Thanksgiving

About 15 years ago, I sent a friend the Thanksgiving greeting shown below. As much as it meant to me then, it means even more now. I'm proud to say I've lived up to my own vision of what can and ought to be possible to a passionately rational man. Here's to the best within each of us.



Commemorating Thanksgiving, a recent TV newscast presented a reminder of how small the ship was that brought to this country its first settlers. It showed the great degree of risk and peril the new world travelers accepted for their values. That particular thread of civilization's progress seemed so precarious.

It reminded me of other historical threads of progress that also seemed precarious. For example, consider Aristotle's escape from the fate that took the life of Socrates, the revival of the influence of Aristotle by Acquinas, and Ayn Rand's escape from the Soviet Union.

Rather than finding this daunting, I found it inspiring. It moved me to think about what we're doing, how we're working to spread Rand's ideas in the midst of so much opposition, how the current cultural context is so precarious.

The TV newscast emphasized the role of chance in history. I saw the subservience of chance to the power of ideas and free will. I saw the courage of the new world travelers in their willingness to put their reason to a supreme test from within a small ship on high seas to reach unsettled land. And then, after that death defying feat, start from scratch to build a new world!

The sea of obstacles is apparently always vast. However, the power of reason can tame that sea and chart a course through it all. In this and all that it entails, I count my blessings.

Happy Thanksgiving.