For the carnivores: A heritage bourbon red turkey, stuffing & gravy
For the pescavores: Salmon with parsley cream sauce
For the vegetarians: Chestnut & Walnut pie with vegetable gravy
For everyone: mashed potatoes, wild rice, squash & kale, Waldorf salad, cranberry-orange relish, green salad.
In case you think our menu light on vegetables, we had crudités and a cheese plate
Pies: Pecan, Pumpkin, sour-cream & raisin
I've posted this painting, Norman Rockwell's 1942 "Freedom from Want", before, and I post it now because it looks exactly like Thanksgiving has always looked in my family. Except we had roses on the table, thanks to global distribution systems.
Look at our menu. Freedom from Want, indeed.
This painting was commissioned by the Saturday Evening Post as one of a series of four that illustrated four essential, universal human rights described by Franklin Roosevelt in his State of the Union address on 6 Jan 1941.
This was his famous "Four Freedoms" speech:
"In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression—everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way—everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want—which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants—everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear—which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor—anywhere in the world.
That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb."
"Freedom of Speech" is also an iconic image.
"Freedom of Worship" is thoroughly Christian and white. If you look closely, you will notice that people of color are there, but marginalized in the corners. They serve primarily as shadows to highlight the blond woman at center left. The diversity ranges from Protestant to Catholic, middle-aged to old. What a 40's vision of the world.
The fourth freedom, "Freedom from Fear" shows parents in Vermont tucking their children into bed after reading about the German bombing of London. Evidently Rockwell didn't much like "Freedom from Fear" because it "was based on a rather smug idea. Painted during the bombing of London, it was supposed to say, 'Thank God we can put our children to bed with a feeling of security, knowing they will not be killed in the night.'"
Reviewing the four freedoms revered by Roosevelt, I was struck by just how messed up the modern USA is. Freedom of speech was then the brave man standing to have his say, his neighbors listening. Now it is Fox News propaganda, billionaires buying elections, bigots whining about being denied their right to abuse their neighbors, and the pathological bullying of Donald Trump.
Freedom to Worship was then people at prayer, the light that shines in darkness illuminating their faces. Today Christianity has morphed into a snarling fury of anti-science ignorance, soothing self-talk, anti-Muslim, anti-democratic bigotry, attacks on women's health and War-on-Christmas paranoia.
Freedom from Want has been corrupted into a "gimme, gimme" society obsessed with getting ours. The symptoms are everywhere: obesity, environment degradation, a 24/7 entertainment complex where pornography and TV drama have blurred into one, bigger houses, bigger cars, more of everything, and, when stuff overwhelms us, "down-sizing" and scaling back. Meanwhile, we refuse to pay our fair share for the services we want, begrudge the minimum wage and deny that we might need to develop non-carbon based sources of fuel. Bikes? Mass transit? Communism! Threats to our American way of life!
And, faced with terrorists, with dangerous thugs who hate the freedoms that Roosevelt articulated--free speech, tolerance for other religions, abundance--Americans corrupt "freedom from fear" into the opposite of Roosevelt's vision. We pour more and more money into US military armaments, demand unrestricted access to guns lest the government tyrannize us, and take brave stances to deny safe harbor to Syrian women and children. We are so terrified of the Other, that we legalize murder with "stand your ground" laws and defend the right to gun down unarmed teenagers. We militarize the police to defend us against our fear of being afraid.
We are unmoored.
It seems to me that Roosevelt omitted an important fifth freedom: freedom from exploitation and discrimination. Roosevelt mentioned individual freedoms enumerated in the constitution: the government is not going to censor my freedom to say what I want or worship as I will, and the government will strive to secure "the blessings of prosperity" and peace. But in a complex free society, we also have to live with one another. And this obliges every citizen --and through us, the government--to defend the rights of other citizens--all other citizens--to speak their minds, exercise their beliefs, benefit from prosperity and live in safety. While some of this is secured in the Constitution--the 13th, 14th, 19th, 24th amendments, for example--the Fifth Freedom requires citizens to voluntarily choose to live with one another as equals. We need reciprocity, to do unto others as we would have others do unto us.
Each of us faces a moral conflict when our rights clash. The measure of our democracy and our character as citizens depends on how we resolve this conflict: Do my rights trump yours? What if I have more power than you, and I don't like your skin color, attitude or accent? What if you make me feel uncomfortable? What if you disgust me? What if I'm scared of you? What if I don't feel like sharing with the likes of you? Do I have any obligation to respect your rights if I don't feel like it, if your rights are a bother or even if I perceive your rights to be a threat to my self-interest?
Speaking metaphorically, if I have all that I can eat and more, and you have none, am I obliged to share? Going one step further, if I can exploit you, do I have the right to benefit myself at your expense? To extend the metaphor, if I am in a position to take food away from you, isn't that my right to enjoy "freedom from want"? The fundamental question is the extent to which government of, by and for the people should step in to defend the rights of all citizens against other citizens who would prey upon them. Are we equal under the law, or, as Orwell wrote, are "some pigs more equal than others?"
It is obvious to me that addition to our rights as individual, we have a collective responsibility to guard our shared freedoms. In my model of democracy, as a citizen, I do not have the right to exploit others. Even if I have the power, I have no right to trump your rights. Furthermore, government should not be used to exploit some and privilege others. In fact, in my model of democracy, the government has a responsibility to ensure that all Americans are treated equally under the law. However, given the frenzy of bigotry that has exploded since Obama became President, or, more recently, the denial that "Black Lives Matter," clearly some Americans don't agree with me. Some Americans believe that they have a god-given right to discriminate against and exploit other Americans, and what is so discouraging today is that, by golly, they are going to fight to the bitter end for that right. Government, if it tries to treat citizens equally, becomes their enemy.
It occurs to me that what I am talking about may not be a Fifth Freedom. Maybe freedom from discrimination is implied by "Freedom from Fear." In the dark month when Roosevelt gave the Four Freedoms speech, Europe was already at war; America would be at war by the end of the year. Roosevelt envisioned a world in which "no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor." Surely the same principle applies to individuals. No individual should be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against their neighbor (even if it is just metaphorically taking food away from them.) But given how fiercely, the principle is denied, and how all other freedoms are corrupted when reciprocity is ignored, I believe it must be defended as a Fifth Freedom. Democracy fails if citizens fail to respect the rights of others.
So, gosh. Happy Thanksgiving, 2015! (***shakes head sadly***) Please pass the wine.