The Pendragon's Hall

Stories like this annoy me. But they grow more common every year. Here it is, once and for all, there is no reason to kowtow to the Indian populations on Thanksgiving because (ready for it?) Thanksgiving has nothing to do with Indians. Thanksgiving has nothing to do with Pilgrims. Thanksgiving has nothing to do with celebrating the Harvest (hence the disparity between Canadian Thanksgiving and our own). The very first Thanksgiving in Plymouth was a solemn day of gratitude in February of 1621 for those who had survived the first winter. There was some kind of celebration after the Harvest came in that Fall, but it was not repeated. Thanksgiving was first and foremost a day for the nation to redirect its priorities towards things eternal. The emphasis placed on it differed from person to person. Presidents Washington, Adams and Madison, all strong Christians, decreed two days of national Thanksgiving throughout their terms in office. Jefferson, the noted Deist, did not and the idea fell into disuse after Madison left office. It was brought back to the forefront by a lady named Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of a woman's magazine in the mid-19th century. Her constant lobbying convinced another strong Christian president, Abraham Lincoln to designate the last Thursday in November (following the precedent set by Washington) as a day of Thanksgiving to God for His protection over the nation. Insofar as this happened in 1863 while the nation was in the midst of its Civil War, it showed great faith on the part of Sarah Hale and all the others who participated. Following Lincoln, celebrating Thanksgiving the last Thursday of every November became a tradition, finally stated in law by Franklin Roosevelt in 1939 (confirmed by Congress two years later). It had nothing to do with Pilgrims at all. The association with Plymouth is shadowy at best, but probably arose when Americans, always interested in origins, searched for the first time a Thanksgiving festival was held on these shores. Plymouth may have been the first, although there is rumor of an earlier one in the Jamestown region in celebration for a safe voyage. That particular community was wiped out by Indian raids. You want to feel sorry for someone? But the image of Pilgrim and Indian has stuck to the detriment of the holiday. It has nothing to do with Plymouth Rock--that was just one of many. The day we celebrate today was the work of determined civilians and a sympathetic President--a day for people to gather and thank God for their blessings. They were not having a particularly good time--Washington decreed a day of Thanksgiving during Valley Forge; Lincoln following the Battle of Gettysburg and FDR on the eve of World War II. They thanked God anyway. The Indians mentioned in the article have the right attitude--I wish more whites were like them. Thanksgiving is a day to celebrate, even when you feel you have nothing to celebrate for, if for nothing else than the very fact that you live and breathe by the grace of God. That is the true story of the holiday. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

The Pendragon is thinking I would have made a great Reagan Democrat. For all my supposed conservative credentials, I still rank FDR and Truman high on my presidential rankings, higher than I do Ford or Nixon, indeed in most cases higher than I do Reagan. I would have been a fervent supporter of Robert Kennedy or Hubert Humphreys or William Jennings Bryan, men who championed the cause of the downtrodden and urged greater economic restraint on the wealthy, but who were unabashedly firm in their commitment to moral principles. It is this which makes it so hard for me to go down the easy road of supporting Rudy Giuliani for president. I am with him neither economically nor socially. Mitt Romney is a fiscal conservative for the most part, but his real message is of social conservatism. Yet patriotic conservatives will have no choice if they are not careful--Giuliani and Hillary; Giuliani and Obama; Giuliani and Edwards are all two sides to the same coin. With one major difference: Edwards and Obama have greater claim to moral character and leadership skills than Giuliani does.

Dick Morris continues to annoy me with his whiny projections of imminent defeat for the Republicans if the contest is anything but Hillary vs. Giuliani. He has not made many successful predictions this decade so he's probably about due, but first of all, I think his hatred of Hillary is magnifying her threat. A: most of America hates Hillary too. B: She has no more experience than any presidential candidate, less than many. C: We somehow managed to survive the first Clinton presidency; we could survive this one too. Indeed, the more I learn about the prospects for a Republican candidacy, the more the Pendragon thinks, "Things could be worse than President Hillary." At least we're likely to regain the Congress with a Democrat president.

Here's how I see the lineup. Last year thousands of Republican voters stayed home rather than vote for a party that seemed little different from the Democrats while liberals flooded the polls to vote for their party of choice. Morris is suggesting that Giuliani could win over some of the left-of-center crowd. He needs to revisit last November. Will conservatives vote for Hillary? No, but they also will not vote for Giuliani. This division of the party faithful will throw the election to Hillary.

