America’s birth defect did not define our destiny



A friend recently asked why so many Americans seem embarrassed by their own country.

The question came during the annual Fourth of July arguments about patriotism, flags, and whether America deserves to be celebrated. It reminded me of something the late Robert Woodson often said about America’s beginning.

Love does not require perfection. It requires stewardship. That seems like a good way to care for a family. And it seems like a good way to care for a nation.

Woodson acknowledged the contradiction at our founding: a nation proclaiming that all men are created equal while tolerating slavery. Others point to limited rights for women and other shortcomings present at the nation's birth.

What interested Woodson was not the diagnosis but the response. He compared America to a child born with a birth defect. Loving parents do not deny the condition or abandon the child because of it. They adapt, advocate, protect, teach, accommodate, and love.

They learn stewardship.

Caregiving taught me that lesson long before I heard Woodson apply it to a nation. During one particularly difficult season, a wise friend told me something that permanently changed the way I viewed caregiving.

“Your wife has a Savior. You are not that Savior.”

For years I had lived as though my job was to fix everything. If I researched enough, worked hard enough, and sacrificed enough, I could somehow force life toward the outcome I wanted.

Eventually I collided with a truth every caregiver must learn. I could not control the outcome. I was accountable for my stewardship.

That realization changed the way I looked at life and the world.

For years I believed life would finally begin after the next surgery, the next recovery, the next crisis, or the next milestone. Like many caregivers, I kept telling myself that if we could just get through this one thing, then we could finally get on with our lives.

Eventually I realized this wasn’t a rehearsal. This was my life.

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When I stopped trying to get through life in order to get on with life, I quit treading water waiting for rescue and learned to swim.

The problems remained. My stewardship changed.

Too often we tell ourselves that happiness waits on the other side of some future event. If only this election goes differently. If only this grievance is resolved. Then we can finally live.

Stewardship asks another question. Not, “Why wasn't I given something better?” But, “What am I going to do with what I’ve been given?”

I’ve seen the difference between cultures that cultivate stewardship and cultures that discourage it.

Years ago, while helping establish our prosthetic limb outreach in West Africa, I worked alongside local technicians learning to build prosthetic legs for their own people. In one clinic, nearly every decision required approval from above.

One day I asked a technician a simple question. “What do you think?”

The puzzled expression on his face answered before he spoke. It wasn’t that he lacked intelligence. No one had ever expected him to own the decision.

America, at its best, asks that question every day. What do you think? What will you build? What responsibility are you willing to carry? That expectation lies near the heart of the American experiment.

America’s founding principles created room for reform because the nation’s founding documents proclaimed truths many of the founders themselves failed to live fully. Those same principles later became the standard by which Americans challenged slavery and expanded civil rights.

The story of America is not one of perfection. It is one of stewardship.

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Of course, stewardship is not the only response to a defect. Some people learn from it. Others exploit it.

Every family caring for someone with disabilities eventually encounters people more interested in the diagnosis than the person. Nations experience something similar. America’s original contradiction has served both as a call to greater fidelity and as a tool for those seeking power through perpetual grievance.

Woodson understood the difference. One path produces stewardship. The other manufactures resentment.

I love this country not because it is flawless, but because it repeatedly calls each generation to measure itself against ideals higher than itself.

When I look at my grandchildren, I hope they inherit a nation that prizes freedom, embraces responsibility, rewards merit, and teaches that life is shaped more by stewardship than by grievance.

What if we stopped waiting for the perfect election, the perfect apology, the perfect reckoning, or the perfect outcome before deciding to engage faithfully with the country we have? Imagine the gratitude, creativity, service, and responsibility that would follow.

Parents of children with disabilities understand this. Caregivers understand this. Love does not require perfection. It requires stewardship.

That seems like a good way to care for a family. And it seems like a good way to care for a nation.

From Jerusalem, a prayer for America



Every Fourth of July, I think about the country where I was born — a nation built on faith, courage, and the belief that every person is created in the image of God.

Independence Day is about fireworks, parades, and time with family. But it is also a reminder of the miracle of America and the values that have shaped this nation for 250 years.

From Jerusalem to every corner of the United States, may this Independence Day be a celebration of gratitude, unity, and hope.

As an American-Israeli, this holiday carries special meaning for me.

