I love Thanksgiving. It is a holiday, with little or no religious significance for most of us, spent, ideally, with family or friends. Only the Fourth of July is better, in my opinion.

It celebrates our thanks for so many things, even when our lives seem particularly precious. But it is a day also to think of those less fortunate, no matter how dire we think our situation is. Murrow's Harvest of Shame was first telecast just before Thanksgiving and this year we have the horrors in Mumbai (I keep wanting to say "Bombay") and the possibility that we were its target, to remind us to maintain some perspective and humanity, despite our own troubles.


Most of what I have to be grateful for is none of your business, and I suspect that you are not that interested anyway. I will note that my parents are still quite healthy and active and in their early 80s, and for that I do give thanks, but that's enough of that.

I give thanks almost every day for the fact that they were born in this country, and that I was as well. The courage of those who brought their parents to these shores, and, actually, to Boston, will fill me with gratitude for people of whom I know next to nothing, for as long as I live.

The Boston part is important, too. There is something about New England, I think, that can enhance an appreciation of what this country represents. Whether it does or not, I am quite thankful that as close as we came in recent years---as we have in the past---to throwing it all away, our nation came to its senses at almost the last possible moment and hope abounds that the gift of our English founders, transmuted by experience on these shores---the rule of law, has survived. (Roger Cohen, I see, has many of the same thoughts, as I am sure many others do as well.)

It is a bit early to be certain, and the excessive pre-occupation with "turning the page" is not a good sign, but it appears that a fair number of our fellow Americans have belatedly recognized that we are not a country of torturers, of "rulers" whose "word" becomes law, but a republic, founded on a respect for the rights of the minority, while otherwise generally allowing for the vote of a majority to determine the course of our country.

We are not a country where the President "takes us to war" but one where war is only waged when Congress, made up of people we have sent to represent us, agrees. We are also a country under which the President may "make Treaties" only "by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate" which makes me wonder why only the Iraqi Parliament gets to vote on the status of forces agreement, but it is Thanksgiving and I will give it a rest for a day or so.

The Times compares our nation as waking up as Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz but to me, it is more like Rip Van Winkle. The trauma of the stolen 2000 election followed by 9/11 (a month after the incompetent who was "awarded" the presidency failed to be stirred by an intelligence report warning of just such an attack) just knocked our country out and we sleepwalked our way until somehow, Katrina woke us up.

So, I am grateful to George W. Bush for showing us again the consequences of such irresponsible behavior. Ben Franklin's warning that the founders gave us a republic "if you can keep it" never had so much more resonance.

A Postscript

When this was first posted, I forgot all about Arlo for some reason. But, as someone reminded me,there is no question that the first Thanksgiving introduced socialism to this continent. As for Arlo, maybe I will listen on WFUV at noon, as is traditional (a tradition begun, of course, at the late WNEW-FM) or maybe I will just play it myself.