Nation: Now, the Grateful Society

• Share

Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 24, is only 16 days after Election Day. So why not get everyone in the mood early to celebrate life's manifold bounties? With this thought just possibly in mind, the White House last week composed a presidential Thanksgiving proclamation that, without actually mentioning the Great Society, suggested strongly that the U.S. should be the Grateful Society.

In one of the most palpably political Thanksgiving messages since 1866, when Lyndon's presidential namesake, Andrew, urged fellow Americans to thank the Almighty for the extension of "our railroad system far into the interior recesses of the country," the President last week issued a 468-word statement that proclaimed:

"Never, in all the hundreds of Thanksgiving Days, has our nation possessed a greater abundance, not only of material things, but of the precious intangibles that make life worth living. Never have we been better fed, better housed, better clothed. Never have so many Americans been earning their own way, and been able to provide their families with the marvelous products of a momentous age. Nor has America ever been healthier, nor had more of her children in school and in college. Nor have we ever had more time for recreation and refreshment of the spirit, nor more ways and places in which to study and to enrich our lives through the arts."

More dressing, anyone?