Pilgrim In The Stocks

Thanklessness, Iowa Endorsements, &tc.

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Dear Friends,

Happy holiday week! This is annually a busy and beloved time of year for us. Thanksgiving, followed by an anniversary shortly thereafter, and then a birthday. There are so many reasons to celebrate it is hard not to make the whole of Advent season one continuous party. We wouldn’t have it any other way.

Speaking of holidays and partying, Noah Rothman has a great (paywalled) essay entitled, “Why Progressive Activists Hate Thanksgiving.” It’s terrific, and some of the quotes from activists hectoring people for being thankful are sights to behold. What a thankless, ungrateful, miserable worldview is one of joyless self-flagellation for imagined sins of the past. They think of Thanksgiving as something like the original “Fall” of man; the day the evil, white, colonialist Europeans got a foothold on the new continent. Thankfully, Rothman notes that almost nobody outside the Progressive bubble seems to listen to these admonitions and, indeed, the scolds take a certain pride in their isolation (I’d call it their gnostic “secret knowledge”). His punchline:

There is satisfaction enough in making a dramatic display of their bottomless capacity for joylessness. In that sense, at least, the activist Left has found a leisure activity they enjoy, even if it is only trying to deprive the rest of us of a good time.

Now is when I remind you that, according to Paul the Apostle, the telltale attribute of the wicked is ingratitude. “They neither glorified him as God nor gave him thanks” (Rom. 1). Have a wonderful, guilt-free celebration tomorrow.

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I was happy to see that Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds endorsed Ron DeSantis for President. I was more happy to see that Bob Vander Plaats, an evangelical heavyweight leader in Iowa, has now endorsed DeSantis. Everyone Vander Plaats has ever endorsed has won the Iowa Caucuses, so this cannot be discounted. (They didn’t go on to win the nomination, but let’s stick to cheery topics, shall we?)