Let’s Pat Ourselves on the Back…
…for the life of me, I can’t think of Whom I am possibly supposed to direct my thanks towards tomorrow other than to myself. This has got to be the most lame and wishy-washy presidential “thanksgiving” I’ve ever read:
Friend –
Tomorrow, Thanksgiving Day, Americans across the country will sit down together, count our blessings, and give thanks for our families and our loved ones.
American families reflect the diversity of this great nation. No two are exactly alike, but there is a common thread they each share.
Our families are bound together through times of joy and times of grief. They shape us, support us, instill the values that guide us as individuals, and make possible all that we achieve.
So tomorrow, I’ll be giving thanks for my family — for all the wisdom, support, and love they have brought into my life.
But tomorrow is also a day to remember those who cannot sit down to break bread with those they love.
The soldier overseas holding down a lonely post and missing his kids. The sailor who left her home to serve a higher calling. The folks who must spend tomorrow apart from their families to work a second job, so they can keep food on the table or send a child to school.
We are grateful beyond words for the service and hard work of so many Americans who make our country great through their sacrifice. And this year, we know that far too many face a daily struggle that puts the comfort and security we all deserve painfully out of reach.
So when we gather tomorrow, let us also use the occasion to renew our commitment to building a more peaceful and prosperous future that every American family can enjoy.
It seems like a lifetime ago that a crowd met on a frigid February morning in Springfield, Illinois to set out on an improbable course to change our nation.
In the years since, Michelle and I have been blessed with the support and friendship of the millions of Americans who have come together to form this ongoing movement for change.
You have been there through victories and setbacks. You have given of yourselves beyond measure. You have enabled all that we have accomplished — and you have had the courage to dream yet bigger dreams for what we can still achieve.
So in this season of thanks giving, I want to take a moment to express my gratitude to you, and my anticipation of the brighter future we are creating together.
With warmest wishes for a happy holiday season from my family to yours,
President Barack Obama
Hmmmm, there must be someone to be specifically thankful too…I wonder who that might be?
Thank you God for everything.
Thanks for SA for being sane rational witnesses to certain principals and truths.
This sounds like it was written by a campaign speechwriter – a single person, without a husband/wife or children of his/her own.
It’s an exercise in abstraction and buzzwords.
(Then again, perhaps all of them are… just sayin’.)
[...] what you read in the prior post to President George Washington’s Thanksgiving Day Proclamation in 1789: Whereas it is the [...]
He just can’t resist making everything about him. Even on Thanksgiving it’s about him and not about HIM. How on earth did we ever elect such a man.
It’s sad that y’all can’t take the day off from being paranoid cranks, but that wasn’t the official presidential thanksgiving. It was a message to his campaign supporters.
Here’s the actual proclamation.
Be that as it may Stealth, BOTH proclamations share exactly the same defect: They don’t directly (or quite frankly indirectly) give proper thanks to the One to Whom we give thanks. I can’t for the life of me understand why that is so hard for him to do. And it’s intentional. He acknowledges that GW gave thanks to almighty God, but for some reason, what was good for Washington, the Father of Our Nation, isn’t good for the Son of Chicago. His is not the Spirit of America. That’s not being a paranoid crank, that’s pointing out a very, very disappointing fact and quite frankly, an unacceptable shift in our public square. The emperor has no clothes.
Have a great thanksgiving!
The mention of Washington acknowledging God is not the same as Obama calling for it.
Skipping to the end:
“I encourage all the people of the United States to come together, whether in our homes, places of worship, community centers, or any place where family, friends and neighbors may gather, with gratitude for all we have received in the past year, to express appreciation to those whose lives enrich our own and to share our bounty with others.”
The mention of “places of worship” is a red herring, window dressing. What the president actually said is that we should thank each other.
Man replaces God, for the first time in a presidential proclamation of thanksgiving.
This is no accident on the president’s part, nor nitpicking on the part of those who note it. The evasions and elisions in thanking God are clearly on purpose, either to shore up President Obama’s anti-religious left flank, or as a representation of how he himself feels.
But for the record and in fairness to the President, Jefferson and Andrew Jackson both refused to issue thanksgiving proclamations, as beyond their constitutionally allowed powers. But they were honest about it.
