11/22/2006 - HAPPY THANKSGIVING
Happy Thanksgiving. I mean it.
I hope we can all appreciate what we have, and what we've earned as a society and culture. We have it so good here in the United States - no wonder overseas dictatorial regimes are so jealous and envious of us. Sadly, we squabble, point fingers at one another, assign blame, refuse any responsibility and, often, fracture our own selves and those we love with anger, bitterness and animosity. Our Mid-Eastern adversaries must get quite a kick over watching us trip over ourselves to apologize for and lament over that which we have in such bountiful plentitude - that precious gift they spill blood with wanton disregard to deny the same to their own people.
I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving. I hope we, as individuals and as a nation, can center ourselves again. We lean too right or too left but lately, it seems we are leaning toward defeat and to those who would do us harm, and oftentimes breaking our backs to do so.
I am proud to be an American. I am proud of our heritage. I do not regret living in the land of the free. I make no apologies for the fact that I have freedoms that most others in our world do not have. And I appreciate them every morning, afternoon, evening and night. For that, I am most thankful. I am grateful to those who serve this country with bravery and honor and wish them all safety and peace in those places where I know the very concepts are tenuous or utterly foreign.
For those who wish not Thanksgiving, but a pardon from the world for the imagined atrocities of Western Civilization, I still wish you a Happy Thanksgiving. And then I wish that you would go wherever you think things are so much better than they are here. Your voices carry from the home stand bleachers, but there is plenty of room across the field.
Happy Thanksgiving, and I wish you a Merry Christmas to come ...