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Abraham Lincoln Thanksgiving

Discussion in 'Political Debate & Discussion' started by Brother Bob, Nov 21, 2006.

  1. Brother Bob

    Brother Bob New Member

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    ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S THANKSGIVING PROCLAMATION - 1863 "It is the duty of nations as well as of men to owe their

    dependence upon the overruling power of God; to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured

    hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy

    Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations are blessed whose God is the Lord. We know that by His divine law

    , nations, like individuals, are subject to punishments and chastisements in this world. May we not justly fear that the awful

    calamity of civil war which now desolates the land may be a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins; to the

    needful end of our national reformation as a whole people? We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven;

    we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other

    nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and

    multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these

    blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success we have become

    too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us. It has

    seemed to me fit and proper that God should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and

    one voice, by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also

    those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November

    as a day of Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the

    heavens."*********************************************************
     
  2. dispen4ever

    dispen4ever New Member

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    You rule, Abe!
    :thumbs:
     
  3. church mouse guy

    church mouse guy Well-Known Member
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    Thank you for these posts!

    I just finished reading James Burnham's book Suicide of the West wherein his thesis is that "Liberalism is the ideology of Western suicide" (p. 297).

    Now Lincoln established Thanksgiving as follows according to Brother Bob's post: "...I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November
    as a day of Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens."

    So I got to thinking about Burnham's book and how liberals believe that the cause of our current problems is ignorance and bad institutions and how liberals want to change all of our institutions.

    So then I got to thinking about the mother of all liberals--Franklin Delano Roosevelt--and how he changed Thanksgiving from the last Thursday in November as set by Lincoln to the 4th Thursday in November as set by federal law in the Democrat congress on December 26, 1941, I believe.

    Anyway, I think that FDR was making an attack on Thanksgiving and Christmas--we now all know that FDR was a life-long playboy and died at the side of his concubine in Warm Springs, Georgia, while his wife was somewhere else--because he wanted to disrupt the institution in my opinion. FDR blamed commercial interests for wanting a longer selling season at Christmas--trying to trivialize Christmas in my opinion. At any rate, FDR wanted to make both holidays look banal. Thanksgiving was to be just a time to fill your belly and Christmas was to be a time of material considerations under the hard-hearted liberalism of FDR. Nothing spiritual or material in what FDR did--FDR just made an open attack on tradition for no good reason other than that is what liberals do.

    Isn't it time to restore Thanksgiving to the last Thursday in November? Isn't it time to let merchants know that we know that many of them are acting only out of pure greed and could care less about Christians? Isn't it time to tell liberals to leave American institutions alone? Isn't it time to tell the American people that Thanksgiving deals with Great Britian's religious prejudice on the part of the Church of England and that Thanksgiving represents one of the greatest achievements of the Protestant Reformation in that God blessed those who fled to the barbarian wilderness seeking freedom for Protestants?
     
  4. Terry_Herrington

    Terry_Herrington New Member

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    :laugh:

    :laugh:

    You're a real hoot CMG! :laugh:
     
  5. LeBuick

    LeBuick New Member

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    I agree, but shouldn't you put this in the euphimism thread?
     
  6. church mouse guy

    church mouse guy Well-Known Member
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    Well, Terry, you are a real liberal just like FDR. You must be very happy with the Democrat Party's triumph earlier this month.

    The fact of the matter is that FDR changed the date of Thanksgiving for no good reason whatsoever. Can you imagine what kind of businessman would have been FDR's friend and would have asked him to change Thanksgiving to increase Christmas sales? FDR hated business people as do all liberals. His friends must have been some Democrat hacks who wanted to use the federal government to try to make another buck off of religion.

    Liberals just don't get anything except themselves.
     
  7. Terry_Herrington

    Terry_Herrington New Member

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    Yes, I enjoyed it very much. In fact, just thinking about puts a smile on my face. :)

    BTW, I noticed that the democrats picked up three congressional seats there in Indiana, along with gaining a majority in the State House. :tongue3:
    .
     
  8. LadyEagle

    LadyEagle <b>Moderator</b> <img src =/israel.gif>

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    Well, when all is said and done, at least we didn't end up with a turkey for our national bird, which is what Ben Franklin suggested (I think it was him).

    Am not sure I am understanding your point, CMG. At least we still have Thanksgiving. The true liberals would want to do away with it all together.
     
  9. The Galatian

    The Galatian New Member

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    Did you know that in Turkey, the turkey is known as the "American bird?"
     
  10. Alcott

    Alcott Well-Known Member
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    Some guy named Boothe thought so, too.
     
  11. church mouse guy

    church mouse guy Well-Known Member
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    Good point, Lady Eagle! The liberals would like to destroy Thanksgiving and Christianity and that is their agenda. Liberalism says that ignorance and bad institutions have held us back. But those principles are discarded once liberals take over the institutions and it is now liberals themselves who are badly educated.

    FDR was a life-long playboy and died at the side of his concubine in Warm Springs, Georgia. To say that FDR had any serious Christian beliefs is laughable although as a very rich man FDR understood paying lip service to the Episcopal Church.

