This Thanksgiving is a good time to give thanks for American independence.  Not our national independence from Great Britain; that’s for the 4^th of July and 2026 (the 250^th anniversary year of the Declaration of Independence). I mean independence for individuals and communities. We owe a lot to the Pilgrims for helping set the course of Americans’ sense of independence more than 150 years before the Declaration of Independence.

On July 4, 1986, at the renovation of the Statue of Liberty, President Ronald Reagan delivered an inspiring message from the deck of the carrier U.S.S. John F. Kennedy that is important for us today -- that the things that unify us as Americans is greater than what divides us.  The heart of the message is the lesson to be learned from John Adams and Thomas Jefferson setting aside their political differences and rivalry to resume their friendship and the following:

"My fellow Americans, it falls to us to keep faith with them and all the great Americans of our past. Believe me, if there's one impression I carry with me after the privilege of holding for 5 ½ years the office held by Adams and Jefferson and Lincoln, it is this: that the things that unite us -- America's past of which we're so proud, our hopes and aspirations for the future of the world and this much-loved country -- these things far outweigh what little divides us. And so tonight we reaffirm that Jew and gentile, we are one nation under God; that black and white, we are one nation indivisible; that Republican and Democrat, we are all Americans. Tonight, with heart and hand, through whatever trial and travail, we pledge ourselves to each other and to the cause of human freedom, the cause that has given light to this land and hope to the world."