By now everyone knows that the market played dead, once again, this week. So with the lack of action in the indexes I thought I would post a few of Thanksgiving editorials that I found very inspirational and/or informative. New longs and stocks on wathclist are listed below.
Grateful Hearts
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 11/22/2006
Thanksgiving 2007: This is the time to park discontent at the door, sit down to a feast and count one's blessings. And in the United States of America, the blessings are many. This weekend we give thanks for . . .
• The land. The Pilgrims understood. Despite their struggling start, they perceived God's hand at work in the vast, fertile continent that was their new home. They saw riches before them, and nearly four centuries later we see the same abundance and beauty today. Every journey through this land reveals its greatness to us.
• The people. Now 300 million strong, Americans are hard to sum up as a people by traditional standards of race, religion or culture. They famously come from all over, and their presence fuels arguments over the question, "Who are we, anyway?" But there can be no argument with their success at making this nation the richest, strongest, most productive and most innovative on Earth.
• The founders. A sobering lessons from Iraq is that nation-building isn't so easy, even with plenty of examples to learn from. So just think of how hard it was to achieve that feat the first time, with untested ideas and a world watching (if not rooting) for failure.
America is free not just because it fought a war for freedom, but (even more so) because it was blessed with leaders who had both the principles and practicality to come up with a Constitution that has secured that freedom for 217 years — and counting.
• Our liberty. And where would we be without Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton and all the rest? Maybe in the same condition as far too much of the human race today, living where freedom is tenuous or just a distant dream.
If history teaches us anything, it's that there's nothing inevitable about the march of freedom. It can be rolled back as readily as it advances. It requires much from the people and from their leaders — courage, self-reliance, respect for the rights of others and for the law. Americans live free today because past generations had such virtues. We thank them today, and only hope we can emulate them.
• Those who defend us. Most of our fellow Americans are doing their part to keep the country moving forward. We thank them for their work — and Americans do work, harder than folks in most other rich nations — in sustaining an economy that's the envy of the world.
But a particular group deserves special gratitude on this Thanksgiving weekend, when the nation is at war. These are the Americans who have chosen to defend their country, often at risk to their lives and at the cost of separation from their families.
It is not through sheer luck that America has been free from a significant terrorist attack for more than five years since 9/11. And it's not that our enemies have given up. People on the front lines, at home and abroad, have been fighting all that time to pursue our enemies and thwart their plans.
Thousands have given their lives. Many thousands more are separated from their families on this day of reunions. Their loved ones — with half their heart in Iraq or Afghanistan — are sacrificing greatly, too. We salute them. We thank them. We wish them hope over this holiday.
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A Great and Godly Adventure: The Pilgrims and the Myth of the First Thanksgiving'
By George Will
Thursday, November 23, 2006
``Twas founded be th' Puritans to give thanks f'r bein' presarved fr'm th' Indyans, an' ... we keep it to give thanks we are presarved fr'm th' Puritans.''
-- Finley Peter Dunne
WASHINGTON -- But the Pilgrims who bequeathed to us Thanksgiving were not Puritans, at least as we use that term to denote busybodies bent on extirpating dissipation, meaning fun. Excessive merriment was not a pressing problem for the half of the Mayflower's 102 passengers who survived the first few months in wintry Massachusetts.
True, the Pilgrims left Holland for America in part because the Dutch had too much fun, even on Sunday, when the Pilgrims' services would last four hours, the congregation standing throughout. And two Pilgrim brothers did quarrel because one said the other was ``blinded, bewitched and besotted'' by his wife, a ``bouncing girl who wore whalebones in her breast, an excessive deal of lace and a showish hat.''
But the Pilgrims went to America, writes Godfrey Hodgson, not to become American but to remain English and devout. Rather than tarry among the licentious Dutch, they would risk life among Indians who, they had heard, flayed prisoners with scallop shells. Soon a Pilgrim was instructing Indians in the Ten Commandments, ``all of which they harkened unto with great attention, and liked well of; only the seventh commandment they excepted against, thinking there were many inconveniences in it, that a man should be tied to one woman.''
