The Great American Holiday. The Resilient vs. the Resentful. Thankful For: Duffy’s Flying Tips. Not Thankful: Reckless Calls for Military Disobedience.
Tomorrow is the quintessential American holiday, a feast of good food and gratitude. Melanie Kirkpatrick, who wrote an entire book on “the holiday at the heart of the American experience,” has a nice essay in the Wall Street Journal on the scuffles over the date of the holiday:
Americans have celebrated Thanksgiving for more than 400 years, beginning in 1621 when the Pilgrims and Wampanoag came together for their famous feast. It wasn’t until 1941, however, that the holiday’s date was codified in law, when Franklin Roosevelt signed a joint resolution of Congress mandating its celebration on the fourth Thursday of November.
It was FDR’s ill-considered decision three years earlier to move the date—then observed on the last Thursday of November—that sparked Congress’s action. The president’s change had caused a national uproar, such that residents of half the states ate their turkey dinners on what they considered to be the traditional date, while those in the other half did so on “Franksgiving,” the date newly ordered by the president. The residents of Texas, Colorado and Mississippi, apparently having a special affection for turkey dinners, celebrated on both dates.
The Pilgrims celebrated the first Thanksgiving (though it can be argued that giving thanks is so much a part of what makes up the American spirit that the feast goes back even before 1620) in the most precarious of circumstances. If you are like me, you look forward to the Wall Street Journal’s annual publication the day before Thanksgiving of an account of the Pilgrims’ journey to Plymouth, as recorded by Nathaniel Morton. It is given the headline “The Desolate Wilderness”:
Besides, what could they see but a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wilde beasts and wilde men? and what multitudes of them there were, they then knew not: for which way soever they turned their eyes (save upward to Heaven) they could have but little solace or content in respect of any outward object; for summer being ended, all things stand in appearance with a weatherbeaten face, and the whole country, full of woods and thickets, represented a wild and savage hew.
What a miracle this country is!
Here’s a story from the New York Post that I think has a tie-in with the theme of gratitude: America is No Longer Left vs. Right: It’s the Resentful vs. the Resilient.” A snippet:
While the resilience crowd focuses on building — strong families, thriving communities, and successful companies — the resentment crowd harbors dark fantasies about punishing their enemies and rewards any blowhard who promises to make the guilty pay.
One side believes that you deserve everything and must work for nothing; the other, that you deserve nothing and must work for everything.
Mark Halperin’s funny “For This They Are Thankful” (alas, no link, but you can go on Halperin’s 2-Way this morning and find out who is grateful for what) list has Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy being thankful that the women of “The View” agree with him on something. Ms. Must also agrees with the Secretary’s message to air travelers:
“How do we maintain maybe some of that frustration we have as we travel this Thanksgiving season? Maybe we should say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to our pilots and to our flight attendants,” Duffy said during a Monday press conference.
The Transportation chief added, “Let’s try not to wear slippers and pajamas as we come to the airport. I think that’s positive.”
Which political party will be grateful after the midterms? Michael Goodwin writes that President Trump needs to hit the reset button if the GOP wants to win the 2026 midterms. Goodwin is critical of the president’s “scattershot” approach, which he says needs focus, and his handling of the economy.
Meanwhile, economics guru Larry Kudlow says that “America is the world’s hottest economy,” citing investments flowing in, growth, and free markets firing again. Less sanguine, Liberal Patriot John Halpin asks, “Can Either Party Crack the Code on the Economy?” Halpin argues that it’s easy to campaign on affordability but hard to bring down prices. But Thanksgiving dinner does appear more affordable this year, though the White House is careful not to say “mission accomplished” quite yet.
Big News on the D.C. Front: Mayor Muriel Bowser, who has been Washington’s Mayor for a decade, will not run for re-election. Bowser refused to take on President Trump à la Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, and I’m wondering if that lost her so much of her base that this decision was inevitable. The field to succeed her will likely be crowded.
“Yuri, here’s what I would do.” The leak of Special Envoy Steve Witkoff advising a Putin aide could have an effect on negotiations to end the Ukraine war. The Wall Street Journal’s Holman Jenkins is not optimistic that the negotiations will succeed:
Maybe ask a basic question: Can Mr. Trump deliver Vladimir Putin? Probably not. Mr. Putin might bite if a deal really delivered him control of Ukraine but here’s betting he’ll balk at an outcome that merely inaugurates a postwar period inside Russia dominated by the never-ending discovery by his people that the war left Russia worse off.
If Mr. Trump can’t deliver Russia, it doesn’t matter if he can deliver Ukraine. Yet at some point, Ukraine will want to play its top card, saying yea to a cease-fire and throwing down a gantlet to its allies.
Meanwhile, the American Enterprise Institute’s Danielle Pletka advances the gob-smacking, almost surreal (but fascinating) idea that there are two foreign policies emanating from the Trump White House, one a shadow policy shop under the aegis of Vice President J.D. Vance.
California Democrat Rep. Eric Swalwell went on the Don Lemon show to say that military members are saying that the military can act as a “check” on President Trump. We think of the army acting as a check on dictators. Swalwell and his ilk are trying to persuade the American public, reality to the contrary, that we live in a dictatorship.
The Real Clear Politics gang debates whether Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are in separate camps and whether Senator Mark Kelly, who was one of the Democrats in the military as a check camp, should be court martialed.
An editorial in the Washington Examiner lambasts Kelly and his cohorts for their “reckless call for military disobedience”:
Elected Democrats have every right, indeed, they have a duty, to conduct oversight over the president’s use of the military to defend the nation. But what they may not do is encourage service members to disobey orders they don’t like ….
Civilian control of the military depends on elected leaders engaging properly in the legal process, not urging rank-and-file troops to freelance their own interpretations of presidential authority. By suggesting service members should substitute personal judgment for the chain of command, Democrats are eroding a foundational norm that has kept America stable through far fiercer political storms. If they believe the president’s actions are unlawful, their recourse is to the courts, to oversight hearings, and to statutory reform — not to social media videos aimed at soldiers.
Encouraging individual service members to decide which orders feel legitimate invites chaos, politicizes the armed forces, and threatens to fracture the institution Americans rely on in moments of crisis. There are no illegal orders here, just Democrats unwilling to accept that constitutional disputes must be resolved in courtrooms, not military barracks. Their recklessness endangers the principle they claim to defend.
USA Fencing is still trying to come to terms with and move forward from its failure to defend a female fencer when a male fencer claimed the right to compete in women’s sports. It would have been less complicated to take a stand for women athletes in the first place. Real Clear Politics has an excellent piece by a psychiatrist on failed attempts to refute the conclusion of the recent Department of Health and Human Services report, finding no medical evidence to support sex changes of minors. We should be thankful for a solid HHS report, even if wokesters exhaust themselves trying not to follow the science.
Wishing you a happy Thanksgiving. Should you find yourself grumpy, just follow Yuval Levin’s advice.
