Who cares?
Frosty
by William L. Anderson
Today in the United States, we celebrate a holiday known as
"Thanksgiving." Many of us (including my family and I) will attend
church services this morning and many more will eat a very large meal
with the main dish usually being roasted turkey. At the table, most
likely we will continue what began at church speaking about those
things for which we are "thankful."
At one level, I have no problem with people being thankful for their
blessings. As a Christian, I thank God each day for my family, home,
and other things that I believe come from the bounty of God, and I am
not ashamed to say it. Yet, if we truly are thankful for our blessings
on a daily basis, then why do we have a special holiday in which we
repeat those things that we already have repeated?
In a word, the reason for Thanksgiving Day is government. It is on
this day that the government specifically the President of the United
States orders us to be thankful. Since our government is secular in
form and content, we really are supposed to be thankful to government
for our bounty.
For example, I almost certainly will hear someone at church say that
he or she is "thankful that we live in a country where we can freely
worship God." Yet, people around the world have that freedom. One can
put it another way, a way that is guaranteed to offend others: "I am
thankful that the American state has not yet destroyed all of our
freedoms, including the freedom to worship God."
While I write this, the U.S. Government actively is debasing the
dollar, waging war against people who were not at war with us,
arresting people and falsely charging them with crimes, blocking
mutually beneficial economic exchanges, making it more difficult to
produce and sell goods (and then condemning producers for not
producing enough), and then propagandizing us in saying that the
government is the only thing that gives our lives meaning.
While we think of the Pilgrims celebrating a successful harvest in
1621, Thanksgiving as an official government-sponsored holiday came to
this country via the presidency of Abraham Lincoln in 1863. While
armies under his command were destroying the harvests of the southern
states, burning houses and forcing families to face the winter without
food and shelter, and generally plundering and pillaging, he declared
an official day of "Thanksgiving."
The next president to further make Thanksgiving a government-sponsored
holiday was Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939. Thus, two of the presidents
who were most active in destroying the liberties and social fabric of
this country were at the forefront of telling everyone else how
thankful they should be.
[]Lest I appear to be an ingrate, again I say that I am thankful to
God for the blessings that I have received, however undeserved those
blessings may be. And I add that I am thankful to God that He has
restrained the American state, if for a season, to where it has not
done as much harm as it could have done. For now, we worship in
relative peace; in the future, perhaps all of the Thanksgiving
services will be held in government buildings in which we thank the
state for the meager rations placed before us. We are not there, at
least yet, and I will be eternally thankful if that day is put off
forever.
November 23, 2006
William L. Anderson, Ph.D. mailto:and...@prodigy.net, teaches
economics at Frostburg State University in Maryland, and is an adjunct
scholar of the Ludwig von Mises Institute.