Hodgson is a British journalist and historian. His ``cmakes clear that the Pilgrims embarked on the angry north Atlantic in storm season not because they wanted to impose their strict ways on anyone, but to avoid being bothered by anyone.
It was not until the Cold War in the 1950s that American historians, seizing upon John Winthrop's sermon (``we shall be as a City upon a Hill, the eyes of all people are upon us''), suggested that the Pilgrims pioneered ``American exceptionalism'' by adopting a universal mission to cure this fallen world of corruptions. An American cold warrior, Ronald Reagan, would, 30 years later, wield that ``city upon a hill'' trope while ending the Cold War.
The first Thanksgiving feast involved a few dozen English settlers and perhaps a few hundred Native Americans who, Hodgson reports, ``protected themselves from cold, insect bites and so on with a thick layer of fat or grease. This may have made them smelly at close quarters though hardly smellier than the Europeans, who changed their clothes rarely.'' The dinner probably did not include turkey, which was rarer in Massachusetts than in England, where it had been introduced from the Mediterranean, hence its name.
This year, when one of the Transportation Security Administration's 43,000 airport security screeners (perhaps two times more numerous than were Native Americans in 1620 in what is now eastern Massachusetts) confiscated a traveler's too-large tube of toothpaste, the traveler perhaps thought: Life is hard. So it is timely for Hodgson to remind us of the admiration that is due ``as a tiny band of men and women, determined to follow what they believe to be the ordinances of their God, entrust themselves to the wild freezing ocean; confront disease, starvation, ferocious enemies and justified fear.''
Thanksgiving, Hodgson notes, is an echo of the breaking of bread at the heart of Christian worship, and of a Jewish Seder. It also is a continuation, in today's abundance, of harvest festivals around the world, which began millennia ago, when abundance was so rare as to seem miraculous. Hodgson thinks Thanksgiving expresses ``the deepest of all American national feelings'' -- gratitude. It is the inclusive gratitude ``of a nation of immigrants who have lived for the most part in peace and plenty under the rule of law as established with the consent of the governed.'' Celebrated by turning inward with family, Thanksgiving is, Hodgson thinks, a counterpoint to Americans' other great civic festival, the Fourth of July:
``It is good to celebrate the public glories and the promise of American life with fireworks and speeches, better still to celebrate the mysterious cycle of life, the parade of the generations, and the fragile miracle of plenty, in the small warm circle of family, the building brick of which all prouder towers have always been constructed.''
An Englishman (Samuel Johnson) said that people more often need to be reminded than informed. Sometimes Americans need a sympathetic foreigner, such as Hodgson, to remind them of the dignity of what they are doing, on this day, and all others.
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Recounting our manifold blessings
By Mark M. Alexander
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
"[I]t is the indispensable duty of all men to adore the superintending providence of Almighty God ... that with one heart and one voice the good people may express the grateful feeling of their hearts and consecrate themselves to [His] service ... acknowledging with gratitude their obligations to Him for benefits received...." --Samuel Adams
What is the nature of gratitude, of true thankfulness? Acknowledgment of receiving a gift that is undeserved, then joy appropriately suffusing that knowledge, overflowing into recognition of indebtedness to the giver. In truth, we are not really giving thanks -- we give nothing -- we are only responding with properly grateful hearts that are due the Gift Giver.
A course volunteer sits while wearing a Thanksgiving turkey hat during the final round of the ADT Championships golf tournament in West Palm Beach, Florida, November 19, 2006. REUTERS/Marc Serota (UNITED STATES)
That is the spirit in which Thanksgiving was first celebrated on our shores -- and then persisted as a joining thread of our nation's character. The Pilgrims set us on the path to become a country humbly acknowledging the thanks we owe to Almighty God as Creator of life and Author of liberty.
At Thanksgiving nowadays, we're often invited to "count our blessings." Similarly, The Patriot's holiday tradition is to recount the origins of our blessings of liberty. Indeed, Thanksgiving is an indispensable part of the foundation of our nation.
