We must preserve the blessings we enjoy

It's Thanksgiving week, a special time in this great country when we pause from our hectic lives and give thanks for the countless blessings that surround us.

Your Thanksgiving list of blessings is surely the same as mine - family, health, freedoms and countless opportunities that all-too-often we fail to recognize.

Across America, families will gather, eat far too much and share in that special bond that is high on our list of thankful blessings.

As the Christmas season approaches, our thoughts often turn to those less fortunate. And as in the past, we'll do what we can individually to lend a helping hand to our neighbors in need.

But unfortunately, the Thanksgiving dinner conversation this year may well drift toward the calamities of the world that are unfolding before our eyes each day.

While we are indeed thankful, we also recognize that today's world gives us ample to reason to also be concerned.

Concerned for our children and grandchildren, concerned for our safety and most of all, concerned for the future of the greatest country on the face of this Earth and the greatest in the history of mankind.

I can't help but recognize the irony that just two years ago I opined that Thanksgiving dinner conversation would be dominated by the fiasco of Obamacare.

Who would have imagined that Obamacare is now viewed as a bureaucratic nuisance because other unfolding events present much greater concerns for our future.

During this Thanksgiving we face world problems that currently defy a solution.

And while we gather to pause and give thanks, it's impossible to ignore the destruction and chaos and slaughter that has become commonplace.

Let me give an opinion.

This week - like all of those in the past - we are able to genuinely give thanks and be grateful because past generations fought for the freedoms we enjoy today.

Without the sacrifices of countless Americans, perhaps we would not be allowed to provide this gratitude. Absent those sacrifices, our country would today be but a shadow of itself.

Without those sacrifices, we may well have little to be thankful for.

Increasingly far too many Americans are unwilling to make the sacrifices needed to assure we have something to celebrate.

Whiny college students seem hellbent on destroying the pillars of higher education because their sensibilities have been bruised.

The federal government has never been so mistaken about the desires of the vast majority of Americans.

And lurking just around the corner are fanatics who in the name of religion seek our demise.

It is appropriate to pause this week and give sincere thanks for the blessings that surround us.

But it is equally appropriate to resolve individually and collectively that we will fight to preserve those blessings and will make the sacrifices necessary to assure that future generations can too gather around a Thanksgiving table with the same optimism and joy that we have experienced.