NOV. 26 EDITORIAL

Learn from the past and move forward

Your recent editorial “Be thankful, but true to our past” caught my eye.

What a load of claptrap.

The individual who wrote is someone that obviously likes to wallow in the past and beat their chest and say what bad people we’ve been. You go ahead, I’m not going there and worry too much on what my ancestors did wrong (or right).

What we can do, is learn from the past but not caught up in feeling miserable about it. Looking around I see a lot of good things that occur in this time and place on a daily basis, things that I’m thankful for and I’m glad that I can share them with my family on Thanksgiving Day.

It’s great to have the freedom to put drivel in a community newspaper. I’ve been in too many countries that it wouldn’t be allowed. So I’ll take this country, black eye and bruises and all, you go ahead and stay in the past, sounds like you like it a whole lot better.

Ken Aitchison

Redmond

NOV. 26 EDITORIAL

Pilgrims were not part of a genocide

After reading Nov. 26 your editorial opinion, I began to wonder where you received the historical information for your article.

My dictionary states that Genocide is the systematic destruction or extermination of a class or race of people or property.

Nothing in the history books that I have read calls the advancement of the founders from Columbus or the Pilgrims as being an act of Genocide. Treatment may have been unfair and at time vicious.

The first government day of Thanksgiving was sponsored by John Adams in the Revolutionary war after the victory at Saratoga and approved by the Continental Congress. A day of Thanksgiving was celebrated off and on for the next 100 years until Lincoln designated it as a National day of Thanksgiving. The official date was set by President Franklin Roosevelt as the third Thursday in November.

Your assertion that America was founded on the backs of slavery and vicious wars is out of extreme left wing Liberal opinion. You have attempted to fill your readers with guilt for being happy at this Thanksgiving holiday.

Look around and observe the sharing and support that is extended to those less fortunate.

You may feel guilt and remorse at being an American at this time of year but I will celebrate with my friends and family this festive season and our pride in America.

If this is your editorial on Thanksgiving, I can hardly wait to read your opinions on the coming holidays, especially the patriotic days of the Fourth of July and Veterans day.

Les Snavely

Redmond