A liberal’s Thanksgiving

Listening to my conservative friends, I sometimes get the feeling that they believe Thanksgiving is a holiday owned by them. That somehow, liberals’ political or social dissent is synonymous with ingratitude, while conservatives’ dissent is an attempt to restore the Garden of Eden, and the rest of us ought to be thankful for it – and them – on Thanksgiving. I don’t think so.

For starters, the tradition of Thanksgiving was founded by dissenters who were regarded as radical by the establishment of their time – the Church of England – as any lefty is today. And the Thanksgiving tradition wasn’t meant to honor a lot of complacent fat guys convinced that the honor and glory of simply being born an American justified its own holiday. Rather, the men and women who celebrated that first Thanksgiving were lean people who had suffered a brutal repression in their past and confronted a future of disease, starvation and mastering the wilderness.

So I want to propose a few Thanksgiving thoughts for all. First, I am thankful for the men and women who defend this country – at home and abroad. If I am critical of their being sent to distant places to fight strangers, it is not because I am ungrateful for their efforts. Quite the contrary, like a mother hen, I worry about these kids. If they are to be placed in harm’s way, I want it to be for the best of reasons and governed by the most rational plans. Anything less than this would prove that I am cavalier with their lives, hardly evidence of gratitude for what they do.

Second, I am thankful for the material abundance of America. But proving my gratitude is much harder than simply paying lip service sitting around the family table. We have been showered with abundance. Do you think we should do nothing in return? Should we pull up the ladder, seek refuge in our tax cuts and leave every nation and child behind? Is there no obligation to help the poor, the widow, the orphan?

Do occasional abuses in government programs justify cutting off tax dollars to those who do not have the luxury of family, friends or emergency funds to assist in their time of need? George Bush’s tax cut came at a price. One price, for starters, was that 250,000 kids lost their after-school programs. The White House initially proposed half a million lose their programs. Taxes aren’t the price we pay for civilization, as a judge once famously observed. Taxes are the way we have of expressing our gratitude for the wealth we have, and for this, I am grateful.

Third, while I believe we can and must do better, I am thankful that we live in a country founded on the principal of individual freedom. As declared in the summer of 1776, “WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

The Declaration of Independence goes on to say that the purpose of government is to “secure” these rights. Military tribunals, PATRIOT Act(s) and the existence of a Constitutional Free Zone in Guantanamo Bay are at best troubling and at worst a grave threat to the soul of our republic. And when our government ducks its core purpose, as it has today, I am thankful for those who have dedicated their life’s work to hold our government accountable to these inalienable rights for all, even when all includes people who are different in the color of their skin, or their sexual or religious preference.

Finally – and this is true – I am grateful for my right-wing friends. Their existence is the best evidence that I have genuine reasons for many of the above thanks – it’s proof that our country is free and vigorous, that dissent flourishes, that in spite of differences, we can shake hands at the end of the day rather than cycle the slides of our Glock-9s. In short, I am thankful that together, with our differences, we can join hands and argue our way to a better America.

To all my readers, left, right and center: I am thankful for you.