Indigenous People's Day LTE - Jan 2020

January starts a new session in Concord. We will be voting on the bills studied over the summer before going on to the bills submitted for this year. HB221 renaming Columbus Day as Indigenous People's Day is one such bill. The idea is that because Columbus did some things we might disapprove of we should no longer celebrate people that risked life and limb to explore and learn about the world. The idea is not to change the day to a National Day of Exploration, Inspiration, or Learning but to make the day about learning what a wretched people we are and that no atonement is possible. This secular version of original sin is being propagated by those that resent the culture of freedom and individualism that formed our great country.

Thanksgiving is about celebrating abundance, sharing that abundance with family and friends, reflecting on how good we have it, and being thankful for all the good things in our lives. You may have heard the talk this year about how Thanksgiving shouldn’t exist because of how the USA treated the Indians. That is just another example of trying to cancel out the positive by trying to focus on the negative.

The new year is a time to reflect on the years past and resolve to improve. Judging your past actions on what you know now instead of what was known then is holding yourself to an impossible standard. Likewise, judging historical figures by current standards can undervalue what they did or said that could inspire and inform our future.