Grocery stores, train stations, even gas stations are crowded today, as people are moving from point A to point B to celebrate Thanksgiving with friends and family. The live turkey population is far lower now than just a week ago, and in 48 hours much of their remains will be fully digested ane expelled.
Nearly all the traditional food for Thanksgiving is from New World sources: turkey, potato, yams, cranberries, and corn were unknown to Europeans before Columbus. At the time of the pilgrims, this was a vast unexplored continent with an abundance of natural resources and a civilization untouched by the Roman era, the European dark ages, and the motion of territorial expansion. The pilgrims didn't believe in religious freedom, but rather another theocratic regime. They lived in the same place as today's Americans but in a completely different world. They could never have imagined what their settlement would have turned into.
Bush has promised that he'll seek strict constructionists to replace any Supreme Court justices that retire in his next term. If the pilgrims were our standard for this, we'd have judges who believed in trial by ordeal, considered heresy a crime, and distinguished the initiated in a faith superior to those who weren't. They would have been bothered more by today's risqué fashion than by slavery and the genocide of Native Americans.
There is much we can admire the pilgrims for, and we can take pride in the liberty they found here. But they only caught - and started - the fragments of what would America great. There's more to this day than indigenous plant- and wildlife and funny hats.
Sent from my Blackberry
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