I’d like to take this opportunity to wish all my many readers in the United States of America a very happy and joyful Thanksgiving, a celebration that starts at midnight tonight. May you join with your families and friends and be thankful for all your successes in life, whether they be great and world changing, or small and intimately personal.

May you also be thankful that you live in a land of Liberty and enjoy rights that many of us in other nations do not have. These rights, such as the right to speak freely and follow the deity of ones choice; the right to take responsibility for our own self defence; the right to fair and timely trials for criminals; the right not to be arrested without good cause and not have government thugs quartered in your home, are what makes up the foundations of a free society and are rights not present in many other nations. Americans in this generation, as well as being thankful for the good things of the here and now, should also be thankful for the generations of Americans that went before them and who codified, created and often fought hard for the rights that Americans enjoy today.

Be thankful that you are free my American friends. Be thankful that you don’t live in a country where people are prosecuted for telling jokes, or who are forbidden from legally owning the means of defending themselves or whose justice and policing systems have been corrupted by political ideology.

So when you sit down for your Thanksgiving meals, realise that you have much to be thankful for and many people, some alive but many now dead, to be thankful to.