I grew up in the United States, where freedom is woven into daily life. Today, I raise my children in Israel, a country whose very existence is a miracle of biblical proportions. Each year on July 4, I am reminded how blessed I am to belong to two nations rooted in faith, resilience, and hope.

America and Israel are different in many ways, but their foundations are strikingly similar.

Both nations were built by people who believed in something greater than themselves. They trusted God, longed for freedom, and sacrificed for a better future.

America’s founders risked everything to establish a nation where liberty could flourish. Israel’s founders rebuilt a homeland after 2,000 years of exile, guided by ancient promises and unshakable faith.

Both nations understand that freedom is never guaranteed. It must be protected, nurtured, and passed to the next generation.

And both nations know that a country’s greatest strength lies not in its power, but in its values.

On Independence Day, I often think about the men and women who have served in the U.S. military — those who fought in World War II to defeat evil, those who stood against tyranny in the decades that followed, and those who continue to defend freedom around the world.

As a Jewish woman, I will never forget that American soldiers helped liberate the concentration camps. They brought hope to a world drowning in darkness. They saved lives — not only the lives of Jews in Europe, but the lives of my own family members.

Both my grandfather and my father-in-law survived the Holocaust, thanks in no small part to the sacrifice of American service members. Their courage is part of the reason the Jewish people are alive today.

As an Israeli, I see that same spirit of courage in the young men and women who serve in the Israel Defense Forces.

America and Israel both understand the cost of freedom. Both nations honor those who protect it. And both nations know that not every hero comes home.

Living as both an American and an Israeli has taught me that miracles are not only ancient. They are happening right now.

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America is a miracle: a nation founded on biblical values, where people of every background can pursue their God-given purpose.

Israel is a miracle: a nation reborn from ashes, thriving against all odds, and standing as a beacon of hope in a troubled region.

To belong to both is a privilege I thank God for every day.

As America approaches its 250th anniversary, this Independence Day feels especially meaningful. It is a moment to reflect on the values that built this nation — faith, freedom, courage, unity — and to rededicate ourselves to living them.

These are the same values that sustain Israel. The same values that bind Christians and Jews together. The same values that light the way forward in uncertain times.

This Fourth of July, my prayer is simple:

May God bless America with peace and protection. May He strengthen the families who build this nation every day. May He guide its leaders with wisdom and humility. And may He remind all of us that freedom is both a gift and a responsibility.

From Jerusalem to every corner of the United States, may this Independence Day be a celebration of gratitude, unity, and hope.

Happy Fourth, America.

The knock that changes everything: Glenn Beck’s powerful reminder of Memorial Day’s true meaning



For many Americans, Memorial Day is nothing more than a welcome day off of work to kick back and relax and maybe host a backyard barbeque.

But the true meaning of this holiday should stir deep gratitude and empathy in every American citizen. Memorial Day is set aside not for leisure but for reverence. It is about honoring and remembering the men and women of the armed forces who died while serving in the military.

Two years ago, Glenn Beck delivered an unforgettable message that is worth revisiting on this important day.

- YouTube

Glenn starts by telling a common story that only the parents of fallen soldiers will truly understand.

“If you will, try to imagine this in the first person, through the eyes of someone I'm about to describe,” he begins.

“Your son has been in the United States Marine Corps for what seems like forever now. … What begins as extreme worry and then turns to panic, then helplessness, then all time seems to stop. It's as if you're stranded in the loneliest cold of winter, with no daylight to help tell you the passage of time. It's just you, your worry, and no end in sight,” he narrates.

Unbeknownst to you, your beloved son suddenly falls in combat. This immediately sets a precise military protocol in motion.

“This is what's happening behind the scenes,” says Glenn. “First a death notification. It has to be executed within eight hours. A discreet attempt to locate you, the next of kin, is initiated so the officers chosen to deliver the notification arrive at the right place at the right time.”

“Three individuals are typically chosen to arrive at your home: an officer at least one rank higher than the deceased, a chaplain, and someone capable of delivering medical help should the next of kin pass out or worse,” he continues.

The parent, already sensing the gut-wrenching news, listens in horror as the officer delivers the following message: “The commandant of the Marine Corps has entrusted me to express his deep regret that your son John was killed in action on Friday, March 26. The commandant and the Marine Corps extend their deepest sympathy to you and your family in your loss.”

