Thread by @ThyConsigliori

24 November 2020 - #MAGAanalysis Thanksgiving

So, what are you grateful for, today?

Over the decades, I've essentially - but not completely - stopped asking my friends and family this question on this day. They all know me too well. They know I'll probe, and no one wants that.

2) They also know I'm both dogged and devious. They see right through me if I say, "It sounds like you really enjoyed that this year, yes?" It's the same question, of course. Alas. It's so easy to see me coming.

3) You can probably anticipate that I'll mention my friends and family in gratitude, and you're right. Family and friends are, in that order, the greatest blessings we have. If you know me, you know they give me purpose in my every moment, waking and sleeping.

4) I won’t spend time telling stories. And I’ll only mention one such soul, my beloved @KateScopelliti. Here are four wonderful shots of the love of my life.

5) I will tell you this about her. She could easily have been a Queen of Broadway as a song and dance girl, and then, of course, Hollywood would have snatched her up. And no, I'd not have been able to ward off the competition for her attention. Whew. Dodged a bullet there!

6) We only discovered our passion for America as a deeply shared value late in life. Oh, here's a funny story I have to include. She voted for Reagan, twice. I only learned this some many years AFTER the Clinton impeachment. She was afraid to tell me, I hated Reagan so much.

7) My socialistic, youthful hatred of Reagan was so deeply implanted that, in spite of how much I have since come to be a fan, I stutter and slow down when I talk about it. Youthful passions die hard, and often with some degree of, well, not-quiteness...

8) But that brings me to my point of focus for today. It is, to be sure, America Herself. I am more grateful to America than words can express. But I'll try. If I have to put it into terms of one man, a founding father, it has to be Thomas Jefferson.

9) You don't see that portrait nearly so often as images from when he was older. This, however, is a lot more like what the author of the Declaration Of Independence must have looked like. Did you realize he was just 33 years old at the time?

10) In just a tiny number of years, I'll be twice his age at the time. Yet, I remember being 33, myself once, quite well in fact. Man was I young back then! It boggles the mind to imagine such a young man writing one of the greatest documents of the ages. Amazing.

11) I will NOT let myself get distracted into a diatribe against modern education. I will just add this thanks for those, his teachers, who found and released so great a mind into the world with such an extraordinary foundation. Honor to Jefferson's teachers, and gratitude.

12) In my ongoing reading, one of the things coming out is the path of compromise our Constitution took. Of course, James Madison would be my 2nd guy to focus on, if I was going to. I'm not, but here is youthful James. Yep, just 36 years old when he wrote our Constitution.

13) The image above celebrates Madison writing the 1st Amendment, which was a huge part of the compromise necessary to get the Constitution across the ratification line. No, I won't talk about other compromises right now, but it's a fascinating study, I assure you.

14) Rights. That's what I'm grateful for today. Rights as a thing in this world. Rights in general. Rights in specific. The Four Great American Rights - I'll explain:

1) Life
2) Liberty
3) Happiness
4) Property

15) Those four are, of course, the Four Great Human Rights. They transcend America and inhere within the soul and being of every single human. They always have and always will. They are more than universal in time, they are specific to the individual. Each and every individual.

16) Those rights, the Great Four, were essentially created by Jefferson, due to a necessary compromise. The Southern, slave-holding Colonies-about-to-become-States, would never have signed on for the Declaration if it had included Property as a right.

17) Slaves were obviously humans, and created equal. But, what they did not have was the right to property. Jefferson and all the founders knew the great contradiction of this, its illogic and falsehood and evil. They knew. Perfectly well they knew.

18) But as you fight with the army you have, not the one you want, you also rebel from King George's rule with the rebels you have, not the ones you want. Human prejudice will never be gone. It certainly wasn't gone yet in 1776. It had to be compromised with.

19) I've said it before and will again. As Jefferson aged, he lost some of his youthful ideals. And I strongly suspect that in the compromise here, writing the Declaration, part of that path was set in motion. He wanted to free the slaves, right then. But he couldn't.

20) Jefferson's Dream of Perfect Freedom could not survive the necessity of compromise. Thus, the famed Great Three Rights - Life, Liberty, Property - could not remain written into the early drafts of the Declaration. Property had to be removed. I can only imagine his agony.

21) If I could be the Ghost of Christmas Future for Jefferson, I'd comfort him. He created a new right, one that even slaves might enjoy, even in the middle of the most terrible compromise in history. The Pursuit of Happiness. A right designed for slaves. Contemplate that.

22) In that part of Jefferson's education covering the classics, he was exposed to all the philosophies and moralities of our ancient past. Happiness, in that contest, was the direct result of virtue. We can't follow that history right now, but oh, it's wonderful.

23) Okay, you forced it out of me. As I understand it, Latin Virtue had solely to do with the difference between victory and defeat, and had positively NO moral element, at all. If you were faster than your enemy, and killed him, your speed was your virtue. Period.

24) I believe it was the Greeks - my own classical education is severely lacking! - who placed virtue and vice into a moral context. And I believe it was the Greed definition of happiness that placed it as the result of greater virtue, lesser vice. Yet another fascinating study!

25) What I can share with you solidly is this. By the time of the Great Enlightenment of the 17th & 18th centuries, happiness itself was the most moral of ideas, and completely founded upon virtue and completely antithetical to vice.

