Thanksgiving
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Give me Liberty
Rodger Williamson
Celebrated on the fourth Thursday of each November, “Thanksgiving” is a time-honored tradition that dates back to our earliest days upon this continent as settlers.
The first “thanksgiving” in what would eventually become the United States was celebrated 411 years ago, at Jamestown, in the British Colony of Virginia in the year 1610. A day of thanksgiving was held in order to celebrate the arrival of English supply ships after the “starving time” winter of 1609-1610. The Pilgrims in New England would not celebrate their now famous harvest thanksgiving in Plymouth until 11 years later in 1621.
The Continental Congress proclaimed our first National Day of Thanksgiving in 1777, and George Washington made a proclamation for a Day of Thanksgiving in 1789. Thanksgiving has been celebrated nationally off and on ever since.
President Abraham Lincoln is given credit for proclaiming in 1863 that our National Thanksgiving Day be celebrated the final Thursday of November.
In 1870, President Ulysses S. Grant signed into law the Holidays Act that made Thanksgiving a yearly “appointed or remembered” federal holiday. And in December of 1941, the Senate passed an amendment to a prior resolution that designated that Thanksgiving be observed annually on the fourth Thursday of November.
As we celebrate all that we may be thankful for this Thanksgiving weekend of 2021, I ask, how thankful are you with our elected representatives in our local, state and federal governments? Since they are supposed to work for you, as their employer, are you thankful for their accomplishments while in office, or disappointed?
Are you thankful for our $28.9 TRILLION national debt (FYI – one trillion is equal to one-million-million) that is 125.9% of our GDP?
Are you thankful for a Federal Reserve that has painted itself into a corner by maintaining extremely low interest rates so as to not pop the economic bubble that it has created?
Are you happy with the current inflation, thanks to our government’s poor fiscal policies?
Are you thankful for a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms that infringes upon your 2nd Amendment Rights?
Are you thankful for a National Security Agency that has violated your 4th Amendment protections by surveilling every bit of digital data that you have ever created?
Are you thankful for a Department of Education that violates your 10th Amendment protection from the federal government?
Are you thankful for the 10 cents per gallon tax that Governor Kay Ivey railroaded through the Alabama Legislature last year?
Are you thankful that President Biden is on track to have issued more executive orders than any other U.S. president in history?
I’ll be honest, I truly have a lot to be thankful for, but I am not thankful for corrupt politicians who usurp the natural born liberties of “We The People” in order to empower and enrich themselves.
If you are like me, and not thankful for the current political and economic status of our nation, I ask that you step up and actively participate in choosing better candidates for future elections, and consider not their party affiliation, but whether a candidate is going to truly work for us or just embed themselves into the existing political swamp.
