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With President Obama and the Clintons now dust in the wind, what do Americans need more than anything else to “reboot” this great nation? What’s the secret sauce that could get us going again and make the biggest difference at this time in our country’s history?
What all Americans need most right now is a self-conscious and continuing mindset of Thanksgiving. We need hearts thankful that we were born into the greatest nation in human history. Further, thankfulness that God used our Founding Fathers to bless this country with an amazing degree of freedom and for the first 200 years… the most remarkable standard of living ever known.
What we desperately need to get back to is a permanent sense of thanksgiving for the faith and courage of our unconquerable forebears who, with a gun in one hand and a Bible in the other… crossed our untamed rivers and rugged mountains… farmed the land… developed the resources and built our industrial infrastructure… all to secure a place for themselves and for us. They were a special breed, tough and free, seeking not just a place to worship. Their desire was to build a “City on a Hill.”
In the beginning, they came from England. Persecuted by James I and his High-Church henchmen. Despite their hardships, they came with thankful hearts. But the humble Pilgrims were also strong, determined, and bold. They had to be. Future Plymouth Governor William Bradford describes their mindset: “What could they see when they came ashore but a hideous, dark and desolate wilderness?”
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“With little what could sustain them… but the spirit of God and his grace. May not and aught not the children of these fathers rightly say, ‘Our fathers were Englishmen and came over this great ocean and were ready to perish in this wilderness. And they cried out to the Lord and he heard their voice and looked on their adversity. They praised the Lord because he is good and his mercies endure forever.’”
Our nation was founded and preserved by men and women who believed in individual freedom, in high biblical values, and in personal responsibility. But even that was not enough for them. No. They regularly got down on their knees and asked the assistance of an Almighty God. Not just out of weakness, though, but because, over and over, even their great strength and best efforts fell short at times.
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From the very start, prayer was an important part of our American tradition. Imagine seeing the great skeptic Benjamin Franklin calling for prayer at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia that produced the remarkable document that is the Constitution of the United States. Imagine seeing a well-dressed foreign diplomat at the time, visiting the Continental Congress and asking a friend which of the delegates George Washington was… only to be told: “Mr. Washington is the man on his knees giving thanks to God.”
Let us be thankful for such heroes. For a George Washington, our nation’s “Indispensable Man” and Father of our Country… for the brilliant Patrick Henry… for the steadfast John Adams and for the great Christian general, Robert E. Lee. And let us thank God for the Pattons and MacArthurs. May the Lord again give us such heroes! As Tennyson wrote:
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek to find, and not to yield.
That’s the greatness of America that President-elect Trump should return us to. He’s got his work cut out for him given the damage President Obama has done. Instead of being strong, confident and thankful, for the last eight years we’ve been weak, apologetic and guilt-ridden. We have let this President and his minions turn us into the most guilt-ridden people in all of recorded history. Think about it. Whatever bad happens anywhere in the world, it is somehow made out to be our fault. We send aid around the world and we’re called corrupt. After defeating Germany and Japan, we defended Korea and tried to help Vietnam only to be accused of imperialism. The president of Mexico insults our new President, suggesting that it’s because all Americans are guilty of exploitation. The world spits in our face and we call it morning dew.
My guess is we still give away more goods, services, equipment, food, and money than all the nations in the history of the world combined. We hang our heads in shame as we discuss slavery and anti-Semitism — as though millions of Americans didn’t die to free slaves and destroy the Nazis. President Obama has dialed our national self-respect setting to “off” and we’re a sick nation because of it.
Meanwhile, teachers in our schools tell America’s youth that every virtue we possess has some secret agenda hidden behind it. George Washington was a thief with wooden teeth, Ben Franklin a con man, MacArthur, arrogant and shallow. Jefferson raped black slaves, and on and on. We have apparently forgotten that the world respects only those individuals and nations which respect themselves. Our kids must be taught this.
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Our schools teach that socialism is good while free enterprise is a sure road to ruin. Really? Is that really true? Much of the world is already living in socialist “hell,” after all. We know what it looks like. That said, Americans should realize and teach our children to be thankful that, despite Obama’s best efforts at socializing our country… we’re in still in Heaven compared to most of the world. And we should teach our kids to be eternally thankful to God for it.