Why must he thank God? He can give thanks to whomever he chooses, whether he is the President or a man on the street. Isn’t that what so much of our nation is predicated upon? Perhaps Obama isn’t thankful to God. Perhaps he doesn’t really believe in him. Maybe he is and does, but doesn’t feel the need to share it publicly. Who knows. It feels unfair to criticize who he chooses to thank.
Following this same logic, how do you feel about actors or athletes or recording artists who thank God for their awards or accomplishments? Are these to be celebrated and encouraged?
BSK, if it’s proper to note the doings of the religious right, surely it’s proper to note the rise of the anti-religious left, whom I think have taken over the Democratic Party.
And so it’s proper to note President Obama’s historic detour around divine providence, to my mind to appease the the modern human-centered philosophy that forms so much of his base.
By contrast, Bill Clinton was [I hope not the last of] the center-left of the traditional Democratic Party, and indeed he proclaimed:
On Thanksgiving Day, we set aside our daily routines to acknowledge the bounty and mercy of Divine Providence.
which would have fit in just fine with George Washington.
Now, you might think President Obama’s declaration is just fine, but I think we should be permitted to at least note his stark deviation from American tradition.
Something’s going on here more than about Thanksgiving, the replacement of a reverence for divine providence with secular humanism, so it would be disingenuous of us to pretend that it isn’t.
TVD-
You are right that there is a marked change in the tone of Obama’s speech and past speeches (I haven’t read them all, but I’m happy to take your word for it). I was just troubled by the speculation about the causes of it (what you describe as “appeas[ing] the the modern human-centered philosophy that forms so much of his base”) and the resulting criticism based on that speculation (or perhaps based in no speculation at all and predicated solely on an opposition to Obama and/or a more secular President).
I will not criticize those who choose to thank God. I ask that those who choose not to thank God, or any other higher being, be extended the same respect.
Perhaps there is something more going on here. But do we know that for sure? Maybe it was a covert attack on religion. Or maybe Obama doesn’t believe in thanking God. Or maybe he was trying to give a speech that was inclusive to people of all faiths and worldviews. I don’t know. And I’d reckon you don’t either, outside of speculation that, while certainly not baseless, is well-short of air-tight.
Well, I think the cleverness in the wording, driving around divine providence, is palpable. And there’s not even a pluralism, thanking something higher than man, or if one chose, just fellow man. Basically, divine providence is written out, and that’s been the purpose of thanksgiving since Washington.
This is worthy of comment.
He did seem to thank his “fellow man” in the last statement, though that also could be read as simply thanking those who he anticipates working with him (a particular fellow man, but not humanity as a whole).
A genuine question: What was the purpose of Thanksgiving pre-Washington, as best you understand it? Was Washington continuing a previous tradition or was he also deviating? Or are you focusing solely on Thanksgiving vis a vis the Presidency?
As I recall, Congress asked Washington to issue the proclamation.
But I think what’s pretty much unknown by our products of the modern American educational system is just how much they believed in divine providence back then.
In fact, in Washington’s first inaugural address—and he says he’s confident he’s speaking for pretty much everybody—he credits God not only with the success of the American revolution, but also with the tenor and tone that engendered the drafting and ratification of the Constitution. As well as expressing a confidence that God will continue to bless America in the future.
“…it would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official act my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that His benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States a Government instituted by themselves for these essential purposes, and may enable every instrument employed in its administration to execute with success the functions allotted to his charge.
In tendering this homage to the Great Author of every public and private good, I assure myself that it expresses your sentiments not less than my own, nor those of my fellow-citizens at large less than either. No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than those of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency; and in the important revolution just accomplished, in the system of their united government the tranquil deliberations and voluntary consent of so many distinct communities from which the event has resulted can not be compared with the means by which most governments have been established without some return of pious gratitude, along with an humble anticipation of the future blessings which the past seem to presage.
These reflections, arising out of the present crisis, have forced themselves too strongly on my mind to be suppressed. You will join with me, I trust, in thinking that there are none under the influence of which the proceedings of a new and free government can more auspiciously commence.”
I don’t know what they teach in schools these days, but it doesn’t seem to be this, based on what people say as adults.