“This is the nightmare that thousands have had to endure, thousands fear could happen to them at any time,” says Glenn.

“312 parents experienced what I just described in 2003 alone; in 2007, 847 military men and women died in combat; in 2008, 352; in 2009, 346 — and the list and the numbers go on and on,” he recounts.

This Memorial Day, as we gather with friends and family, Glenn hopes that we will take time to remember the true meaning of this somber holiday.

“I'm not trying to be a downer here, but there is a sacredness to Memorial Day that most of us just cannot understand,” he says.

Glenn concludes by reading John 15:13: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

“This weekend, remember the honor, the love of country, the families. Together they represent the absolute best of all of us.”

To hear Glenn deliver this touching monologue, watch the video above.

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Wokeness runs on ungratefulness — and normal people are over it



In an era where every grievance gets inflated into a moral crusade, the ideology people call “wokeness” stands out for one trait more than any other: ungratefulness.

Wokeness doesn’t simply point to injustice. It fixates on it. It treats progress as an illusion, opportunity as a trap, and gratitude as complicity. Everything becomes evidence of oppression. Nothing counts as improvement. To normal people, that posture feels like a bad odor in a room: It sours everything.

Michelle Obama’s story should read like an American testimonial. Yet she often talks about the country as if it injured her.

Everyone knows the type. The chronic complainer. A friend who rants about his job every time you see him. The boss is unfair. The pay is lousy. The co-workers are idiots.

At first, you listen. You sympathize. You offer advice. Then the excuses begin.

“I can’t quit because of the benefits.”

“The job market is terrible.”

“No one would hire me.”

Not with that attitude, pal!

Eventually you realize the problem isn’t his job. It’s him. He doesn’t want solutions. He wants a permanent grievance. After a while, you stop inviting him places. Or you nod and tune out.

Wokeness runs on the same fuel. It sells victimhood as identity and complaint as virtue. It refuses to admit how far the country has moved on race, sex, and equality because that would require humility — and would shrink the movement’s moral leverage.

The result is predictable: Sympathy dries up. People get exhausted. Potential allies become spectators.

You see this pattern in activist politics across the board. Some racial activists talk about systemic racism endlessly while refusing to deal honestly with internal problems that damage communities, like family breakdown and educational collapse. Some LGBTQ activists demand constant affirmation while downplaying enormous legal and cultural victories.

The message stays the same: You owe us more. It rarely becomes: Look how far we’ve come, or here’s what we can fix ourselves.

Michelle Obama embodies this attitude better than almost anyone.

Her story should read like an American testimonial. The country elected her husband president twice. The Obamas became global figures. They turned that platform into immense wealth and influence through books, speeches, and media deals. Few families have been lifted higher by modern America.

Yet Michelle Obama often talks about the country as if it injured her.

Start with her 2008 campaign remark: “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country.” Whatever she meant, it landed as contempt. She had lived an elite, upwardly mobile American life — Princeton, Harvard Law, a prestigious career — and still claimed pride only arrived when her husband’s political rise validated it.

Then came the line from her 2016 convention speech: “I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves.” She could have framed it as proof of moral progress: a black family in the White House, a nation that overcame its own sins. Instead, she chose the grievance frame, even in the middle of historic achievement.

More recently, Obama described her White House years as a kind of trauma: “What happened that eight years ...? What did that do to me internally? ... We made it through. We got out alive.” She doesn’t have to pretend the job was easy. But she keeps using the same vocabulary: burden, survival, damage — as if the privilege itself was the wound.

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Wokeness runs on ungratefulness — and normal people are done with it

In that same conversation, she complained about being labeled “bitter” and “angry” as a black woman. Yet she enjoyed years of glowing coverage from the same cultural institutions that demonize her critics: legacy media, Hollywood, corporate America, the prestige press. Whatever hostility Obama faced, she lived under the warmest spotlight in American public life.

That’s the dynamic people recognize instinctively. Wokeness demands that everyone feel guilty, even when the facts argue for gratitude. It can’t celebrate progress because celebration would admit the country improved. It can’t relax because the crusade requires permanent outrage. It can’t share credit because that would weaken the hierarchy of grievance.

Normal Americans don’t reject wokeness because they hate justice. They reject it because it never stops scolding, never seems satisfied, and never acknowledges anything good. It turns every achievement into an accusation and every success into a complaint.

