Posts Tagged → young people
Being thankful is being American
Watching America’s wild riots since 2020, including recent pro-jihad protests demanding that America embrace evil, anti-Western values, you would be forgiven for thinking Americans had become largely self-entitled and unappreciative for all of the incredible bounties we have. College campuses are now full of upper-income white kids wishing hate on America, and upper-income brown kids wishing hate on white people, and no one showing appreciation for anyone who had prepared the way for all of the beneficence they all take for granted.
Note to uneducated young people: White Europeans created both your unique American freedom of speech and the fancy institutions you are at now, as well as all of the technology you practically live on, and they pay most of the taxes that run the military that protects you from direct foreign take-over so you can drink expensive coffees and pose and preen and virtue signal to your shallow ego’s fullest desire.
Nothing wrong with white people, and nothing is wrong with America. Can you identify a better, freer country with more opportunity for more people than America? I can’t, and you can’t, either. America’s young people must learn to be thankful for what they have and where they live, or they will lose everything they are taking for granted right now.
Being thankful and appreciative for what we each have was baked into the American culture from the beginning. Because the first few generations of Americans had to work hard for food and shelter every day, and the Europe they had fled was closed to upward mobility and meritocracy.
In Europe if you were born poor, you stayed poor. Only in the new America did we have “influencers” who gained popularity and income through their persuasive skills. That is the essence of capitalism, by the way.
Thanksgiving Day has its beginning in the thanks to God and to helpful American Indians given by the Puritans. Having fled violent religious persecution in Europe, the Puritans were starving. Despite being newcomers posing a potential threat, they were saved by their Indian neighbors, who taught them how to farm and hunt. Traditional Thanksgiving food that we eat today includes the foods eaten at the first Thanksgiving feast – wild turkey, squash, beans, and maize.
On October 3, 1789, after the brutal American Revolution and the War for Independence, America’s first president, George Washington, gave this Thanksgiving statement of appreciation below. May each of us Americans, and especially our foolish, spoiled young people who take so much for granted, read it and imbibe it, follow through on it, and express our thanks for everything we have – clothing, food, home, and smart phone, and the opportunity for so much more than anywhere else on planet earth.
By the President of the United States of America—
A Proclamation
Whereas 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 favor—and Whereas both Houses of Congress have by their Joint Committee requested me “to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.”
Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next 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 previous to their becoming a Nation—for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his providence, which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war—for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed—for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted, for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.
And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions—to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually—to render our national government a blessing to all the People, by constantly being a government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed–to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shown kindness unto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord—To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and Us—and generally to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.
Given under my hand at the City of New York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789.
Go. Washington
Summertime harvests & roadside wisdom with strangers
Presently we are enjoying the height of the summer fruit and vegetable season. Berries wild and cultivated can be picked whenever you have time, often right along the road, and many are for sale at small roadside kiosks and shacks. Same goes for honey, sweet corn, and a host of vegetables. Most of which are organic and have not been sprayed with synthetic chemicals. It is really a wonderful time of year to both eat well, and participate in the natural gathering of food as humans have done since God completed our evolution a hundred thousand years ago.
One of the aspects of summer time food gathering that I enjoy is the natural gathering of people around the sources of these fruits and vegetables. Like roadside stands, selling fruits and vegetables picked that morning by the landowner, standing there wiping their hands on their apron, sweat beading on their forehead, and stuffing cash into their pockets or running off to make change.
The people who shop at roadside stands and kiosks are a pretty interesting group, and most of them are willing to strike up a discussion with the strangers around them with little more incentive than a good joke about the weather or an offering of just-purchased cherries from the stand down the road. At the stand where I bought our annual supply of sweet corn, the discussion centered on whither America given that so many young Americans do not want to work, can’t work, don’t know how to work. Everyone present shared their growing up story about how they learned to work hard, and to enjoy it, and where that strong work ethic took them in their life. This is real rural wisdom that keeps the wheels on America and turning.
As if on cue, a ragged bunch of older teenagers went braying by on Route 147, their dirt bikes drowning out the already damaged hearing of their elders gathered at the sweet corn stand.
“See?” said the proprietress.
“I told the neighbors they can’t ride on our farm without helmets because they are so foolish and are going to get hurt. They still ride through our crops anyhow,” she said with her hands on her hips and a furrowed brow darkening her attractive face.
I see it everywhere I go. Doesn’t matter the skin color: White, black, brown, yellow…today’s young Americans are seemingly all huffing endless free sh*t from their families like a recreational drug, and that lack of responsibility has led to a lack of focus, a lack of real goals, no work ethic, a lack of seriousness about life, etc. And yes, America will undoubtedly fail if these kids don’t grow up, wake up, and get serious about their lives and about their nation. Somewhere I saw headlines about half of the young people think “mis-gendering” someone should be a crime punishable by jail. Obviously these are not serious people, they are are adult-aged children stuck in perpetual childhood and whining about every damned little ridiculous nonsense thing.
It felt nice to have my own observations reinforced by the other elders standing around the corn stand. Anyone like me with a blog and strong opinions is bound to eventually live inside my own head. Getting out into the public and hearing from strangers that I am not alone in my worries about the upcoming generations of Americans is reassuring. No, I am not overly critical and demanding, I am just old fashioned because I believe that a strong work ethic makes you a better person, a more civic minded person, a better citizen, a more productive adult.
Some say that America could not be started over and built again today, with the toxic soup of all of the ridiculous and picayune regulations, rules, ordinances, etc surrounding us. But more than anything the challenge to America seems to be the lack of desire among our young people to want to achieve anything of substance, and their willing subservience to freedom-crushing government bureaucrats.
I wonder if these kids can learn to speak Chinese. At least “Please don’t shoot me” in Chinese ought to be a phrase they are taught, as the willing and easy victims they are building themselves up to be will need some memorable last words before their country is taken by force from them.
Enjoy your summer harvest, friends. I do, and I enjoy the old memories, too. When I was a kid, my mother would send me and a sibling out on hot summer days to pick gallons of blackberries, black raspberries, red raspberries, and blueberries that grew naturally on our property and on adjoining farms. We would return hours later red faced, dirty, scratched up, and with buckets fulled up, and unbeknownst to us, our can-do spirit filled up and stronger, too. We eventually ate what we picked; we earned what we ate. From the fruits of our labors Mom made jams, jellies, pies, and sauces, the Mason jars ever more lining up in the pantry nice and neat for us to eat throughout the coming year.
It is a shame that today’s young Americans are not learning such a simple life lesson.
Where are their parents? Where are the Americans?
Roadside sweet corn stand along Rt 147
As fast as the corn is brought up from the field it is stuffed by buyers into bags and spirited off to kitchens across the area
Rural America is full of iconic and inspiring scenic views like this looking at the Susquehanna River water gap
Quaint though they may be, the old-time country mouse values and principles of rural America trump the shallow arrogance of city mice every single time
Our fresh sweet corn was eaten a bit with butter and salt, but mostly stripped off the cob and put into ziploc freezer bags for eating throughout the year. Chicken corn chowder is a popular winter soup
While waiting for my daughter to finish getting her nails done for her wedding, I picked a hatful of red raspberries in the weed patch next to the parking lot. Unbelievably, a woman approached me and asked me for money to buy food. When I offered her my berries she became irate and yelled at me. Our family ate this delicious wild growing roadside fruit over three days.
