I trust you all had a joyous Thanksgiving. For me, my descendants and ancestors, it was our first holiday to break bread around my 26 foot-long dining room table strategically centered in my new addition. This brings a close to an overwhelming project which took me nearly 17 months of evenings, weekends and noon hours to complete. I know I was violating a commandment by working seven days a week, however when questioned about healing on the Sabbath Jesus told the Pharisees “Who would not pull their donkey from the well should he fall into it on the Sabbath?” Redneck logic suggests my ass has been stuck in the well for the past 68 Sundays.

I was making coffee around five o’clock Thanksgiving morning, when I heard rustling up in the loft. I expected the nine grandkids and four dogs bunking upstairs to have slept longer, but five of the youngest ones quietly appeared in the kitchen dragging their blankets and sucking their thumbs. One-by-one, I set each on a stool at the counter with a small bowl of cereal and a small glass of juice; small being the key word so as to minimize the impending spills. The wee ones are a half-asleep mass of pajamas, blankets, frumpled hair, thumbs and blue eyes. These will be the only quiet fifteen minutes of my day. It is great being a father of three and a grandfather of 12, responsibilities I savor and take very seriously. Sadly, my version of the American family is dying and here is proof.

Ferguson, Missouri, is being sacrificed. For four months, political whores have fanned the flames of hatred while waiting for the grand jury decision regarding the police shooting of Michael Brown. If America were a true Democracy governed by mob rule, Officer Wilson would have been be lynched long ago. Fortunately, we are a color-blind, constitutional republic governed by the rule of law and the cooler heads of the grand jury determined Officer Wilson’s use of force was justified. He was set free in a city where he can never again publically show his face; truly collateral damage in the left’s war to promote racism.

Just as instructed by the likes of Reverend Jackson, Al Sharpton, Eric Holder and President Obama, thugs brave enough to expose their boxers but too chicken to reveal their faces, looted and destroyed anything of value. While viewing this senseless mayhem, did you notice the one thing remarkably absent? Unlike my Thanksgiving table, fathers were nowhere to be found and here is why.

Our great American experiment in freedom relies on a strong family unit to pass the values we cherish to the next generation. Faith, family, freedom, rights, responsibility, a strong work ethic and a willingness to sacrifice are not characteristics transferred in the bloodlines, they are passed at the family dinner table. Contrary to the tenets of modern feminism, a father needs to serve as head of the household. However, for progressives to create an all-powerful Marxist utopia, they must replace fathers with government programs; a dangerous demolition which began with President Johnson’s War on Poverty. Fifty years and 20 trillion dollars later, the ruling class can herald Ferguson, Missouri, as the champion of their efforts. In 1964 the illegitimacy rate in the inner-city was 7 percent, today it is 74 percent; fathers have been completely removed from the equation and the urban family has collapsed.

When you look at the crowd of looters, nearly all are less than 30; the byproduct of two generations of fatherless households. Had I not had a father who raised me I could easily have been burning cars in the streets of Ferguson while thinking I was due the bounty produced by others. However, I did have a father who made me the person I am today. I labored to instill those same values in my own children and I am relieved to see them appear in my grandchildren. For America to right herself, men must accept their roles as fathers and grandfathers, thereby removing government programs from the equation.