As you've probably gathered by now, it's the day before Thanksgiving. The United States of America is a land of plenty, of freedom, and opportunity. It's the world's greatest nation - and not just because our military kicks butt, and we invented rock and roll.
So....I wanted to ask you what you're thankful for. Maybe your wonderful family; tax accountant; business partner; or anger management counselor. 
Maybe a constitutional amendment; an actual deficit hawk in Congress (is there one?); or something smart and right that government did (ummm..........?). Or maybe a place in the Northwest; a food; a philosopher or writer; your cordless drill; or a historical event. Or something else.
I'll start. I'm thankful for:
today's sunshine break from all the fog (right), plus the beautiful surroundings in my adopted home of Seattle.....it beats the heck outta Chicago, let me tell you;
my wonderful wife and children, and our home and neighbors;
cities - they make civilization go 'round, even if their politics are screwy;
food on the table, the right to bear arms, and a free press;
my grandpa Jacob's flight from Ukraine, and the things my father taught me;
free markets and electric guitars.
Your turn now. C'mon, give it up.
Posted by Matt Rosenberg at November 23, 2005 03:45 PM | Email ThisFreedom to express our opinions - as on this blog.
The health and happiness of my family and friends. The bountiful meals that my family and I share almost every night, not just on Holidays. My wonderful wife-to-be and our awesome children (three lovely daughters).
To be born in a country that is free and to our fighting men and women who our over there helping others taste our freedom.
God has blessed the USA and I would most like to thank my creator for all that he has given us.
God bless all of you bloggers (trolls as well) and may your hearts be warm, bellies be full, and family and friends be happy and safe. Thank you all.
Sincerely,
Jeffro
The gift of being born in America to loving conservative parents and amongst intelligent, hard working, honest conservative brothers and friends.
George W. Bush who has the intellect, courage, and strengh of will to do the most difficult job as President in the last 50 years and doing it well despite the most scurrulously critical and treasonous behaivor by liberals and the MSM.
The troops who recognize the necessity of their mission despite many limitations imposed on them by the liberal democrats most of whom want to see them slaughtered.
The liberal pinheads who come to Sound Politics and prove that all of my worst opinions of them are entirely justified. They always encourage me and make my day.
Patience, a sense of strong moral perspective, and a sense of humor without which a large number of liberals would not be alive today. Thanks God.
Posted by: Amused by liberals on November 23, 2005 04:42 PMI'm thankful to our military for their courage to keep us safe.
I'm thankful to Sound Politics for letting us harp.
And, I am REALLY thankful for pumpkin pie.
Have a wonderul holiday, everyone. Posted by: katomar on November 23, 2005 04:46 PM
I'm thankful for my son the Marine, he is doing the right job for the right reason. I'm thankful for my twins always volunteering in the community to help others. I'm thankful for the love of my husband the past 25 years and looking forward to another 25 years with the love of my life.
And I'm thankful for people like the Shark who care for this country as much as I do.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Posted by: kim in vancouver on November 23, 2005 04:58 PMand for the current economy; and for the new regime in Iraq, and for the blogosphere, which lets little rays of hope pierce the savage MSM negativity;
and for the thousands of years of human ingenuity which produced such string instruments as the guitar, the violin, the tamburica and the bouzouki, NONE of which require one milliwatt of electrical power;
and for the various tribes which took up said instruments and invented breathtaking and wholly unpredictable ways to arrange the sounds they could produce.
Posted by: Hank Bradley on November 23, 2005 05:04 PMNo human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.
Abraham Lincoln
Thanksgiving Day Proclamation
my inalienable rights;
the opportunity to exercise them;
friends who last a lifetime;
a lifetime among friends;
a family who completes me;
that I became a Coug,
and really good beer.
Finally, soldiers, sailors, Airmen and Marines
who make it possible.
I also am truly thankful for Stefan's dogged quest for the truth down at the KC Elections Office. Nobody does it better! For several months long before even the '04 elections, I'd been hoping that vote fraud in this state would be exposed and rooted out. Lo and behold, here came Stefan as the leading person to do it.
