A Happy Thanksgiving with George Washington, C.S. Lewis, and James Hirsen

By Andy Caldwell

I am encouraging you to ask everyone you know some very serious – in fact existential – threat-level questions today considering a phenomenal column written by James Hirsen on Newsmax, “Nothing ‘Democratic’ About Socialists,” In his column, Hirsen opines that socialism is no longer just creeping onto the American stage, considering the election of Mamdani as the Mayor of New York City. Mamdani is just the latest socialist elected to office in America, including 11 members of Congress and over 200 state and local officials.

These electeds are all card-carrying members of the Democratic Socialists of America, some 80,000 strong, who, Hirsen writes, are seeking power through infiltration for nothing less than nefarious purposes including “the abolition of private property, ending capitalism, and replacing the free market system with the goal of government control of virtually everything.” As I mentioned last week, Mamdani indicated the same when he stated, “We will prove that there is no problem too large for government to solve and no concern too small for it to care about.”

Hirsen reveals that the DSA’s platform demands “public ownership of utilities, housing, and finance, decommodifying healthcare and education, and seizing the means of production, which are all prequels to the imposition of totalitarianism and freedom’s ultimate demise.”

As C.S. Lewis rightfully observed, “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.... This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”

America’s First Real Holiday

One question before us today is how does the rise of the DSA comport to our nation’s core and foundational belief that the only legitimate purpose of government is to secure our unalienable Divine rights of life, liberty, speech, religion, and private property etc., and that these rights can only be secured by way of limited government, because government has and will always be the biggest threat to all our rights?

Another question is, how have we as a nation fallen so far into the grips of communism’s legacy, as Hirsen points out, that is “one of economic decay, government ruin, and social collapse, a distinct pattern that is historically consistent across time, place, and events”?

Our nation, in fact, sets aside a day of Thanksgiving every year, not to thank mankind for our liberty but to thank “Providence.” Specifically, our first president, George Washington, inaugurated the first Thanksgiving by way of proclamation in 1789, with gratitude to God for his favor, protection, and providence. The introduction to the proclamation reads, “Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God”.... What is providence? We have the answer from the Westminster Shorter Catechism: “God’s works of providence are his most holy, wise, and powerful, preserving and governing of all his creatures, and their action.”

Our day of Thanksgiving is a good time to ask for mercy, via “the favorable interposition of providence” as it relates to all these questions. As Washington stated, “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...”

Andy Caldwell, Executive Director, COLAB

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