Ungratefulness repels people. Always has. The movement that builds itself on resentment will keep shrinking — not because its enemies “silenced” it, but because everyday people walked away.

That’s the fate of every ideology that cannot say two simple words: Thank you.

Modern life isn't so bad (even if my furnace is out again)



Every year, at the coldest time of the year, our furnace goes out. I’ve written about it before, I’m writing about it now, and I’m sure I’ll write about it again. Benjamin Franklin said, “In this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes.” I say, “In this world, nothing is certain except winter — and our furnace breaking.”

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about modernity: not just as an era, but as a way of life, and as a particular relationship we have with technology and the natural world. Winter has a way of provoking those thoughts. It’s unforgiving outside and warm inside, and that contrast shapes not only our environment but our state of mind. Winter invites introspection whether we ask for it or not.

You don’t actually want to go back to 1198 or 1598. At most, you want to go back to 1998 — before things took such a strange turn.

It also reminds us of something more basic: Winter wants to kill us.

Cold truth

Without insulated homes, reliable transportation, and warm clothing, many of us simply wouldn’t make it. Maybe that isn’t true everywhere. It’s not true in places with mild winters. But it is true here, where the temperature tonight is expected to dip to ten below zero. In places like this, modernity doesn’t just make life comfortable — it makes it possible.

That’s easy to forget. I turn the thermostat up and the furnace obeys. I want it to be 67 degrees, and it becomes 67 degrees. No delay, no doubt. I can count on warmth in the same way I count on the sun rising tomorrow — until I can’t. Then the house turns cold, the basement office becomes unusable, space heaters migrate upstairs, and our seemingly invincible HVAC world collapses all at once. Annoyance quickly turns into perspective.

The furnace, of course, is only one small example. This isn’t really about heating systems or cold weather; it’s about how easily we take the blessings of the modern world for granted.

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No thanks

We all do it. Whatever we have now quickly becomes the baseline. We stop remembering what life was like without it. You see this with people who move to America from poorer parts of the world. After a decade, they are often just as accustomed to convenience as those born into it. You might expect memories of hardship to linger, but they rarely do. Perhaps death once sat closer to daily life, even in developed societies, and kept gratitude sharper. Perhaps something else has changed. Either way, ingratitude seems to come naturally to us now.

Medicine is a clear example. How many of us would be dead without modern medical care? Many. Imagine surgery without anesthesia. Imagine life without optometry or dentistry. It’s not a romantic picture.

The same goes for something as mundane as mail. People love to complain about the USPS, but in much of the world, a functioning postal system barely exists. I know someone who lived in Africa building embassies for the U.S. government, and he told me that local mail simply wasn’t usable. Here we send letters, order books, ship packages, and trust that they will arrive — and that if they don’t, someone will make it right. That trust is a modern miracle we barely notice.

Horse power

Or consider transportation. We can wax poetic about the romance of horse-drawn travel, but the truth is, we would hate it. It might charm us for a day or two, but before long, we’d be desperate to return to cars, trains, ferries, and planes. Modern speed isn’t just convenient — it reshapes what a human life can contain.

Lately I see a lot of anger directed at modernity itself. Some of it is understandable. There are technological and medical “advances” that drift away from the good and toward the destructive. That frustration is real, and I feel it too. But rejecting the modern world wholesale is neither wise nor serious. You don’t actually want to go back to 1198 or 1598. At most, you want to go back to 1998 — before things took such a strange turn.

Our task, then, isn’t to flee modernity, but to refine it. We cannot escape it — and we shouldn’t want to. The better path is gratitude without naivety: thankful for the blessings, alert to the dangers, and willing to curb excess without denying reality. If we do that, we may yet manage to build not just a modern world, but a good one.

Our forefathers prayed on Thanksgiving. We scroll.



There was a time when Thanksgiving pointed toward something higher than stampedes for electronics or a long weekend of football. At its root, Thanksgiving was a public reminder that faith, family, and country are inseparable — and that a free people must recognize the source of their blessings.

Long before Congress fixed the holiday to the end of November, colonies and early states observed floating days of thanksgiving, prayer, and fasting. These were civic acts as much as religious ones: moments when communities asked God to protect them from calamity and guide their families and their nation.

