This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
I love Thanksgiving. Not just because I feel justified in gorging myself before passing out on the couch — something I have to feel guilty about the other 364 days of the year. But because there truly is so much to be grateful for. And while I never forget to overeat, I often forget to express my gratitude. Thankfully, Thanksgiving rolls around once a year and reminds me to count my blessings.
At the top of my gratitude list are the origins of Thanksgiving and the subsequent birth of a nation — the greatest nation the world has seen. In late 1620, around 100 people boarded the Mayflower and set sail for a new beginning. Some of them sought religious refuge and freedom, others were in pursuit of what later would be dubbed the "American Dream." The voyage lasted two months. As a father, I can't imagine how many times the parents were asked, "Are we there yet?" Knowing they endured just that warrants my unfaltering gratitude, to say nothing else of the other hardships they faced.
The pilgrims were ill-prepared for the harsh New England winter they faced upon arrival. By spring, their numbers had been halved. Without the generosity and assistance of Squanto and other Native Americans, the remaining pilgrims may not have survived to celebrate the inaugural Thanksgiving later that year.
The onslaught of settlers to the New World seeking a new life with its accompanying liberty culminated in the birth of our nation. "We hold these truths to be self-evident," Thomas Jefferson would later pen in declaring the colonies' independence from the mother land, "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." These inspired words set the ground work for the largest and most successful experiment with the radical and relatively untested form of government — a democratic republic.
Modern academia would have us place our historical microscopes on instances where Jefferson's prose was at odds with the nation's practice. To be sure, slavery, limited suffrage, civil rights, wars and other violations of Jefferson's edict will forever stain the white cloth of America's history. They shouldn't, however, define this nation any more than our individual mistakes define us. Our lives, in a lot of ways, are a microcosm of the American experience: We strive for excellence centered on altruistic principles but often fall short. As Winston Churchill noted, "All men make mistakes, but only wise men learn from their mistakes." The same could be said of nations.
And I am certainly grateful to live in a nation that not only learns from its mistakes in its experiment with freedom, but affords me the chance to do likewise.
Rep. Brad Wilson is the House Majority Assistant Whip, representing House District 15 in Davis County.