So now America celebrates "Thanksgiving Day" - for many, a more important holiday even than Christmas. On Thanksgiving, family members far and wide gather to eat the traditional turkey dinner and thank the Founding Fathers as well as the Lord for having given them the Land of Free and Plenty.
This tradition is known in the vernacular as "counting your blessings" - or, to borrow a TV jester's take on it to fit the occasion this year, ". . . re-counting your blessings."
What a charade we are experiencing - right in our living rooms! More about that tomorrow.
Consider this small but poignant message a little old lady sent me, along her monthly donation to keep the Zundelsite going tucked into a turkey card:
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse - the generous bestowal of gifts - from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence:
From bondage to spiritual faith,
from spiritual faith to great courage,
from courage to liberty,
from liberty to abundance,
from abundance to complacency,
from complacency to apathy,
from apathy to dependence,
from dependence back again to bondage.
There can hardly be a more compelling symbol of moral, social and physical decline than the relentless Liberal-Libertarian campaign being waged in certain quarters...It is a path that must lead to self-destruction, weakening society on a return path ultimately to bondage that is almost impossible to understand. It is yet another sign of that gradual, subtle, "salami-slicing"; whittling away of moral and social standards in our society. As usual the exponents persuade, cajole, and teach, and in turn the taught become the teachers - literally in our schools today.
(On Target Bulletin,
409)
=====
Thought for the Day:
As you watch TV today and ponder dimples, chads and whatnot, try to remember this morsel:
"We do not what we ought;
What we ought not, we do;
And lean upon the thought
That chance will bring us through."
(Matthew Arnold)