Grounded in gratitude

The Continental Congress issued the first national Thanksgiving proclamation in 1777, drafted by Samuel Adams. The delegates called on Americans to acknowledge God’s providence “with Gratitude” and to implore “such farther Blessings as they stand in Need of.”

Twelve years later, President George Washington proclaimed the first federal day of thanksgiving under the Constitution. He asked citizens to gather in public and private worship, to seek forgiveness for “national and other transgressions,” and to pray for the growth of “true religion and virtue.”

Our problems — social, fiscal, and moral — are immense. But they are not greater than the God our ancestors trusted.

Other presidents followed suit. During rising tensions with France in 1798, John Adams declared a national day of “solemn humiliation, fasting, and prayer,” arguing that only a virtuous people could sustain liberty. The next year he called for another day of thanksgiving, urging citizens to set aside work, confess national sins, and recommit themselves to God.

For generations, this was the American understanding: national strength flowed from moral character, and moral character flowed from religious conviction.

The evolution of a holiday

In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln — responding to years of lobbying by Sarah Josepha Hale — established the last Thursday in November as a permanent national Thanksgiving. Hale saw the holiday as a unifying civic ritual that strengthened families and reminded Americans of their shared heritage.

Calvin Coolidge echoed this tradition in 1924, observing that Thanksgiving revealed “the spiritual strength of the nation.” Even as technology transformed daily life, he insisted that the meaning of the day remain unchanged.

But as the country drifted from an agricultural rhythm and from public expressions of faith, the holiday’s original purpose faded. The deeper meaning — gratitude, repentance, unity — gave way to distraction.

When a nation forgets

Today, America marks Thanksgiving with a national character far removed from the one our forebears envisioned. The founders believed public acknowledgment of God’s authority anchored liberty. Modern institutions increasingly treat religious conviction as an obstacle.

Court rulings have redefined marriage, narrowed the space for religious conscience, and removed long-standing religious symbols from public grounds. Citizens have been fined, penalized, or jailed for refusing to violate their beliefs. The very freedoms early Americans prayed to preserve are now treated as negotiable.

At the same time, other pillars of national life — family stability, civic order, border security, self-government — erode under cultural and political pressure. As faith recedes, government fills the void. The founders warned that a people who lose their internal moral compass invite external control.

Former House Speaker Robert Winthrop (Whig-Mass.) put it plainly in 1849: A society will be governed “either by the Word of God or by the strong arm of man.”

A lesson from history

The collapse of religious conviction in much of Europe created a vacuum quickly filled by ideologies hostile to Western values. America resisted this trend longer, but the rising influence of secularism and identity ideology pushes our society toward the same drift: a nation less confident in its heritage, less united by a common purpose.

Ronald Reagan saw the warning signs decades ago. In his 1989 farewell, he lamented that younger generations were no longer taught to love their country or understand why the Pilgrims came here. Patriotism, once absorbed through family, school, and culture, had been replaced by fashionable cynicism.

Thanksgiving offers the antidote Reagan urged: a return to gratitude, history, and shared purpose.

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Thanksgiving was meant to be the clearest expression of a nation united by faith, family, and patriotism. It rooted liberty in gratitude and gratitude in God’s providence.

Reagan captured that spirit in 1986, writing that Thanksgiving “underscores our unshakable belief in God as the foundation of our Nation.” That conviction made possible the prosperity and freedom Americans inherited.

Today’s constitutional conservatives must lead in restoring that heritage — not by nostalgia, but by example. Families who teach gratitude, faith, and national purpose build the civic strength the founders believed essential.

A return to gratitude

Thanksgiving calls each of us to humility: to recognize that national renewal begins with personal renewal. Our problems — social, fiscal, and moral — are immense. But they are not greater than the God our ancestors trusted.

That confidence is the heart of Thanksgiving. It is why the Pilgrims prayed, why Congress proclaimed days of fasting and praise, why Lincoln unified the holiday, and why generations of Americans pause each November to give thanks.

Editor’s note: A version of this article first appeared at Conservative Review in 2015.

The families behind our veterans deserve more than once-a-year thanks



Every November, America pauses to thank its veterans. As Thanksgiving approaches — and as we mark Veterans and Military Families Month — it’s worth remembering that real gratitude does not begin in ceremonies. It begins in living rooms, workplaces, and communities willing to listen.

