A Conservative Thanksgiving

T hanksgiving is a conservative holiday. Not so much in the mode of contemporary partisanships of “Left” and “Right” but in its broadest, purest sense. Ultimately, true conservatism seeks to preserve. It desires to safeguard and sustain elements both past and present into the future. And Thanksgiving — well, it’s right there in the name: It’s an acknowledgment and celebration of the blessings that enrich our lives.

Today, America needs Thanksgiving more than ever. So much of our social and political climate is built on — and animated by — its opposite: condemnation. At nearly every turn, our culture seems to want to uproot, destroy, and rebuild up from the ensuing ashes, to the point of reproving the most fundamental aspects of our society and our politics.

Consider that we condemn our constitution and seek to amend it unnecessarily. We condemn our Founding Fathers, and tear down their statues and rip their names from public buildings. We condemn fundamental parts of human nature, from man’s religious longings to time-out-of-mind understandings of sex, family, and faith.

And, with these blanket condemnations, we thereby condemn at least half of the country who believe in such things causes, seeing them as mortal enemies to be crushed.

In such times, we need to assume the practice of thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is rooted in an entirely different feeling from condemnation; it’s one of gratitude. Conservatism’s own preservative elements come from this posture. Our gratitude stems first from a recognition of our abundant blessings. We see not only what is good but how those goods have manifested in our lives. We see, for instance, the genius and the justice of the Founding Fathers — their articulation of justice grounded in equal natural rights, and their construction of a constitution seeking to protect those rights through separation of powers, federalism, and a bill of rights. We identify such things as contributions to human liberty and acknowledge them as great goods — extending gratitude, in return.

We are thankful for this precious inheritance. We are grateful to our forebearers who worked hard to create and preserve it. When expressed authentically, this gratitude creates a circular — and thus self-reinforcing and self-perpetuating — positive relationship between our heart and mind. While our knowledge leads to gratitude, that feeling then enhances our knowledge, as we seek to better understand that for which we are thankful.

This posture should not amount merely to cherry-picking specific, praiseworthy events from our past. A truly conservative Thanksgiving sees and acknowledges both wrongs committed and wrongs ongoing. Indeed, the history of America includes real instances of injustice on matters concerning race, gender, religion, and class. Thus, gratitude — properly understood — is not rigidly attached to the status quo; it welcomes reform. Such reform, however, should be less focused with uprooting and upheaval and more oriented around amelioration and refinement — to purify our gold of its dross. For Americans, it has involved a better realization of our principles, not ridding ourselves of them.

Moreover, Thanksgiving should not bury us in observational nostalgia. Thankfulness should precipitate action. While this includes reform, it also involves our part in preservation. We should be able and willing to contend for the goods of our past and present, fervently always — and fiercely, or gently, as conditions dictate. In both reform and preservation, then, we should not dismiss any and all forms of condemnation. Instead, condemnation should serve thanksgiving. It should serve to make us more thankful about the goods we have preserved for future generations and in the true improvements that accompany reform toward those goods.

The norms of our own Thanksgiving holiday present a picture from which we can work. In this holiday, we feast together with family and friends. As we experience an abundance of food, so we should commemorate America’s abundance of blessings. As we spend time with family, so we should be thankful for America’s community of citizens and the principles that have sustained us since 1776.

Let us again, then, celebrate so that we might preserve, and feast so that we might build. Let us regain a conservative Thanksgiving.