Thank you, G-d, for sparing me growing up during the Holocaust years, just before my generation, when I would have felt so enfeebled and unable to act meaningfully when the moment called for someone to block Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., while wearing a yarmulka, sackcloth, and ashes, and not to move until FDR would bomb the rail lines leading to Auschwitz.

Thank you, G-d, for allowing me to be born and grow up before Obama destroyed the nation’s culture, turned so much of America woke/progressive, destroyed the culture taught to children, and destroyed the tone on the college campuses.

Thank you, G-d, for allowing me to grow up when homosexuality was neither persecuted nor praised, when society did not recognize homosexual marriages as valid, when there were no “Pride Parades,” and when men — even the sissies, wusses, and wimps — were described as “men” (albeit as “sissies” or “wusses” or “wimps”) and when women were called females, women, ladies, chicks, or similar nomenclature.

Thank you, G-d, for allowing me to grow up in an era when it was considered acceptable for me to hold a door open for a lady, to allow all women to enter or exit an elevator before I would, and to be a guy unbattered by Gillette razor commercials and U.S. Department of Defense DEI initiatives aimed at emasculating me.

Thank you, G-d, that Christopher Columbus did not know his left from his right and so ended up here instead of India, so Nikki Haley and Ramaswamy can run for president here instead of Ronald Reagan running in New Delhi.

Thank you, G-d, that Columbus launched the process of this continent coming under the rubric of Western civilization rather than remaining a place where Aztecs, Incas, and other native tribes in America basically butchered and scalped each other in endless internecine tribal wars marked by a savagery that, although Cortez and others were able to approximate, came to an end.

Thank you, G-d, that the British ended up in control here, rather than the Spanish. That English became the language of the land and that I got the opportunity to learn it and play with it.

Thank you, G-d, for the heroic early pioneers at Roanoke, Jamestown, and Plymouth Rock.

Thank you, G-d, that, for all the wonderful things the Brits gave us, you blessed our efforts finally to kick them out so that we could hold forks and knives the way we wanted, could be less stiff and humorless, could be just a bit improper by saying things out loud instead of thinking them quietly and getting all passive-aggressive in that way, and so that we could be reared on hot dogs and fries rather than mutton.

Thank you, G-d, that we had so many heroes: Patrick Henry, Nathan Hale, John Adams, Samuel Adams, and of course the First Families of Virginia: the likes of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, William Henry Harrison (and Tyler, too).

Thank you, G-d, that our first leader was George Washington, who knew his strengths and limits, whose fortitude was beyond human, who refused to be called “His Excellency” instead of “Mr. President,” and who had the humility and vision to step down after two terms made up of eight years.

Thank you, G-d, that the colonies drafted an amazing statement of freedom in their Declaration of Independence that gave the world such a better model for liberty, fraternity, and equality than the French independence movement that featured the guillotine and one set of anarchists beheading the next, with endless decapitations until calmer heads prevailed.

Thank you, G-d, that the states worked out the finest of compromises that worked for 250 years, give or take, until contemporary progressives and woke undertook to deconstruct it all. So they agreed there would be one legislative house that would give each and every state the same equal representation of two senators, and another chamber that would advantage bigger states over smaller states in direct proportion to their relative populations, and then both sides would have to reach agreement on a final law.

Thank you, G-d, that they also figured out checks and balances that would work for 250 years among an executive branch, the legislative bi-cameral one, and a judiciary.

Thank you, G-d, for blessing this country such that we always had just the right guy show up to save us when we almost ruined it. Washington at the opening bell. Lincoln as the war between the states erupted. Teddy Roosevelt in his time. Harry Truman for a brief moment when we needed a guy who knew what had to be done to end the madness of the 1940s and basically OK’d “pushing the button” not once but twice. JFK during the Cuban missile crisis. Ronald Reagan after Jimmy Carter drove us into malaise and ruin. And, of all people, a fully brash and slightly crude New York real-estate and hotel-and-casino magnate who was absolutely the only person in the entire country who possibly could have rolled back so much of Obama’s Curse.

Thank you, G-d, for inspiring this country to be a haven for Jews, a place where we would not be persecuted or face too much prejudice too often, a country that ultimately would give us a fair chance and would support the Return to Zion in our times, a country that was the only one that could stand up to the Soviet Union and bring it down, and that saved the world when another continent’s denizens made a mess of the planet twice in the same half century.

Thank you, G-d, that we may live where we want, eat what we want, and — at least until recently — think and say and write what we want. Thank you for giving us the outlets and resources with which we will reclaim those rights and for having helped us realize, in the face of the Woke Progressive Cancel Culture onslaught, how precious those rights are.

Thank you, G-d, for baseball. And for the rulers of baseball speeding up the games.

Thank you, G-d, for ice hockey so that we always will have at least one sport that is just too violent for the woke and progressives to get started messing with.

Thank you, G-d for giving us two border countries like Mexico and Canada. Mexico may be an annoyance, O L-rd, but they are at peace with us and always are, give or take an Alamo. And the Canadians are just so nice — and even sing the words of our National Anthem when microphones black out at hockey games in Toronto, Montreal, Edmonton, Vancouver, and Ottawa — that they are almost identical to us, except they cannot pronounce “about.”

And thank you, G-d, for blessing America, land that I love, standing beside her and guiding her through both the night and the day with Your light from above.