When I returned from Iraq, I believed my mission was complete. I had led soldiers through chaos during the invasion of Baghdad and made it home alive. What I didn’t expect was the second battle: reintegration. Purpose felt less defined. Connection felt harder to find. The uniform came off, but the transition demanded its own kind of discipline.

Service doesn’t end on the battlefield. It continues in the boardroom, the classroom, the town hall — and at the dinner table.

Like many veterans, I learned that coming home isn’t an ending. It’s a transfer of duty.

Service that spans generations

That duty is carried not just by veterans but by the families who stand behind them. A spouse manages a household while absorbing the worry that never quite fades. A child learns resilience from absence. A parent hopes each phone call means his son or daughter is one day closer to coming home — and able to stay.

My son is now a second lieutenant in the Army. Watching him begin his own journey reminds me that service does not stop at the edge of a battlefield. It moves through generations. Families carry it alongside us.

The meaning of gratitude

Thanksgiving offers a natural moment to reflect on gratitude — not the polite version, but the kind that demands something from us.

It demands employers who recognize leadership potential behind a résumé gap.

It demands communities willing to listen before advising.

It demands fellow veterans who know that strength includes accepting help, not just offering it.

Most of all, it demands that Americans see military families not as supporting characters but as central figures in the story of national resilience.

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What we owe the next generation

The wars of the last two decades lasted longer than anyone expected. Their consequences will last even longer. We owe it to the next generation — including my son’s — to show that a nation’s strength is not measured only by how it deploys its forces, but by how it welcomes them back.

As we close Veterans and Military Families Month and gather around Thanksgiving tables, we can honor veterans in a simple but meaningful way: not by assuming we understand their experience, but by inviting them to share it. Not by thanking them once a year, but by offering them roles in which their judgment, discipline, and experience make a difference.

Service doesn’t end on the battlefield. It continues in the boardroom, the classroom, the town hall — and at the dinner table.

Thank God for God: Being grateful for gratitude



Several months ago, I came across a conversation on X (formerly Twitter) that caused me to think about the horrors of hell in an entirely different way. Rather than shudder at the torture imposed upon damned souls by demons and other accursed creatures, I had to stop and consider the torture that damned souls impose upon themselves.

"There's not a single grateful thought in hell," said Father Brian O'Brien, echoing a statement attributed to noted exorcist Father Chad Ripperger.

— (@)

Hell is eternal separation from God, as all Christians know, and most people think of hell as wallowing in an endless bath of fire surrounded by warring demons tormenting physical bodies that can no longer die. But, as Fr. Ripperger perceived, hell is also a permanent mental state that prohibits thoughts of God and the goodness of His creation, including our fellow man.

In other words, hell is endless fixation on the self. If there is no God, then man is his own highest being. Such a powerful position may sound enticing at first. As Satan infamously declares in John Milton's "Paradise Lost," "Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav'n."

But Milton's Satan is lying, as the real Satan always does, and we are now living in a hellscape of our own making because we have accepted his lies and tried to recreate ourselves rather than accept our subordinate role as the created. People have irreparably mutilated their bodies — or even worse, the bodies of their children — in a vain attempt to change their sex. We have toppled statues and destroyed monuments in an effort to jettison the past.

In a recent op-ed in the Nation, two leftist writers even considered doing away entirely with Thanksgiving, a civic holiday that reminds us of our interconnectedness and shared smallness, and replacing it with "Truthsgiving," which apparently would be little more than a yearly lecture from perpetually aggrieved activists.

Chase Iron Eyes called the story of the first Thanksgiving feast a "new myth" created by "aliens in a foreign land" who needed "a sense of people, purpose, and place."

His colleague Sean Sherman argued that the "sanitized version of Thanksgiving neglects to mention the violence, land theft, and subsequent decimation of Indigenous populations ... [and] causes tremendous distress to those of us who are still reeling from the trauma of these events to our communities."

I cannot imagine a more miserable way to spend a day than to focus on the sufferings of those long since dead rather than the blessings of the present age. And everyone, no matter their circumstances, still has something and someone for which to give thanks.

The purest form of gratitude we can have is for God for His own sake. Those in recovery from addiction understand well the importance of God as He is, and a young people's recovery group in my area has an apt motto that keeps Him in the forefront of their minds: thank God for God.

