Careful What You’re Thankful For
Like many of you, I will be spending the day with friends, family, and people I love. I’ll be eating turkey, having some good slash awkward conversations with plenty of eye-rolling, and watching a guy run the ball up the middle for a loss of yardage instead of just going around the defenders like he should’ve done. Like many of you, I have a lot for which to be thankful. And like almost all of you, my giving-of-thanks should be mingled with a touch of grief, especially insofar as what I am thankful for falls under the rubric of The American Dream. To come at this by way of illustration, is it right for the child of a jewel thief to thank God for his Xbox? Sure, he may believe that it is God who is the ultimate Source...
Read More“What, to the Indian, is Your Thanksgiving?”
In a moving speech given by escaped slave Frederick Douglass on July 5th, 1852 (a portion of which is read by Morgan Freeman below), the question is asked, “What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?” Here is part of his answer: [The Fourth of July] is a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. . . . Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America...
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