[guest post by Dana]

I don’t know about you, but while I am making pear pies and pumpkin pies today, I will be thanking God for all that is good and great in my life. And I will also be thanking Him for all that isn’t so good and great in my life because I have learned that in faith, it is through walking the arduous and painful path of tribulation with Him that begets another layer of unfathomable richness in my being. And hope grows. How seemingly paradoxical. God is a mystery that can be known. A mystery to be revealed over a lifetime. And just when one thinks they have reached His deepest depths, they come to find that He is endless. Further, aside from being wholly thankful for love of family, I am also thankful to God to be able to live where I do. This is particularly significant to me because I recognize I could be living in some oppressive third-world instead. I am also thankful for the privilege and immense freedom we have to participate in and be critical of our government. Whether it is to work for change at the local level all the way up to the federal level, or to speak our mind with our vote, it is all a great privilege that many others are not accorded. I know we could all write a book about what we are grateful for, so abundant are our blessings.

With that, Juan Williams is also giving thanks. He would like all of us to thank God government for its provision to us (think Cash for Clunkers, Obamacare, Stimulus, Solyndra, etc.):

The endless assault on government has driven down trust in federal management and deflated confidence in political leaders.

So, this Thanksgiving, let us join hands as I offer my list of reasons to give thanks for the good work being done by our government to bring us prosperity, health and peace.

At Thanksgiving 2008, the American economy was on the brink of collapse.

This Thanksgiving unemployment is 5.8 percent, the lowest it has been since the Great Recession. The recovery is slow but it keeps going and going. Federal investment in the stimulus, the auto industry bailout, the “Cash-for Clunkers” program and the Wall Street bailout all worked.

Not only that, but income tax rates for most families are lower today than “at any time since the 1950s,” according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Thanksgiving 2014 arrives with Wall Street investors collecting record levels of profit. Since February of 2010, nearly a million blue-collar, manufacturing jobs have come to America. The consumer confidence index, a critical indicator, is at its highest level since July 2007. The current national average price for a gallon of gasoline is the lowest it has been in four years.

“During the bleakest days of the financial crisis, it seemed the economy would never bounce back…” Business Insider magazine recently wrote in a report on the latest forecast from the financial consultants at JP Morgan. “But six years later…the economy has actually flourished…Five out of six indicators [corporate profits, stock prices, household net worth, GDP, and business investment] have not only reached their pre-crisis highs, but they have actually surpassed them.”

Even the much-maligned government program to boost America’s alternative energy industry, including the loan to solar panel company Solyndra, has been a success. Paul Krugman, the Nobel prize-winning economist and columnist for The New York Times, recently wrote that the energy program has returned $5 billion in profit for loans from the American people.

One last note on the new American prosperity: When President Obama took office in 2009 the deficit was $1.2 trillion. Today it is projected to be $483 billion. It has gone from 9.8 percent of the GDP to 2.8 percent, an incredible 71 percent reduction.

Here’s another reason to be thankful: The success of the Affordable Care Act.

Despite incessant political attacks and a horrendous start for the website, the program has cut the number of Americans without health insurance by 25 percent. That means about 3 million more of our fellow Americans have health insurance than did so before Democrats in Congress acted. And a Gallup poll recently reported 70 percent of people with “ObamaCare” rate the plan as excellent or good.

P.S. This also makes me thank God that we live in a country where we still have the freedom to publicly write, “What a moron!” without fear of retribution.

–Dana