After thanking God for Himself, we must also appreciate His many gifts. Jesus Christ is Lord over all "in heaven and on earth and under the earth," as St. Paul's letter to the Philippians reminds us, and all that we have comes from Him. We cannot possibly repay Him for His generosity, but we can at least devote one day a year to reflecting upon it.

Finally, we must be grateful for one another. Mother Teresa, now St. Teresa of Calcutta, once said that "if we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other." If we belong to each other, then we must love, serve, and give thanks for one another.

And by others, I don't mean strangers of generations gone by but our family, friends, and neighbors in the here and now. We, of course, should remember loved ones who have passed away, but we do not honor the memory of the dead by forgetting the living.

Gratitude to God and to others gives our lives meaning and purpose. This Thanksgiving, I'm grateful for the opportunity to experience and express that gratitude. Whatever it takes, I want to spend eternity standing shoulder to shoulder with all the saints of heaven giving thanks and praise to Him — and avoid forever the one place without Him, the once place where a "grateful thought" cannot exist.

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This Truthsgiving, I'm thankful for European settlement



Cranks come out of the woodwork ahead of every holiday to tell the masses they're celebrating the wrong thing or wrong to celebrate anything at all. Cynical liberal publications dutifully spin off the cranks' latest insights, which are inevitably just old envies and prejudices repackaged for new audiences.

We're told Christopher Columbus is genocidal; the Fourth of July is a celebration fit only for jingos, sexists, and racists; Christmas is environmentally ruinous; and Father's and Mother's Days are hurtfully exclusionary to the reality-averse. Thanksgiving enjoys no exemption.

In its ritual exhibition of late-November ingratitude, the Nation ran a two-stage article by failed Democratic congressional candidate Chase Iron Eyes and Sioux chef Sean Sherman explaining why Americans should either "decolonize" Thanksgiving or replace it with "Truthsgiving."

It is critical to decolonize the day, Sherman suggested, because Thanksgiving's roots are "intertwined with colonial aggression." His preferred decolonized substitute apparently has blessed roots that managed to grow for millennia without absorbing blood from the intertribal wars, slavery, and human sacrifice the Americas were home to prior to European settlement.

According to Sherman, decolonization "means centering the Indigenous perspective and challenging the colonial narratives around the holiday (and every other day on the calendar)." It also apparently means "resisting the dominance of colonial influences."

A decolonized Thanksgiving is apparently one where we racialize our gratitude, resist the urge to give thanks for the myriad gifts handed down to us from settlers from Britain and Europe, and adopt a "clearer lens" to see that anything capable of inspiring pride in post-17th-century America isn't worth celebrating.

Iron Eyes underscored in his argument for canceling Thanksgiving that we can be thankful so long as we're thankful to the right people. "Give thanks to the Native nations who created the world that we inherit today," he wrote.

Iron Eyes' talk of inheritance and Sherman's call for selective remembrance prompted me to think about the world we actually inherit this Truthsgiving and those to whom we owe a tremendous debt of gratitude but are now asked to discount.

More than for property rights, the free market, and the wheel, this Truthsgiving I'd like to express my gratitude to the decentered settlers for their gift of the written word and a functional alphabet, which enable cranks to air their grievances but also preserve Indian languages and traditions for the benefit of future generations.

I am thankful for the settlers' science — the European origin of which the late sociologist Rodney Stark noted was the result of Abrahamic peoples' belief in a rational God whose creation was likewise rational and therefore replete with discernible truth — which has extended Indian and European lives alike and provided us with dominion over a wilderness once worshipped.

I am thankful for the salvific faith settlers brought over to the New World, which not only affirms human beings' inviolable dignity, the eternal love of God, and the promise of life after death but has informed the culture, customs, and ethic that have helped make America the envy of the world.

I am thankful for the imported rule of law, which spares us all from the tyranny of chieftains and the impulses of the mad mob.

I am also thankful for a society prototyped overseas that is so accommodating and tolerant as to put up, year after year, with blood libels and putdowns from its many beneficiaries.

Iron Eyes concluded his argument with, "Let's tell a different story by dropping the lie of Thanksgiving and begin a Truthsgiving."

Instead, let's drop the lie that European settlement wasn't, at least in the long run, an absolute blessing and acknowledge that the imperfect cast of characters responsible for the society we've inherited don't need our condemnation or praise but rather our understanding and thanks.

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