26) In fact, the delights of vice were part of how the Enlightenment itself fell upon the shoals of lost ideals in history. A solid reading of the Book of Psalms might have forecast that. Yet another fascinating study!

27) I'll be blunt on point. There is no way that our America could be founded as such, today. Perhaps it couldn't have been founded as such by, let's say, 1820 or so. But in the years from 1776 - 1789, it could, and was. All that hinged on Jefferson's moment in 1776.

28) Picture it. You're a slave owner in America's South at the time. And, you read this Declaratory Document, and you read about the right to the Pursuit of Happiness. Now, you immediately apply that to your own slaves. As slaves, they should pursue happiness. Hmm?

29) They should not only take responsibility for their owns happiness, they should accept their condition as slaves, and employ their right to pursue happiness as such. Prejudiced soul that you are, you like this. You certainly want happy slaves.

30) In the absolute, in the ideal, a right is just a right. It's the opposite of a wrong. It is incontrovertible. In the real world of politics, however, a right must be recognized by others. We must face this fact. Rights must be recognized. They must be agreed to.

31) That was Jefferson's epiphany. No, the Southern slaveholders would not, not ever, recognize a slave's right to property. He knew that as equal humans they had it. He 100% knew that. But, he equally knew that their owners would NEVER recognize that right.

32) So, within his own soul, he compromised. Not being able to state the truth of each human's right to property, he created a new right, the right to the Pursuit Of Happiness. To my knowledge, no such right had ever been proposed before. And I thank Jefferson for it.

33) Let's talk about terminology. The Declaration had the space to employ four words: The Pursuit Of Happiness. And more, no doubt, Jefferson's proposed right is far more to the Pursuit than to its fulfillment. He'd NOT recognize a right to happiness, only to its pursuit.

34) So, I enter in here with my own bents and proclivities. I prefer one word labels. You can't shrink The Pursuit Of Happiness down to the one term: Pursuit. You can, however, shrink it down to the one term: Happiness.

35) No, no one has the right to happiness itself. But, as everyone equally has the right to its pursuit, I propose we may include the idea of pursuit into the term itself. Happiness = The Pursuit Of Happiness. At least, that's what I mean in my list.

36) Note, Madison is younger than Jefferson. Note, in 1787, in writing the Constitution, Property has to reenter the list of rights. Forgetting the Bill of Rights, the right to Property may be put forward as the single most important in the 1787 Constitution.

37) The process is now completed. The Great Four American Rights are now in place. Property is protected. Now, think about the cry of the 1776 rebellion. No Taxation Without Representation. What is that cry founded upon? The Right of Property. Ha!

38) Many evil compromises have taken place since. It has been the agenda of our Constitution's enemies to destroy the Right of Property especially, but of all Four Great Rights ever since 1789. They have not yet won. I am grateful for that.

39) Be clear. A right is a concept. It's merely an idea. It may have greater force than other ideas, yes. But, if you can't fight the fight of ideas, you can never come to terms with rights. More, the surpass mere ideas and become, actually, ideals.

40) That is my gratitude this Thanksgiving day. I am grateful for rights. For our Great American Rights. Oh, I said I'd get back to that. Okay. It is our nation that discovered these four. It is our nation that enshrined all four into our being, and into our law.

41) America is NOT special due to the fact that WE enjoy these rights. We do, and that is special. But, every human enjoys these rights as his right. The difference is our agreement as Americans. We agree that all humans enjoy these rights, and we have a term for that. Law.

42) To my understanding, no other nation on earth employs these Four Great Rights Of Humanity, as the basis of their law. There's a basic difference I see. Around the world, the benefit of the many trumps the right of the one.

43) Let's go back to Jefferson. Did he foresee that all Four Rights would reestablish themselves over time? I suspect he did. But I can allow that he lost sight of the Property Right of slaves, himself. I add, however, that getting old often entails giving up on ideals.

44) As I always do, I must again give credit to @shestokas for teaching me about the trajectory of rights in America. His relationship to the Constitutional phrase, "A More Perfect Union," is beyond extraordinary. In this, he sees America Herself.

45) To follow @shestokas' point, follow the Bill of Rights, the 14th, and the 19th Amendments. In each of these, America grows into a more perfect union. Dave started healing my idealistic, broken heart over America when he taught me that. Thanks Dave!

46) Here's today's last hero, not at the level of Jefferson, but close. Lincoln. Among presidents, by the way, Lincoln may well have been Jefferson's greatest student. And no, I did NOT use to be a fan of his, any more than I was of Reagan's.

47) It was, in the end, the Emancipation Proclamation and the 14th Amendment that won me over. How many laws do you have to break in order to add those to our history? You can be forgiven. And yes, 600,000 souls dead can be forgiven too. Slavery was made illegal.

48) Jefferson's compromise in the 3rd of our Four Great Rights, his political compromise, was corrected by Lincoln. Former slaves too, as equal humans, enjoy the Right Of Property. That is precisely how America grows ever more perfect, as a union.

49) If it was me, I'd take Roosevelt down, off Mount Rushmore and add Madison. But no matter, it's only a monument. But in contemplating today's gratitude, the ideas captured into our nation itself are, absolutely, where my thanks reside.

50) And here's my coaching. Internalize them, today. Think about YOUR rights. Enjoy them. Smell and taste them. Hear and think them. And yes, if you can, say them. You, yourself, truly do have the rights to:

1) Life
2) Liberty
3) Happiness
4) Property

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