Happy Thanksgiving!
Atlas Shrugged Part 3 is well underway and we couldn't be happier with its progress and the support we continue to receive from fans all over the world. From all of us at Atlas Shrugged, we thank you for your continued support and we wish you all a happy and healthy Thanksgiving.
John Aglialoro
Producer, Atlas Shrugged
John Aglialoro
Producer, Atlas Shrugged
"Thanksgiving is a typically American holiday. In spite of its religious form (giving thanks to God for a good harvest), its essential, secular meaning is a celebration of successful production. It is a producers’ holiday. The lavish meal is a symbol of the fact that abundant consumption is the result and reward of production. Abundance is (or was and ought to be) America’s pride—just as it is the pride of American parents that their children need never know starvation." - Ayn Rand
See also:
Thanksgiving: The Producer's Holiday -- By: Gary Hull, Ph.D.
Thanksgiving Is Designed to Celebrate, Not Faith and Charity, But Thought and Production
"Thanksgiving celebrates man's ability to produce. The cornucopia filled with exotic flowers and delicious fruits, the savory turkey with aromatic trimmings, the mouth-watering pies, the colorful decorations -- it's all a testament to the creation of wealth."
http://www.aynrand.org/site/News2?id=526...
And also:
"Even if one earns goods and services by productive labor and free trade, what one's labor can purchase today is infinitely greater than what it could buy in the past. And that difference is not something that one has earned. The sheer fruitfulness of today's economy as compared to the economy of the past, the sheer abundance of capital and knowledge that lie at our disposal, is a product of those who have gone before. It is a gift from our forebears, and gifts need to be acknowledged as such.
Thus, the first answer to the question "Whom should we thank on Thanksgiving?" is: All of those who, down through the centuries, have advanced civilization by means of their productive achievements. For it is they who allow us to live in the luxuriant world of the twenty-first century." -- Roger Donway here:
http://www.atlassociety.org/whom-should-...
Thanksgiving is not only a holiday to celebrate the producers in the American society, it is a holiday to celebrate capitalism. The original Mayflower Compact could have been written by Marx and Engles. It was a collectivist egalitarian Commonwealth compact with no individual property rights. Everything was community property; homes, land the common house and of course the fruits of a collective labor system. Some people figured that it didn’t matter how much they worked if they still got an equal share of what the others produced. They all nearly starved to death in 1620. William Bradford had to rewrite the compact which granted property rights and used capitalist trading of value for value when “personal”, not collective crops were harvested the following year. It was only after the pilgrims could keep the fruits of their labor, were they able to celebrate in the bounty of their successful and plentiful harvest in 1621.
Thanksgiving is truly a day to celebrate the producers in our country. It is also a day to give thanks to the great minds that created this free nation and also pay tribute to the brave men and women who have chosen to risk their live for the defense of this country. This is not some selfless service or reckless self-sacrifice. As Ayn Rand so brilliantly stated in her address to the U S Military Academy in 1978, “… the defense of one’s country means that a man is personally unwilling to live as the conquered slave of any enemy, foreign or domestic. This is an enormous virtue. Since I am from a country guilty of the worst tyranny on earth, I am particularly able to appreciate the meaning, the greatness and the supreme value of that which you are defending. So, in my own name and in the name of many people who think as I do, I want to say, to all the men of West Point, past, present and future: Thank You. ”
Did the white colonisers in Australia (Brits) ever have a big sit down meal with the native Aborigines? Or did they just starve them into capitulation?
http://www.skwirk.com/p-c_s-56%20_u-415_...
Happy Thanksgiving! :)
I have had my first alpine swim of summer (in a lake) last weekend.
Starting next weekend have 10 days identifying native plants, back in the bush with no hot water but plenty of cold running in the rivers. We will have gas canisters for cooking tho.
We get to southernmost city in new zealand, drive west 3 hours the last leg on gravel, and probably don't see any one else all that time.
I guess my idea of bliss is not yours.
I still dont really get thanksgiving but if it honours the pride of producers and a good harvest as khalling says, all good then. So long as people are not being thanked by moochers for giving.
Looking forward to the third. If I can help, please just ask.
For your listening pleasure: A song I play every Thanksgiving.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m57gzA2JC...
Best wishes,
O.A.