November 22, 2006

The Fulford File, By James Fulford

Happy Thanksgiving From VDARE.com! (While It Lasts)

George W. Bush has just issued a Thanksgiving Proclamation, dating it "in the year of our Lord two thousand six, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-first, " in the old-fashioned format used on all Presidential proclamations, which sounds like an offence against multiculturalism all by itself, since the obvious questions are "Year of Which Lord?" and "What do you mean, Independence?"

Thanksgiving is originally a Christian holiday—the first settlers in America weren't big on pluralism. When I started writing this last week, I hadn't heard any reports yet (this year) of Thanksgiving being targeted by the anti-white, anti-Pilgrim, and anti-Christian complainers who surface every holiday. But I knew they were out there.

Michelle Malkin has highlighted one such instance on her blog:

Teacher Bill Morgan walks into his third-grade class wearing a black Pilgrim hat made of construction paper and begins snatching up pencils, backpacks and glue sticks from his pupils. He tells them the items now belong to him because he "discovered" them. The reaction is exactly what Morgan expects: The kids get angry and want their things back.

Morgan is among elementary school teachers who have ditched the traditional Thanksgiving lesson, in which children dress up like Indians and Pilgrims and act out a romanticized version of their first meetings. [ Teachers emphasize the Indians' side By ANA BEATRIZ CHOLO, Associated Press , Nov 21,]

The children responded by scalping him and his family with hatchets and setting fire to the teachers lounge with burning arrows. (Just kidding.) Christina Ricci did a much funnier version of this in the movie Addams Family Values. Dressed as Pocahontas for the Thanksgiving play, she made the following speech:

Wednesday Addams: Wait, we can not break bread with you. You have taken the land which is rightfully ours. Years from now my people will be forced to live in mobile homes on reservations. Your people will wear cardigans, and drink highballs. We will sell our bracelets by the road sides, and you will play golf, and eat hot hors d'oeuvres. My people will have pain and degradation. Your people will have stick shifts. The gods of my tribe have spoken. They said do not trust the pilgrims, especially Sarah Miller. [A child in the same Grade Six class.] And for all of these reasons I have decided to scalp you and burn your village to the ground.

In 1993, that was a joke. Now teachers are acting like members of the Addams Family. And it's all part of an larger trend.

For example, Las Cruces, New Mexico, has recently been sued by people who want to remove three crosses from the official logo of the city, which takes its name from memorials erected to Spanish victims of the Apaches. It was Placita de Las Cruces (Place of the Crosses), where survivors of a massacre erected crosses in honor of the fallen. The three crosses on the logo are so stylized that you really have to know what they are to realize they're there, otherwise you'd think it was some kind of checkerboard motif.

(Click to enlarge.)

A judge threw the suit out, and the people who brought it are complaining about feeling " vilified," although of course if you're doing something vile, then you will be vilified. Michelle Goldberg, who was mentioned here on VDARE.com last year, when she didn't believe that there was War against Christmas, has now written a whole book, with its own website, called Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism , which is based on the idea that Christians just got here this year, rather than in, say, 1620, and are going to take over, rather than being, say, the vast majority of Americans.

Here at Vdare.com we have a number of things to be thankful for. One is our continued existence, since Christmas 1999, throughout six years of the Bush Administration. (Let's pause a moment and give thanks for the 22nd Amendment, which limits Presidents to two terms. Whatever you may say about Roosevelt's Fourth Term, it resulted in an Amendment which will save us from a Bush Third Term.)

Another thing we have to be thankful for is our readers—they write us letters, (sometimes they become full-time writers for us) they give us moral support, and of course, they give (tax-deductible, remember) financial support. I'd like to thank, once again, the people who have sent money, and the people who are planning to.

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This is an example of the commentary you're supporting, that you won't read in the MainStream Media.

Here in my home state of Maryland, according to the Annapolis Capital, "Maryland public school students are free to thank anyone they want while learning about the 17th century celebration of Thanksgiving - as long as it's not God." [Religion kept out of Thanksgiving stories, By Laurel Lundstrom, November 22, 2004]

True to the religio-phobic conception of educational "diversity," Maryland public school officials have turned Thanksgiving into a multicultural harvest devoid of its spiritual essence. Students are taught that Pilgrims had a "belief system," but nothing further. Not to worry, though. "The Pilgrim Story is read in Spanish and English," Alfreda Adams, principal at Mills-Parole Elementary School in Anne Arundel County where 70 Hispanic students attend, told the Capital. "We make sure that we celebrate all cultures." [ Religion kept out of Thanksgiving stories, By Laurel Lundstrom, November 22, 2004][ Grace, Gratitude, and God At Thanksgiving]

Two years ago the Board of Selectmen of Plymouth, Mass., where the Pilgrims landed in 1620, put up a plaque denouncing them for coming at all. [War On Holidays Is War on America, By Sam Francis]

A couple by me:

Ben Wattenberg: One gets the feeling that when the folks on the Mayflower went out to watch the next boats come in, they muttered to one another 'There goes the neighborhood.'

James Fulford: This happens to be true. And with reason. The Columbia Encyclopedia says that the second ship so taxed the resources of the infant colony that the Pilgrims almost starved. Thanksgiving: The National Question Footnote

There are four problems with Thanksgiving: 1) white Pilgrims, (“an offensive representation of one gender, one race and one historical period”); 2) ungrateful Indians, who pick Thanksgiving to highlight their unthankfulness; 3) modern immigrants, who feel that Thanksgiving has nothing to do with them, 4) [ unmentionable], to whom thanks are given. [Then They Came For Thanksgiving]

And the rest of the Thanksgiving columns below: Happy Thanksgiving!

11/21/01 - Thanksgiving: The National Question Footnote

11/27/02 - Thanksgiving, Crazy Horse, Us

TODAY'S LETTER: A Reader Comments on Multi-Cultist Holidays

11/26/03 - Then They Came For Thanksgiving…

11/21/03 - View From Lodi, CA: Hot Chocolate For Thanksgiving

12/08/03 - War On Holidays Is War on America

11/23/04 - Grace, Gratitude, and God At Thanksgiving

11/19/04 - View From Lodi, CA: Mincemeat For Thanksgiving!

11/24/04 - The High Road to Turkey: An Indian View of Thanksgiving

09/25/03 - Pressure On The Pot [Blast from Past! A 1989 Peter Brimelow column from the London Times.]

11/25/04 - The Fulford File: Thanksgiving Roundup

11/23/05 - VDARE.COM Wishes Everybody A Happy Thanksgiving!

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