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Giving thanks in a dark time

Nov 24, 2011 10:40 am By Robert Spencer

In a precursor to Thanksgiving Day, on March 23, 1798, President John Adams proclaimed a national Day of Fasting and Humiliation, set for the following May 9. It was a dark time. His proclamation read:

As the safety and prosperity of nations ultimately and essentially depend on the protection and the blessing of Almighty God, and the national acknowledgment of this truth is not only an indispensable duty which the people owe to Him, but a duty whose natural influence is favorable to the promotion of that morality and piety without which social happiness can not exist nor the blessings of a free government be enjoyed; and as this duty, at all times incumbent, is so especially in seasons of difficulty or of danger, when existing or threatening calamities, the just judgments of God against prevalent iniquity, are a loud call to repentance and reformation; and as the United States of America are at present placed in a hazardous and afflictive situation by the unfriendly disposition, conduct, and demands of a foreign power, evinced by repeated refusals to receive our messengers of reconciliation and peace, by depredations on our commerce, and the infliction of injuries on very many of our fellow-citizens while engaged in their lawful business on the seas — under these considerations it has appeared to me that the duty of imploring the mercy and benediction of Heaven on our country demands at this time a special attention from its inhabitants.

I have therefore thought fit to recommend, and I do hereby recommend, that Wednesday, the 9th day of May next, be observed throughout the United States as a day of solemn humiliation, fasting, and prayer; that the citizens of these States, abstaining on that day from their customary worldly occupations, offer their devout addresses to the Father of Mercies agreeably to those forms or methods which they have severally adopted as the most suitable and becoming; that all religious congregations do, with the deepest humility, acknowledge before God the manifold sins and transgressions with which we are justly chargeable as individuals and as a nation, beseeching Him at the same time, of His infinite grace, through the Redeemer of the World, freely to remit all our offenses, and to incline us by His Holy Spirit to that sincere repentance and reformation which may afford us reason to hope for his inestimable favor and heavenly benediction; that it be made the subject of particular and earnest supplication that our country may be protected from all the dangers which threaten it; that our civil and religious privileges may be preserved inviolate and perpetuated to the latest generations; that our public councils and magistrates may be especially enlightened and directed at this critical period; that the American people may be united in those bonds of amity and mutual confidence and inspired with that vigor and fortitude by which they have in times past been so highly distinguished and by which they have obtained such invaluable advantages; that the health of the inhabitants of our land may be preserved, and their agriculture, commerce, fisheries, arts, and manufactures be blessed and prospered; that the principles of genuine piety and sound morality may influence the minds and govern the lives of every description of our citizens and that the blessings of peace, freedom, and pure religion may be speedily extended to all the nations of the earth.

And finally, I recommend that on the said day the duties of humiliation and prayer be accompanied by fervent thanksgiving to the Bestower of Every Good Gift, not only for His having hitherto protected and preserved the people of these United States in the independent enjoyment of their religious and civil freedom, but also for having prospered them in a wonderful progress of population, and for conferring on them many and great favors conducive to the happiness and prosperity of a nation.

Given under my hand the seal of the United States of America, at Philadelphia, this 23d day of March, A.D. 1798, and of the Independence of the said States the twenty-second.
By the President : JOHN ADAMS.

There are many obvious parallels between the situation he outlines and the one that prevails today. We are “placed in a hazardous and afflictive situation by the unfriendly disposition, conduct, and demands of a foreign power,” although that foreign power is not a nation-state. We have experienced “depredations on our commerce, and the infliction of injuries on very many of our fellow-citizens while engaged in their lawful business on the seas.” Adams was referring to an undeclared naval war with France that was going on at the time, but he could just as well have meant the undeclared war that we face today: the jihad that could strike anywhere, anytime, while you’re shopping, or going for a walk, or flying in an airplane.

Adams asks that on the “said day the duties of humiliation and prayer be accompanied by fervent thanksgiving to the Bestower of Every Good Gift,” and that seems like a good idea today, particularly since his call for fasting and prayer has given way to a regular day of thanks. Today we should, in his words, “give thanks to the Bestower of Every Good Gift,” for all those individuals who never would have flourished in a strict Sharia state such as the Islamic supremacists are laboring to impose upon the world, and for their achievements that are likewise not consonant with Islamic law.

These include: Adams himself and his son, truculent as they were. George Washington. Thomas Jefferson. James Madison. The Declaration of Independence. The U.S. Constitution. Sam Houston. Davy Crockett. William Lloyd Garrison and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Frederick Douglass. The Gettysburg Address. The Emancipation Proclamation. Abraham Lincoln. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau. Longfellow and Poe and Emily Dickinson. Louis Moreau Gottschalk and Stephen Foster, Scott Joplin and Mr. Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe. Theodore Roethke, author of “In a Dark Time,” which inspired the title of this post. Louis Armstrong, George Gershwin and Duke Ellington and Miles Davis and John Coltrane. Frank Sinatra, Elvis, Bob Dylan. Mr. A. Braxton. Georgia O’Keeffe, Walker Evans.

This is a list made in haste. It is drastically incomplete. It also consists only of Americans, since this is, after all, an American day, but the list of the great people whose lives and works could never have taken the course they did under Sharia, and great achievements that could never have been made under Sharia, is international.

Make your own list. The only condition is that they all must conflict with Sharia: people who paved the way for free and representative government, or for freedom of inquiry. People who celebrated the human spirit in whatever way, leaving monuments to its strength and vitality. Artists, musicians, and others whose life’s work would be forbidden and destroyed by the likes of the Taliban, enabled by their Useful Idiots in the West. This is a dark time like the one Adams spoke of. Let us give thanks, because in doing so we remember what we have that is worth defending.

Happy Thanksgiving.

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