Ben Stein dated November 25

A few nights ago, I had one of the best nights of my life. I traveled up to the campus of UC Santa Cruz, on the Monterey Bay and walked through the redwoods and across the majestic footbridges there and watched the full moon spread its bluish white light through the forest and I thought my Thanksgiving prayer.

Dear God, thank you for letting me be under your stars and moon and in the glorious nature you have created. Thank you for the freedom from fear I have to walk these paths at midnight with no danger from man’s wickedness.

Thank you for the glory of the free society where I can say anything I want and not fear any more than an angry letter. Thank you for more than adequate food of virtually infinite variety. Thank you that I still have the vitality to walk these same hilly paths that I originally walked thirty-three years ago as a teacher here. Thank you for my parents who are up there with you now, I hope, and for my sister, who teaches me every time I talk to her.

Thank you for my glorious wife, the kindest, most forgiving woman n the planet. Thank you for my teenage son, who keeps me humble. Thank you for the incredible gift of my dogs for the lest sixty years, who have been my best friends. Thank you for our four cats, too.

Thank you, above all, for the brave, selfless men and women who wear the uniform of this country and offer up their lives to save us from terror, for the families of those men and women, for the children who have to grow up without a father or mother, for the wives and husbands who have to sleep alone, for a year or maybe forever, for the police and firefighters and emergency workers and teachers who make our lives work, and for the Constitution.

And please dear God, send wisdom to George Bush and Karl Rove and Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi and Condi Rice to get us through our time of peril and into peace and to put aside anger and strive for unity against our foes.

I said all of this, and the moon streamed down and the stars shone and I thought, and thank you above all, for giving me that most precious treasure: a grateful heart.