Abraham Lincoln’s Message to Us This Thanksgiving

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American Thinker

It was at this grave turning point in the American Civil War that President Lincoln issued this proclamation on October 3, 1863:

It is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God; to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations are blessed whose God is the Lord.

We know that by His divine law, nations, like individuals, are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world. May we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war which now desolates the land may be a punishment inflicted upon us for the presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole people?

We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown.

 

But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.

Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us. It has seemed to me fit and proper that God should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people.

I do, therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November as a day of Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens.

[Geee]

No, Thanksgiving Isn’t About ‘Genocide And Violence’

Americans have a great and exuberant tradition that touches our sense of belonging and our pride in coming together. No, I am not referring to Thanksgiving, that festival of gratitude, generosity, and welcome. I am referring to the equally great and exuberant tradition of trash-talking other people.

Supposedly we have reformed. Ethnic slurs that were once common have retreated to the dark corners of dive bars and the even darker corners of anti-social media. We live in a time when a whole new admonitory vocabulary has emerged to warn people away from anything remotely racist. “Cultural appropriation” is taboo—as must be the word “taboo” itself, a Tongan word appropriated into English by Capt. James Cook.

We worry about demeaning stereotypes, microaggressions, implicit bias, normativity, neo-colonialism, and the “othering” of others. Surely we are more enlightened than those vile, imperialistic, hate-filled, white, heteronormative people who… Oops.

Ethnic slurs haven’t disappeared. They have just slipped into a new register. Black lives matter, but “all lives matter?” Them’s fighting words. Attacking someone else, after all, is a classic way of demonstrating loyalty to one’s own group, claiming group superiority, and policing the edges.

Gyasi Ross, a Blackfeet (Native American) author (Huffington Post, Gawker, and Indian Country Today) attorney, “rapper, speaker and storyteller,” explained on MSNBC the other day, speaking of the Mayflower Pilgrims, “Instead of bringing stuffing and biscuits, those settlers brought genocide and violence.” Speaking of Thanksgiving, Ross adds, “That genocide and violence is still on the menu.”

If take this as an attempt to right the historical record, it is hopeless. The Pilgrims didn’t bring “genocide” to America. They barely brought themselves, with half of their company dying that first winter, in 1620-21.

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Thanksgiving Is Meant For The Bad Times As Much As The Good

Gratitude is a virtue. It’s moral and it’s healthy. Thanksgiving is a day to practice this virtue, rendering the efforts to rebrand the holiday an attack on thankfulness itself. In times of war and times of peace, there is always reason for pain. That we have a holiday dedicated to gratitude does not invalidate any of these reasons. It soothes our pains but does not dismiss them.

Indeed, President Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday in the midst of the Civil War, making this very argument explicitly in his proclamation. Thanksgiving has always been about pausing in bad times to give thanks for the good.

[Geee]

What We’re Thankful For

If we were to be honest, the list of things we are thankful for would be far, far too long to catalog.

Of course, we are thankful for our families and friends. For living in this exceptional nation, and for the patriots who defend it.

We are thankful for a loving God. We’re thankful for the freedom we have to worship Him.

But there is so much more.

We’re thankful for smiles and words of encouragement. For comfort when we’re suffering. We’re thankful for the beauty that is all around us. We’re thankful for every moment of joy we’ve ever experienced, no matter how fleeting. We’re thankful for countless other things, big and small.

[Geee]

The 1621 Project: Why Thanksgiving is the quintessential American holiday

The Pilgrims landing on Plymouth Rock in 1620 is one of the most pivotal moments in Western civilization. Their joint celebration with the Wampanoag in 1621 embarked them on a new project. This 1621 Project would lay the foundations for the future generations of America. Similar to the way the autumn harvest yielded an abundance of food for a celebration, the seeds planted by our Thanksgiving forefathers would bloom into a new way of thinking, acting, and governing. From the rigors of the harsh conditions of New England winters, the fruits of the labor of the 1621 Project would bear what would become perhaps the greatest harvest in the world: the United States of America.

From the humble beginnings through a clash of civilizations to the birth of a constitutional republic, the 1621 Project would change the course of humanity. It yielded a new world, a new country, and a freer kind of government. It has been a long, tough journey. It hasn't been a perfect evolution from the time of the Pilgrims and Wampanoag and there are plenty of blemishes throughout. However, what humanity often got wrong throughout its existence, the U.S. has fought to get right.

Today, many try to tear this country down by vilifying its past. They target its history and denounce it under the misnomer as a society of oppression. These enemies of freedom lambaste this country for failing to live up to the impossible standards of a nirvana that only exists in their ideologically corrupted minds. All too often, they emphasize our sins while ignoring our successes. Today, many of them even denounce the celebration of Thanksgiving as an act of racial oppression. Their objective is for the complete dissolution of all the progress made since the Pilgrims and Wampanoag tribe joined together. They want to create a form of government that we have spent centuries trying to escape from.