Morris claims that Hillary will be able to attack Romney for his lack of experience in the foreign policy department. I doubt she will be able to raise that at all since she has no more experience in this matter than he has. She made a few goodwill tours as First Lady and has done nothing for foreign policy since winning her Senate seat. Giuliani also has no foreign policy experience and no way of getting any. Thompson is a joke candidate on every single front. The only thing they could dialogue about is that they both wanted Bill to stay when the vote for his impeachment came up. The only serious contender that is immune to the charge of ignorance of foreign policy is John McCain, the Pendragon's backup choice for President.

As for the widespread belief that Democrats will vote for a Republican of Giuliani's ilk, a rebirth of the "Reagan Democrats," this also ignores the lesson of Reaganism. Ronald Reagan attracted Democrats who were social conservatives. These blue-collar working class people may have agreed with the Democrats on economic issues--certainly were not interested in their wealthy bosses keeping more money. But they disliked their Democratic leaders shoving abortion on demand, homosexual marriage and other mores down their throats while mocking the beliefs that made these workers tick. Reagan Democrats were social conservatives, economic liberals, but their social views outweighed the economic ones. They are not likely to back a Republican with whom they disagree on both economic and social issues

Any way you cut the cake, Giuliani's candidacy would be a disaster for the Republican Party. It would be to ignore the lessons of the 1980s; even worse, it would be to ignore the lessons of last year. Economic conservatism is all very well but in and of itself it does not guarantee elections for the Republican party. The American mainstream is very socially conservative but is not overly conservative in the economic sense. And those who are liberal on social issues are not likely to prefer Giuliani to Clinton. Romney makes excellent sense in this scenario. Morris is wrong...again!

This month's "Foreign Policy" magazine features a photo of Bush on its cover with the superimposed caption: "Iraq Isn't His Fault. (It's Yours.)" Intrigued, the Pendragon read the cover article and even more surprisingly, found himself in agreement. The article suggested that the commitment to a bungled war on terror has deep roots in the American psyche. The reason that the war is not going according to plan has less to do with a vast neocon conspiracy than with the American philosophy of government. Time out of mind, Americans have feared the intervention of the "nanny-state" and hated paying high taxes. Bush and Reagan were both elected and re-elected on a commitment to keep taxes low. Yet at least since the days of FDR, Americans have also believed that the government should shoulder the burden of the entire country--paying for programs and protecting our interests abroad. The flaw is that Americans want to have their cake and eat it too. They want government aid without having to foot the bill. But there's no such thing as a free lunch. Somebody has to pay. If Americans want social programs like Europe and Canada, then they have to be prepared to pay taxes like those countries. If they want the low taxes, they're going to have to get used to not having these kinds of programs. The article rightly tags Bush with perpetuating the misguided belief that it's possible to pay low taxes and have a welfare state, but also notes that no Democrat dares suggest anything different. The same logic can be applied to the war on terror--John McCain is right to urge sacrifice on the part of the population to support the war effort. That is what got us through two World Wars and will get us through today.

One has to wonder sometimes: Tomorrow's election in western New York is largely a referendum on Governor Spitwad's insane desire to give legal drivers licenses to illegal immigrants. Area Republicans are correctly highlighting the link to terrorism, while Democrats cry foul. It would be interesting to see if Republicans, the opposition party during World War II, insisted that prosecuting the war was not a viable political issue. But let's consider this: a valid driver's license is all that is necessary to board a domestic flight. If there are terrorists in New York, and you've got to assume there are somewhere, Spitty's plan has now made them mobile. This is why the next important piece of legislation whether on the state or national level should be requiring a passport for domestic flights. There is a much more thorough background check in process...all you need to get a drivers license is pass a driving test. Several of the 9/11 hijackers were here on expired visas yet they got on board those planes with their other forms of ID. Had they been required to produce a passport, the computer would have shown them to be illegally in the country and they would have been detained. 3,000 lives could have been spared. Spitwad's carelessness is going to get more people killed. And that is a valid political issue.

G.K. Chesterton once wrote, "Fairy-tales do not tell children that dragons exist. Children know that dragons exist. Fairy-tales tell children that dragons can be killed." It is a helpful reminder when surveying the news, it seems. The dragons seem to do an awful lot of the winning these days, but it doesn't have to be that way. Edmund Burke said, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Heed the cries of the innocent; do your part to kill the dragons.