Freedoms Bought with a Price
In 2011, Ohio governor John R. Kasich commemorated Thanksgiving as a time "for friends and family to gather together and express gratitude for our blessings, to celebrate the freedoms we enjoy...," and a day when Americans recognize the providence bestowed upon our nation and celebrate the courage and faith of our country's settlers..." Even before Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national day of Thanksgiving in 1863, Jefferson Davis had issued a proclamation inviting the Confederate states to "unite in rendering thanks and praise to God for these great mercies, and to implore Him to conduct our country safely through the perils which surround us..."
Perils still surround us. However, the nation that was founded upon religious freedom and individual liberty and opportunity is threatened today, more importantly, from within, by increasing unrest, upheaval, scandal and crisis after crisis.
Lincoln foresaw that the greatest dangers to our nation are internal, not foreign. In 1838 he challenged Americans with the task of perpetuating our political institutions in order to perform gratitude to our founding fathers and duty to our prosperity.
"How, then, shall we perform it?" he asked, "At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of earth (our own expected) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a Trial of a thousand years.
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