The Pilgrims left Plymouth, England, on 6 September 1620, sailing for a new world that promised opportunities of religious and civil liberty. For almost three months, 102 seafarers braved harsh elements, arriving off the current-day Massachusetts coast, in November 1620. On 11 December, prior to disembarking at Plymouth Rock, the voyagers signed the Mayflower Compact , America's original document of civil government predicated on principles of self-rule. Governor William Bradford described the Mayflower Compact as "a combination ... that when they came a shore they would use their owne libertie; for none had power to command them...."
Starvation and sickness during the ensuing New England winter killed almost half their population, but through prayer and hard work, with the assistance of their Indian friends, the Pilgrims reaped a rich harvest in the summer of 1621.
The bounty, however, was short-lived. Under pressure from investors funding their colony, the Pilgrims had acceded to a violation of Christian prescriptions for honoring the laborer as "worthy of his hire," and for certifying property ownership rights for individuals and families -- acquiescing to a ruinous financial arrangement holding all fruit of their labors in common, so as to send back a quickly accounted half to their overseas backers.
Making matters worse, by the spring of 1623, Plymouth was in danger of foundering under famine, blight and drought. Governor Bradford wrote that the drought "continued from the third week in May, till about the middle of July, without any rain and with great heat for the most part, insomuch as the corn began to wither away.... [The Pilgrims] set apart a solemn day of humiliation, to seek the Lord by humble and fervent prayer, in this great distress. And He was pleased to give them a gracious and speedy answer, both to their own and the Indians' admiration that lived amongst them. ... For which mercy, in time convenient, they also set apart a day of thanksgiving."
Colonist Edward Winslow noted the Pilgrims worshiped thus: "[W]e returned glory, honor, and praise, with all thankfulness, to our good God, which dealt so graciously with us...." So, the original American Thanksgiving Day centered not on harvest feasting (as in 1621) but on gathering together for public thanksgiving for God's favor and provision.
Bradford recorded in his history of the colony that moment in which Plymouth's leaders gave up their failed communal economy in favor of the free market: "At length, after much debate of things, the Governor (with the advice of the chiefest amongst them) gave way that they should set corn every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust to themselves; in all other things to go in the general way as before. And so assigned to every family a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number."
By the mid-17th century, the custom of autumnal Thanksgivings was established throughout New England. Observance of Thanksgiving Festivals spread to other colonies during the American Revolution, and the Continental Congresses, cognizant of the need for a warring country's continuing grateful entreaties to God, proclaimed yearly Thanksgiving Days during the Revolutionary War, from 1777 to 1783. In 1789, among the first official acts of Congress was approving a motion for proclamation of a national day of thanksgiving -- again acknowledging the importance of a day for citizens to gather together and give thanks to God for our nation's blessings.
On 3 October 1789, by way of proclamation, George Washington wrote: "It is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favour. ... I do recommend and assign [this day of public Thanksgiving], to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country."
It was 155 years later, at the onset of another war to preserve our liberty, that Congress permanently set November's fourth Thursday as our official national Day of Thanksgiving.
Like the Pilgrims, and many generations since, we should hold sure that whatever travails and straits we navigate, if we remain steadfast in faith and obedience, God will see us through under His care.
As Ronald Reagan noted in his 1982 Thanksgiving Proclamation, "Today we have more to be thankful for than our Pilgrim mothers and fathers who huddled on the edge of the New World that first Thanksgiving Day could ever dream of. We should be grateful not only for our blessings, but for the courage and strength of our ancestors, which enable us to enjoy the lives we do today. Let us affirm through prayers and actions our thankfulness for America's bounty and heritage."
Indeed, we should: "Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise. Be thankful to Him, and bless His name. For the LORD is good; His mercy is everlasting, and His truth endures to all generations." (Psalm 100:4-5)
This Thanksgiving, please pray for our Patriot Armed Forces standing in harm's way around the world, and for their families -- especially families of those fallen Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen who have died in defense of American liberty.
On behalf of your Patriot staff and National Advisory Committee , we wish God's peace and blessings upon you and yours this Thanksgiving.
Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus, et Fidelis!
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