Thanskgiving, the third

I am thankful for the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. Our nation is different from all the other nations of the world because the Founding Fathers recognized and codified God as the source of our rights and life, not the state. All other governments in the world, all other documents and constitutions, say that rights and priviledges are granted by the state.

Our country recognizes that God is the source of rights, and that our government is a compact of the governed to unite for protection of life and liberty, and that God-given rights cannot be abridged by government.

There is an anecdote about Benjamin Franklin and the Constitution. When the Constitution was written and presented for the different colonies to accept, a woman approached Franklin and asked him, "What have you given us?" Franklin is supposed to have replied, "A republic, if you can keep it."

With this in mind, I temper my thankfulness with the fear that we are not educating our children in what the Declaration and the Constitution have given us. The events of Hurricane Katrina seemed to illustrate the fact that people now feel that government is the source of all good, and when government doesn't provide what we want when we want it, then government has failed.

It is my hope that we can recover the knowledge of just what we have been given by these inspired documents.