Posted by: Michele on November 23, 2005 05:27 PMFreedom is worth fighting for, whether its my freedom or someone elses.
Posted by: hookr23 on November 23, 2005 05:41 PMBest of all, ENWorld keeps me too busy to get into trouble. :D
Posted by: Alan Kellogg on November 23, 2005 06:51 PMHappy Thanksgiving everyone!
Posted by: Joseph Cantu on November 23, 2005 09:05 PMI am ever so grateful for the courage of the few, not only those in uniform, but little guys like Stefan Sharkansky.
Thank you Stefan for restoring my faith.
Posted by: Anne Lee on November 23, 2005 09:17 PMI'm thankful for this blog. It's an important alternative to the party line.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone, even Goldy.
-JB
Posted by: Jeff B. on November 23, 2005 09:48 PM"The troops who recognize the necessity of their mission despite many limitations imposed on them by the liberal democrats most of whom want to see them slaughtered.
The liberal pinheads who come to Sound Politics and prove that all of my worst opinions of them are entirely justified. They always encourage me and make my day."
How sad indeed. Happy Thanksgiving.
Posted by: CandrewB on November 23, 2005 09:56 PMI served in the Navy on active duty for 12 years. My son is now on active duty Navy. Amongst other things I'm thankful that I had the opportunity to serve, and proud that my son is helping to keep us free.
I have nothing but disgust for the trolls that post their vile comments. But I am thankful for their right to post those comments.
And I am thankful that there are not more idiots on the left!
Amen!
Posted by: GS on November 24, 2005 01:02 AMI am greatful to Stefan for his tireless efforts to expose the theives in King County, whether or not we ever get it fixed.
And I eternally greatful the Headless and the Fog live in William Rufus DeVane King County, and not near me.
The land of the Free.
The TRUTH about Thanksgiving
And so, as beefy gladiators chase a pigskin down the field in Miami or Detroit, we settle into our living rooms, loosen our belts, wave off a second helping of pie, and remind the little ones this is the day we echo the thanks of the Pilgrims, who gathered in the autumn of 1621 to celebrate the first bountiful harvest in a land of plenty.
That first winter in the New World had been a harsh one, of course. Half the colonists had died. But the survivors were hard-working and tenacious, and - with the aid of a little agricultural expertise graciously on loan from the Wampanoag, the Narragansett, and the Mohegan - were able to thank the Creator for an abundant harvest, that second autumn in a new land.
The only problem with the tale, unfortunately, is that it's not true.
Oh, the part about the Indians graciously showing the new settlers how to raise beans and corn is right enough. But in a November, 1985 article in "The Free Market," monthly publication of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, author and historian Richard J. Marbury pointed out: "This official story is ... a fairy tale, a whitewashed and sanitized collection of half-truths which divert attention away from Thanksgiving's real meaning."
The problem with the official story, Mr. Marbury points out, is that "The harvest of 1621 was not bountiful, nor were the colonists hardworking or tenacious. 1621 was a famine year and many of the colonists were lazy thieves."
In his "History of Plymouth Plantation," the governor of the colony, William Bradford, reported that the colonists went hungry for years because they refused to work in the fields, preferring instead to steal. Bradford recalled for posterity that the colony was riddled with "corruption and discontent." The crops were small because "much was stolen both by night and day, before it became scarce eatable."
Although in the harvest feasts of 1621 and 1622 "all had their hungry bellies filled," that relief was short-lived, and deaths from illness due to malnutrition continued.
Then, Mr. Marbury points out, "something changed." By harvest time, 1623, Gov. Bradford was reporting that "Instead of famine now God gave them plenty, and the face of things was changed, to the rejoicing of the hearts of many, for which they blessed God." Thereafter, the first governor wrote, "Any general want or famine hath not been amongst them since to this day." Why, by 1624, so much food was produced that the colonists actually began (start ital)exporting(end ital) corn.
What on earth had happened?
After the poor harvest of 1622, writes Bradford, "they began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop." And what solution was decided upon? It turned out to be simple enough. In 1623 Gov. Bradford simply "gave each household a parcel of land and told them they could keep what they produced, or trade it away as they saw fit."