As I think more about it, America is probably the least guilty and perhaps the most altruistic of all the nations in all human history. In 1946 we could have conquered the world and created a Pax Americana. Instead, we disarmed ourselves, paid reparations to our enemies and went on to build back up the nations we just defeated.
America is the most generous, most maligned, and least appreciated nation in the world. As I said, America rehabilitated Britain, France, Italy, Germany, and Japan after World War II, pouring in billions of dollars, providing equipment, machinery, workers, and know-how that we alone possessed.
Germany and Japan today seem to have forgotten this, even as we continue to pay for their defense. To the critics who claim we only did it in self-interest, let me respond by saying how happy I am that our space exploration has found Mars uninhabited so we won’t be expected to supply Martians with foreign aid and make new enemies in space.
When people anywhere in the world are hit by earthquakes or other natural catastrophes, who sends the help? The United States. When American cities are flattened by hurricanes or tornadoes, who helps? Nobody.
So now with the socialist “putter” out of office, let’s quit apologizing to a world we’ve fed, built up and protected. Let’s quit placating, buying, and bribing our enemies. America has been the light of the world, the hope of the world, the envy of the world and has no need for any sort of inferiority complex… let alone making it a required subject in school. Seriously, can a nation that trains its youth to be guilty of everything under the sun even survive?
How ironic that we should be told we must feel guilty about our guilt, arrogance, and materialism, and yet we are the only nation on the face of the earth where most of the world’s people still want in and no one wants out except liberal celebrities. We Americans have a great deal for which to be thankful.
Of course, we’ll always have problems. We’re sinners, after all. But we can gain perspective on them with a little humorous optimism. For instance, we can be thankful it costs less per paycheck to feed a child than it did his father. We can be thankful America still has an almost unlimited faith in our young people; even Obama wanted to prove this by the size of the debt he expects them to pay off.
We can also be thankful a new Republicans Congress is finally forced to face an urgent unsolved problem: how to get the people to pay the taxes they can’t afford for services they don’t need. And let’s be thankful we’ve still got more free speech in this country than anywhere else — though we do need a great deal more of it that’s worth listening to.
Being forever thankful, you see, doesn’t mean we should be perennial Pollyannas. We ought to have some worries. A reasonable number of fleas keeps a dog scratching, after all. If we do the best we can, where we are, with what we’ve got, that will be more than enough to preserve our country. We can’t all do great things — but we can all do small things in a great way.
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I’m thankful I have an assistant who’s more organized and smarter than I am. She knows when I want to be forced to do something against my will. I’m also thankful that I went in business for myself at an early age, so I never had to get through a job interview. I’m thankful that I love my work, although sometimes I feel like an overworked coal mine — cracked, polluted, and full of noxious gas. I guess we all feel like that sometime. But I know and am thankful to God that He gave us plenty of coal, if we’ll just mine it.
You know, years ago a theologian named Greg Bahnsen taught me that “ingratitude” is the worst sin of all. Also many years ago, my wife’s grandfather told about a time during the Depression of the Thirties when he was complaining with his friends how hopeless everything was. Hunger, mass unemployment, banks closed, ruined men jumping out of windows. “There’s just not much to be thankful for,” one of his friends remarked.
My wife’s grandpa replied: “Well, I for one am grateful to Mrs. Collins.” She was a schoolteacher who a decade before had gone out of her way to encourage him in his studies. “Did you ever thank her?” one of his friends asked. He hadn’t. But that night he wrote to her.
In a week or so this answer came, written in a shaky older hand: “My dear Warren: I want you to know what your note meant to me. I am an old lady in my eighties living alone in a small, lonely room.
“You will be interested to know, Warren, that I taught school for fifty years; and, in all that time, yours is the first letter of appreciation I have ever received. It came on a cold January morning and it warmed and cheered my lonely old heart as nothing has cheered me in many years.”
One of the many regrets of my own life is my failure to express gratitude enough. Not only to those who have meant so much to me but also to those folks I didn’t even know, folks who sacrificially gave of themselves to make this a better nation and a better world.
Thanksgiving is definitely a time that we, as a nation, have set aside to express our gratitude to our Heavenly Father, from whom all blessings flow. It is also a time, if we will make it so, to remember to express our appreciation to our family, friends, educators, employees, pastors, and courageous patriots that aren’t afraid to stick their necks out.
God has blessed America! Be thankful for it. Pray daily that He will continue to do so. And work your hardest to preserve the liberty of this great and blessed land.
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