It has long been my custom to post about holidays on the holidays themselves, so that whatever I write isn’t generally read until the party’s over. It suits my character.
But today I’m going to write about Thanksgiving on Thanksgiving Eve. Just a few thoughts.
It’s become fashionable to denigrate the Pilgrims of the Plymouth Colony, as you are surely aware. They were bigots, they were imperialists, they spread disease among the native population. And, most of all, they weren’t that important. There were lots of earlier colonies in America – what makes them so special?
My short answer is, the Mayflower Compact, the first voluntary self-government plan in the English tradition, in what became the United States. The English tradition is the one we built on; it’s where we got our concepts of civil rights and self-government.
It will be no surprise to you that I’m up to here with revisionist history (unless I’m doing — or translating — it myself, as with Viking Legacy).
I think a lot of us have a sense that our civilization is senescent now, that it’s growing old and fading. That it lacks the energy to perpetuate itself and must inevitably fall to the new fascists of Wokeism.
But you know, if we’re senescent, it was a pretty accelerated decline. I know I’m old, but one man’s lifetime makes for a pretty brief ride from the robust patriotism I remember from my youth to the contemptuous national self-loathing of today.
It occurs to me it’s possible we may not be in our national old age, but in our national adolescence. Like adolescents, we’ve suddenly discovered the sins, foibles and hypocrisies of our parents, and we’re rebelling. We take the blessings Mom and Dad worked hard for for granted, not understanding the sacrifices they made, the prices they paid.
If we’re just in our adolescence, we might have adulthood to look forward to. Maybe we’ll grow up. Maybe we’ll come to appreciate our parents, as most kids eventually do.
Maybe we’ll develop thankful hearts.
