Thanksgiving’s founder illustrates the benefit of working to acheive a goal

Tuesday, Nov. 26, 2013, 11:55 p.m. — TodayIFoundOut.com contains hidden facts about Thanksgiving that should make us appreciative for blessings beyond our table’s bountiful spread.

Take, for example, the pioneering Sarah Josepha Buell Hale. Chances are you’d be pulling an eight-to-five and there would be nothing at all special about November’s fourth Thursday if it had not been for Hale, who lobbied five different presidents for 20 years to make Thanksgiving a national holiday.

It wasn’t until Kentucky’s own Abraham Lincoln became president that a day was officially set aside for Americans to give thanks to the Almighty.

Twenty years is a long time to work on any policy. But Hale did it, and her efforts resulted in one of our great holidays.

Hale’s spirit lives on in Kentuckians dedicated to implementing consequential changes that will impact future generations.

It lives on in those who have worked tirelessly for years to bring a parental school-choice policy to Kentucky. Like Hale, these policy patriots are committed to giving Kentucky parents the opportunity to provide a better education for their children.

I am also very thankful that we have finally succeeded in getting both sides of the school-choice divide to meet together and debate the issue.

SCHOOL CHOICE DEBATES. Allow me to offer this shameless plug: The first of three in the Bluegrass Institute’s “Free to Learn” debate series will be held Dec. 3 at 6 p.m. at Southern Baptist Seminary’s Heeren Hall in Louisville. It’s free and open to the public.

We’ve worked for a decade to have these debates – only half as long as Sarah Hale labored to bring a Thanksgiving holiday to America.

Still, I could not be more grateful for the willingness of University of Kentucky education professor Wayne Lewis, Ph.D., and Jefferson County school board member Linda Duncan to engage in a civilized, intellectually vigorous, debate on whether the commonwealth should have charter schools.

Citizens, educators and lawmakers who claim fuzziness about school choice – what it means, what it would look like, what it could accomplish: be thankful enough for this opportunity to hear both sides of the issue to show up.

I also discovered that the federal government once tried to change the date of Thanksgiving to improve economic conditions. President Franklin Roosevelt lobbied to extend the Christmas shopping season by moving Thanksgiving from the last Thursday to the third Thursday of the month in the years 1939, 1940 and 1941.

The gimmick failed; only half the states went along with FDR’s idea.

Be thankful for America’s founders who created a Constitution in which the states – and the states’ citizens – had the right to govern themselves without Washington’s interference. If Washington did dare impede, the states had the right to tell D.C. to mind its own business.

With more than 30 percent of Kentucky’s expenditures coming from federal revenues, it’s no wonder we don’t see the state’s governor and attorney general standing up to their political pals in Washington to protect the Kentuckians they swore to serve.

Still, contemplate the whole picture and remain thankful that despite the over-enthusiasm for government edicts and control that too many political leaders display, we’re privileged to live in history’s greatest, freest and most-prosperous nation.

Most immigrants will confess that they knew that their best chance of success was north of the border and from sea to shining sea.

Our nation has been diverse from the very beginning. It all began on that Mayflower ship long ago. The passengers weren’t all “pilgrims,” people who had a specific mission in the New World. There also were “strangers,” who were – according to the site – “hitching a ride.”

However and for whatever reason they came, aren’t you thankful that they – whether “strangers” or “pilgrims” – made that journey?

Jim Waters is president of the Bluegrass Institute, Kentucky’s free-market think tank. Reach him at jwaters@freedomkentucky.com. Read previously published columns at www.bipps.org.

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