What? Wasn't that the American way from the start?
Not at all. The Mayflower Compact had required that "all profits & benefits that are got by trade, working, fishing, or any other means" were to be placed in the common stock of the colony, and that, "all such persons as are of this colony, are to have their meat, drink, apparel, and all provisions out of the common stock."
A person was to put into the common stock all he could, and take out only what he needed - a concept so attractive on its surface that it would be adopted as the equally disastrous ruling philosophy for all of Eastern Europe, some 300 years later.
"This 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his need' was an early form of socialism, and it is why the Pilgrims were starving," Marbury explains.
Gov. Bradford writes that during those terrible first three years "Young men that are most able and fit for labor and service" complained about being forced to "spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children." Since "the strong, or man of parts, had no more in division of victuals and clothes, than he that was weak," the strong men simply refused to work, and the amount of food produced was never adequate.
In historian Marbury's words, Gov. Bradford "abolished socialism" in the colony, "replacing it with a free market, and that was the end of famines."
In fact, this lesson had to be learned over and over again in early America. "Many early groups of colonists set up socialist states, all with the same terrible results," Marbury notes. "At Jamestown, established in 1607, out of every shipload of settlers that arrived, less than half would survive their first 12 months in America. Most of the work was being done by only one-fifth of the men, the other four-fifths choosing to be parasites. In the winter of 1609-10, called 'The Starving Time,' the population fell from 500 to 60.
"Then the Jamestown colony was converted to a free market, and the results were every bit as dramatic as those at Plymouth. In 1614, Colony Secretary Ralph Hamor wrote that after the switch there was 'plenty of food, which every man by his own industry may easily and doth procure.' He said that when the socialist system had prevailed, 'we reaped not so much corn from the labors of 30 men as three men have done for themselves now.' "
They say those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. Sadly this was a lesson the people of Russia had to learn all over again - at the pain of equally devastating starvation and penury - in our own century. By the 1980s, when the discredited and bloodstained rulers of Russia finally threw up their hands and allowed farmers to raise private crops and sell them for profit on a mere 10 percent of their lands, once again more crops were produced on that 10 percent of the land than on the 90 percent devoted to "collective agriculture," the system under which - as the bitter Russian joke would have it - "We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us."
Yes, America is a bounteous land. But the source of that bounty - and the good fortune for which we annually gather to give thanks - lies not merely in the fertility of the soil or the frequency of the rains - for there is hardly a more fertile breadbasket on the face of the earth than the Soviet Ukraine.
No, the source of our bounty was the discovery made by the Pilgrims in 1623, that when men are allowed to hold their own land as private property, to eat what they raise and keep the profits from any surplus they sell, the entire community becomes one of prosperity and plenty.
Whereas, an economic system which grants the lazy and the shiftless some "right" to prosper off the looted fruits of another man's labor, under the guise of enforced "compassion," will inevitably descend into envy, theft, squalor, and starvation.
Though many would still incrementally impose on us some new variant of the "noble socialist experiment," this is still at heart a free country with a bedrock respect for the sanctity of private property - and a land bounteous precisely because it's free. It's for that we give thanks - the corn and beans and turkey serving as mere symbols of that true and underlying blessing - on the fourth Thursday of each November.
God bless America - land of the free.
Posted by: JCM on November 24, 2005 07:17 AMThankful I am surrounded by great friends with postive can acheive anything attitudes.
Thankful that I am an American.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
That's great stuff, thanks for sharing.
Fog-
You made me laugh, for that I thank you.
Fog and Headless-
What are you really thankful for. I would think that, regardless your opinion of this holidays origin, we all are thankful for many of the same things. Go ahead, it's okay to let go of your animous towards conservatives and let us know that, deep down, we're not all that different.
Arbiet-
You're just plain sick and wrong.
Again, I wish everyone a wonderful, happy and safe Thanksgiving, yes even headless, fog and the others. Be safe and troll again soon.
You think it's sad that I am thankful that you come to Sound Politics to freely express your opinions?
