Why We Celebrate Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving: Unemployment is stubbornly high, Europe's economy is a mess and North Korea's mad regime threatens global catastrophe. Even the weather in much of the nation portends gloom. Time to celebrate.

You read that correctly. Adventurous and enterprising Americans have always struck out in faith, affirming not only the significance of their individual lives but convinced of the material world's expandability. They endorsed the animating spirit of creation.

Moreover, they've maintained that healthy attitude in the worst of times - through wars, depressions and recessions. Indeed, in one of the recessions of the past quarter-century, a best-selling book was titled "Tough Times Never Last, But Tough People Do."

And so it's even now, despite huge debts heaped on Americans and their progeny by irresponsible government, by manifold anxieties spread with the sense that our politicians, giving up on a free society, are poised to trample our remaining liberties and dignity.

That's why last year's Tea Party, with its sea of yellow "Don't Tread On Me" banners, and this month's midterm elections give reason to celebrate. They hold promise of renewal and redemption - as well as hope that out-of-control government can be reversed.

Those very banners recall this country's Revolutionary era, depicting as they do a coiled snake ready to strike at any tyrant's well-shod feet. The spirit lives, as government for many Americans is now best symbolized by the screener/molester empowered to grasp your genitals before permitting you to board an aircraft.

Or it's symbolized by a tax collector threatening to place a lien on your property even though the sum of its wealth would reduce the national debt by not one sneeze. Or by clueless politicians and policymakers who still don't get that humble Americans need to keep and put to use as much of their honestly earned income as possible so that the economy may grow again.

We could recite forever a litany of government's misdeeds and contemporary tyrannies. But we recognize, as George Washington did, the need to pause for a day of gratitude, aligning ourselves with providence and an ultimately benevolent universe.

For us, the American spirit is symbolized by a black woman who lost a six-figure job and now works at multiple menial jobs. It's a foreclosed McMansion owner who finds more modest quarters for his family as he looks for work or creates his own. It's an immigrant who still believes in America's special brand of opportunity.

They do so in faith, either well-defined or inchoate, and these people will shape the economy of the future. From them we'll find the innovations that improve our lives. From them we'll find a resurgence of responsible government and new tools to keep it in check.

From the Pilgrims on, Thanksgiving was always about individuals, in deepest gratitude, internalizing the possibilities that flow from the Infinite. It was about making optimism a moral imperative.