to be thankful for. And those things we are thankful for are much more important than a government program.