Seven Things to Be Thankful for Thanksgiving 2017 (FREE)

Despite our many problems, there remain many good things occurring in America. This Thanksgiving 2017, here are seven of them:

1. Second Amendment, First Freedom. Because Americans possess more than 300 million firearms, our governments – federal, state and local – know there’s a limit to how much they can push us around. Certainly we have way too much government. But the extreme level of repression and control the “free” countries of Canada, Australia and Western Europe (except Switzerland) suffer don’t exist here. As I related earlier, the police themselves don’t want to take our guns because it’s too dangerous.

2. The First Amendment. No question there’s a lot of really bad stuff out there on the Internet. But such horrors also are available in the “free” countries, listed in No. 1, that repress free speech. What they repress is any real opposition to the ruling regime – although that may be changing, as seen with Brexit and the Austrian election. In America, the immense forces of Political Correctness still reign in the academy, the media and the government. Despite that, we still can say what we want and believe what we want. The powerful new social media, all of them connected to the government one way or another, are increasing their censorship not just of really bad groups, but even of reasonable opposition. Yet competitors are arising to restore freedom.

3. President Donald John Trump. My ideal president would be a combination of George Washington and Russell Kirk – a philosopher president. But that’s not going to happen. First off, among around 150 million Americans eligible to run against Hillary Clinton last year, Trump was the only one who could have defeated her. If you want a vision of President Hillary, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever. Trump obviously hasn’t been perfect. But so far we have: strong economic growth, what appears to be a decent new Supreme Court justice, the most pro-life (anti-abortion) president in 50 years, no new foreign wars (albeit some continuing), better trade deals all around and better relations with a little country with 7,000 nuclear weapons, Russia.

4. Women cooking Thanksgiving turkey. Even feminist women I know insist on cooking their family’s bird just the way Mom did – and further insist the No. 1 man around (husband, father, brother, boyfriend) carve it.

5. The NFL getting its comeuppance. I enjoy a good, or even bad, Sunday afternoon game as much as anybody. But the NFL started dominating all Sunday – which should be a day for family and church – from dawn till dusk; then Monday evening; then Thursday evening and sometimes even all day Saturday. Even Thanksgiving, which started out with just a game in my native Detroit with the Lions playing somebody else, was joined by two more games, meaning footballaholics ruined the holiday for their families. Now there’s a reaction against such greed. You’ll know things are turning around when Thanksgiving again has only one game, in the afternoon in Detroit, the way Vince Lombardi intended it.

6. Free online learning. Yes, the Internet presents a lot of problems with learning (see above for other problems), and reading books still is best, but you now can learn almost anything for free, or nearly so. For starters, the Bible is free almost anywhere in the globe with a cell-phone connection. So are the great works of literature. True, the PC universities teach piffle. And it’s still best to learn in a personal way from a great teacher. But kids these days can get the essentials for nothing. So Yale dumped Shakespeare from its English curriculum? The Complete Bard is free on numerous sites, performances are free on YouTube – here’s Richard Burton’s great version of Hamlet – and live performances are flourishing. So who needs Yale?

7. Modern medicine keeps us ticking longer. I read a fair amount of history, and one thing common until about 100 years ago was people dying in large numbers from plagues, accidents, childbirth and starvation. Sure, the two world wars wiped out millions, and nuclear war could be even worse, but modern sanitation, nutrition and medicine should be appreciated. Several friends and relatives are alive today from medications or treatments available in just the past 20 years. Modern sawbones keep us alive to stuff ourselves on Thanksgiving. Happy Turkey Day!