That is sad but it is also very amusing.
Posted by: Amused by liberals on November 24, 2005 11:39 AMHeadless, I am grateful that Gregoire's numbers are even Lower than our Presidents!
Posted by: sgmmac on November 24, 2005 11:51 AMBeing born in the USA
Good health
Family and Friends
Free Country
God's Grace
Our brave troops
Knowing the GW low rating are bogus because of
great blogs like this one
Our Great President
Happy Thanksgiving all - including Lucy.
Happy Thanksgiving everybody, even to fogged up Fog and mean-spirited headless.
EW Posted by: EW on November 24, 2005 01:52 PM
I'm thankful for my wonderful fiancee, Sarah.
I'm thankful that, even though I am a political minority in this still great city, the powers that be still don't round us up and send us to gulags.
I'm thankful for our military, that they are willing to sacrifice, at the very least, time away from their families on days like this to make the world a better place for people they don't even know and, at worst, sacrifice their lives for same.
I'm thankful for the fortune God has bestowed upon me in being born in this, the greatest country on God's green earth.
I'm thankful that we all are able to disagree on many things but, for the most part, don't pick up arms and kill each other becuase of it.
And I'm thankful for this blog, a source of differing opinion that keeps me informed as, no matter what age we all may be, we all still have "young skulls full of mush" at least to some extent and need that other source of information so as not to be taken in by misinformation. Posted by: Mark Griswold on November 24, 2005 02:06 PM
Gee it comes as a real surprise to me that you identify with my characterization of liberals so easily and defensively while at the same time revealing such a complete tone deafness about the issue.
If you cared as much as you say you do you would rather that our troops are victorious than home. Instead you scurry to the cowards way of expressing concern, pandering impuissance. I am thankful to you for coming here to help make it clear what America is up against every time they hear phony messages from the left about caring and concern.
Your contributions are appreciated.
Posted by: Amused by liberal caviling on November 24, 2005 02:39 PMI am thankful to live in a country that allows me to know (no matter how it dismays, hurts or puzzles me) what people on the opposite side of the fence think/believe. I am thankful for my family. I am thankful that what goes around, comes around and George W. is seeing (and feeling) that more than anybody. I'm thankful for Tom Friedman's last column in (gasp!) the NY Times; a careful, thoughtful piece about where George should go from here. I know George doesn't really think in historical terms (past or future) but really, he's got to pull it together or he really will be in the Bad Presidents column.
I imagine you think you have a point, but it is obvious that you haven’t quite figured out what it might be. Regarding ignorance, “What goes around, comes around . . .” is hardly the shrewd insightful product of a study of history, but a lazy ignorant liberal snob’s way of saying something that means absolutely nothing.
Your comment, ”I know George doesn't really think in historical terms (past or future)” says more about you than Bush. History is past a$$hole, and the future is purely speculative. Nevertheless, because of George W. Bush and his insistence on standing up to evil, the odds are that our future will be far better off than would have been with Gore or Kerry. People that hold your attitude are easily satisfied with shallow answers based on the mere opinions of party hacks, and Bush couldn't care less about your outlook because he is not Bill Clinton. He would rather do the right thing than be liked by arrogant numb skulls like you.
The biggest reason people of your stripe criticize Bush's Iraq strategy is because it is highly likely to succeed thus proving (once again) that you are wrong. In the process you would rather it fail and with it American security than Bush succeed. Your comments evidence fear, misplaced conceit, and indolence rather than certitude, informed opinion and diligent critical thinking. I am thankful that you came forward to demonstrate what the liberal pretense of snobbery adds up to. Nothing worthwhile.
Thanks.
Me?--I'm thankful for our border guards and our military—they enable us to go about our lives in peace;
The Unsung Heroes who quietly and honorably maintain our sovereignty without a whimper as we sleep comfortably--can "thank you" ever suffice? no--but we can all do our part to help---
Posted by: Jimmie-howya-doin on November 26, 2005 04:42 PM(see apache fogs previous post)
Posted by: hookr23 on November 26, 2005 07:07 PM