Perhaps you too have been wondering why it is that President Obama is always, always telling us who we are as Americans and who we are not. Obviously, why he does this is a complicated question. And I guess “always” is an exaggeration. Frequently, though—he does it very frequently.

To pull one little item from the Google hopper: He was asked earlier this year about football players and the concussions they always (frequently) seem to be getting. There are few subjects the president won’t comment on.

“We have to change a culture that says you suck it up,” the president said. At the same time, he went on, football will continue to be, even after we stop sucking it up, “fundamental to who we are as Americans.” Boola boola.

The little clump of words about who we are as Americans pops out of the president’s mouth so often it’s easy to miss it, even when he says it twice on the same occasion, a few sentences apart, as he sometimes does. It’s not necessarily annoying. Often when he tells us who we are the phrase has a nice, friendly lilt to it, as though the president were giving us a pat on the back. You hear him at the 9/11 museum saying, “Nothing can ever break us. Nothing can change who we are as Americans,” and you think, Thanks, Obama!

Unfortunately, Americans might also get confused about who we are, assuming we’re paying attention to our president. It’s easy to lose track.

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From our nation’s inception, one of the defining characteristics of the American spirit has been an attitude of gratitude. Leaders throughout our country’s history have encouraged and inculcated it.

Just a brief moment of reflection cannot help but yield a level of humility that recognizes even what Americans are “owed” in the end is rooted in many gifts. How did we come by the talents, abilities and opportunities that have allowed us to accomplish our dreams, to provide for our families, to learn, live, grow up in a land that is free? It is all grace. Of course, the natural follow-on question is to whom do we express our gratitude? One overriding answer becomes clear in looking to the words of the most prominent leaders in United States history: God, the Author of “every good and perfect gift.”

From the first English settlers erecting a cross at Cape Henry and giving thanks for safe passage, to the Pilgrims in Plymouth Colony, to the Founders of our country, to those who saved it during the Civil War, and onward to the present day, gratitude expressed to God has been pervasive.

At key moments throughout the Revolutionary War, the Continental Congress issued calls to days of prayer and fasting to seek God’s aid or days of thanksgiving for victories won. When the Continental Army defeated the British in stunning fashion at Saratoga in 1777, a proclamation calling for a national day of thanksgiving went out recognizing that God “…smiled upon us in the prosecution of a just and necessary war, for the defence and establishment of our unalienable rights and liberties…[and] hath been pleased…to crown our arms with most signal success.”

Four years later, when combined American and French forces under the leadership of General George Washington defeated the British at Yorktown, the Continental Congress proceeded en masse from the Pennsylvania State House (Independence Hall) to a nearby church to attend a special service and offer thanks to God. Shortly thereafter, the body issued a proclamation calling on the nascent nation to do the same observing, “Whereas, it hath pleased Almighty God, the father of mercies, remarkably to assist and support the United States of America in their important struggle for liberty against the long continued efforts of a powerful nation: it is the duty of all ranks to observe and thankfully acknowledge the interpositions of his Providence in their behalf.”

Washington, having known the dire straits the Continental Army found itself in on numerous occasions during the eight-year conflict, viewed the Americans’ victory as nothing short of a “standing miracle” and gave God the credit due in his Farewell Orders to the Army and in his Circular Letter to the States. He revisited the topic among the very first thoughts he expressed in his Inaugural Address in 1789 stating, “it would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official act my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe, who presides over council of nations…In tendering this homage to the Great Author of every public and private good, I assure myself that it expresses your sentiments no less than my own….No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than those of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency.”

That same year, President Washington issued the first thanksgiving proclamation under the newly formed government. The proclamation stated it is “the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor…Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be.”

Abraham Lincoln, a fervent student of George Washington and the Founding Fathers, followed in their footsteps during Civil War. At decisive moments during the conflict, he too issued proclamations calling for national days of thanksgiving including after the landmark victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, both of which conspicuously occurred during the July 4th weekend in 1863 and changed the entire trajectory of the war.

In the most famous of his thanksgiving proclamations, issued later that same year, Lincoln set the precedent (and followed Washington’s lead) for what became our nation’s annual November thanksgiving observances. He made note that even in the midst of a war of “unequaled magnitude,” Americans had many things for which to be thankful including fruitful fields and industry, the non-intervention of foreign powers in the war, the contracting theaters of conflict, and for a population continuing to grow despite the waste wrought by what would be the nation’s bloodiest war. Lincoln perceived, “No human counsel hath devised, nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are gracious gifts from the most high God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.”

He added, “It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people. I do, therefore, invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States…to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.”

And it has seemed fit and proper to every President since Lincoln to issue annual Thanksgiving Day proclamations. Drawing on the inspiration of those who have gone before, may this attitude of faith-filled gratitude continue to be at the heart of the American spirit.

Randy DeSoto is a freelance writer, media consultant and former Press Secretary for Senate Candidate Joe Miller in 2010 and 2014.

For responding to a president who defies his constitutional limits, Congress is said to possess four powers: to impeach, to defund, to investigate, and to withhold confirmation of nominees.

But there is a fifth recourse, which the new Republican Congress might consider in view of President Obama’s executive amnesty for illegal immigrants: the power to censure. In fact, censure could work in tandem with Congress’s other powers, helping the legislature make the moral case for responding to the president’s lawlessness.
Presidential censure is a rare occurrence. Most notably, in 1834, the Whig-controlled Senate censured President Andrew Jackson, a Democrat, for moving federal deposits from the Second Bank of the United States to local banks, derisively called his “pets” because most were operated by loyal Democrats.

Jackson’s legal justification was dubious at best. Under the law, only the secretary of the Treasury could initiate such a transfer, and then only if the funds were deemed insecure. But the Bank had been impeccably run since Nicholas Biddle became its president in 1822. An investigation had ascertained that the funds were perfectly safe, and the House had voted overwhelmingly to affirm that fact. Treasury Secretary William Duane, moreover, refused to remove the money or to step down so Jackson could install somebody who would. Jackson fired Duane, replacing him with Roger Taney without Senate confirmation. Taney’s cronies would go on to grossly mismanage funds in Jackson’s pet bank in Baltimore.

This series of actions added up to a severe presidential encroachment. So the Senate—led by Henry Clay and Daniel Webster—censured Jackson by passing this resolution: “Resolved, That the President, in the late Executive proceedings in relation to the public revenue, has assumed upon himself authority and power not conferred by the Constitution and laws, but in derogation
of both.”

The censure wounded the president’s bountiful pride, so much so that in 1837, Missouri senator Thomas Hart Benton, a fierce Jackson loyalist, had the resolution stricken from the record.

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