    Lincoln, as Brother Bob posted, established Thanksgiving as the last Thursday in November. So that date endured for about 80 years until FDR wanted to put his name on the holiday. So he ordered the date changed for no good reason, Lady Eagle. The only reason that FDR could think of for his attack was money and he made a false claim that merchants would have more money under his personal date than otherwise. Here FDR showed his own ignorance of the origin and meaning of 2 American institutions, but then as a playboy FDR never attended law school but merely read and then passed the bar. FDR said that the institution was bad for financial reasons but he really made a double attack by sticking his name on the schedule to replace Lincoln's name as the person setting the date and the tradition and FDR tried to say that Christmas was about merchants and the economy because as a liberal FDR believed that Christianity is a bad institution (it wasn't good for the economy).

    Liberals don't like Thanksgiving. It has Protestant roots and deals with the freedom of religion, miracles, and gratitude to Jesus. Liberals do not want freedom of religion for Christians but want Christians silenced and religion made part of a private experience only. Christianity as a bad institution in the liberal doctrine must be changed, meaning silenced and destroyed.

    Islam in America does not like Thanksgiving. Catholicism in America talks about social justice and full bellies on Thanksgiving (Liberals are going to see that no one in the world ever misses a meal, believing that they can achieve that goal) because Catholicism teaches that only Catholicism is true Christianity. The late Pope said that Baptists and other third wave Protestants were not really even churches so the Pope would have said that the Pilgrims had no church (See Dominus Jesus). I can't imagine that Thanksgiving means much to Jews other than a big lunch. Here in Indianapolis, I saw a lot of public drunkedness on Thanksgiving. Why, the NBA has even played games here on Thanksgiving Day.

    I think that Lincoln's date should be restored, Lady Eagle, just to get the adulterous name of FDR off the holiday and I think that the proper date should remain the last Thursday of November so that merchants who want to cash in on Christmas get the message that they do not control the schedule as set in the 19th century.

    Contrary to FDR and liberalism, Christians are not ignorant but the salt of the earth and the light of the world and Christianity is not a bad institution but the best institution in the world insofar as Christianity can be classified as an institution at all. It is liberalism that is ignorant and an exceedingly impractical ideology that only destroys.

    As for the elections in Indiana, Terry, they were the result of a liberal Republican governor named Mitch Daniels, former US budget director and Eli Lilly executive, who angered northern Indiana by selling the management of the Indiana toll road to foreign companies and who angered many others by putting Indiana on Eastern Daylight Time even though scientifically Indiana is well within the Central Time Zone. It was 11 PM before it got dark this summer. I myself voted for a Democrat representative to the state legislature because only the Democrats can check Daniels. Indianapolis congresswoman Julia Carson was re-elected in spite of her corruption and socialism because her opponent, who defeated the slated candidate in the GOP primary, had a police record for beating his wife. Bush meddled in Indiana politics to help Daniels win his GOP primary but Daniels is a nut in the governor's office. The people of Indiana want to cut and run in Iraq and that accounts for the losses of the other GOP congressmen along with Daniels' dealings.
     
  12. Joseph M. Smith

    Joseph M. Smith New Member

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    Without getting into the FDR-liberalism aspect of this discussion (though I do think it is like using a nuclear bomb to kill a fly), let me observe that the present arrangement for Thanksgiving works very well for those of us who arrange our worship according to the liturgical calendar. The Sunday before Thanksgiving is the Festival of Christ the King, which lends itself well to both the praise called for by Thanksgiving and the eschatological note for the end of the liturgical year. Then as soon as Thanksgiving is over we are ready to begin Advent, with no interruptions as there might be if Thanksgiving were later.

    Besides, how often is the 4th Thursday not also the last Thursday? Infrequent ...

    I would add, however, that Thanksgiving lends itself well to semi-secular observance, or multi-cultural observance, if not "liberalism". People of many faiths can thank "whatever gods there be" without dabbling in Christianity. There are no specifically Christian references in Thanksgiving. For example, the Washington Post has been running stories about how immigrants from other lands have learned about and adopted the day -- usually about the culinary aspects. But Buddhists, Hindus, et al, can observe the day with no "inconvenient" references to Christ, as Christmas demands.
     
  13. church mouse guy

    church mouse guy Well-Known Member
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    Can you explain your reference to nuclear power please, Joseph? Are you saying that FDR, a nominal Episcopalian, had some obsecure liturgy in mind when he arranged to put his name on the celebration? He only said that it was all about money as far as I know and not about infant baptism and the advent practice of putting out different colored ribbons on different Sundays, etc.

    I wonder if one can be thankful to Allah--for example--for a day dealing with freedom of religion from the Church of England's iron fist and a day dealing with Christian miracles and the blessings of Jesus in a hostile savage wilderness?

    I cannot excape the conclusion that this moving of the date was nothing more than an egotistical act of FDR to change an institution for no good reason other than to have history note that he did it, allegedly in order to help the Christmas merchants make more money off of Christmas. That motive is in line with liberal ideology that people are ignorant and our institutions are bad and our institutions should be changed to accomodate multi-culturalism.

    This is an 18th and 19th century holiday and the 20th century meddling should be removed so that it is celebrated on the last Thursday of November as Brother Bob pointed out that Lincoln so intended.
     
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