Today is Thanksgiving, which may be the most conservative holiday of them all. It’s old, for one thing. And it reminds us to be thankful for what we have, including what out forbears gave us. That’s the opposite of complaining and blaming others, which are not conservative characteristics.
On this Thanksgiving Day, 398 years after the Pilgrims celebrated their survival in the New World with a feast giving thanks to God for delivering them and preparing them for a kingdom to come without cold or wetness or hunger or want, Massachusetts conservatives have many things to be thankful for.
Here are seven of them:
7. Sixteen-Year-Olds Can’t Vote Yet
A majority of the city councilors in Somerville and representative Town Meeting members in Brookline think it’s a swell idea for 16-year-olds to vote in local elections. But it takes a state law to make that happen, and the Massachusetts Legislature hasn’t yet latched onto this particular lunacy.
So for the time being 16-year-olds will have to be content with the free stuff they get at home and at school, and cannot expect taxpayer-funded subsidies for vaping, tattoos, ear buds, or texting while skateboarding.
6. Plastic Bags
Those thin-film white or gray plastic bags so handy for carrying groceries or drug store products may be an endangered species in Massachusetts, but they haven’t yet been wiped out altogether.
Left-wing state legislators on Beacon Hill are hard at work trying to keep you from killing manatees with your second-use-is-for-diapers plastic bags by banning them statewide, but not all the slightly-less-left-wing state legislators agree. Yet.
5. Balloons Are Still Legal
A lighter-than-air state rep wants to ban balloons in Massachusetts, but after getting a hearing in October, the bill hasn’t gotten off the ground.
So it’s still legal in most places in the Commonwealth to give a kid a colorful balloon on his birthday.
But if there are any other items or activities your kids enjoy, it’s probably a good idea to keep it to yourself.
Otherwise, the pension-hunters on Beacon Hill might take aim on that.
5. Ed Markey
Ed Markey brightens our day more than most conservatives would like to admit.
Like that time in 2017 when he used left-wing-blogs’ conspiracy theories when he falsely claimed a grand jury in New York was investigating President Donald Trump’s alleged ties to Russia.
Or the time he made up his own history of the American Revolution during a political event near Downtown Crossing.
When it comes to making nonsensical statements in public, our 73-year-old junior senator stands out. The Massachusetts Republican Party should consider funding an Ed Markey Channel on cable television – a continuous loop of Markeyisms for the people of Massachusetts to learn from and enjoy.
If we have to have a looney-toons U.S. senator from Massachusetts – and let’s face it, we do – than it might as well be this looney-toons U.S. senator.
The other one resembles a bad character from a fairy tale.
3. No ‘Congestion’ Tolls
The left’s latest take-your-money scheme claims to be able to solve traffic problems on Boston-area highways by tolling the stuffing out of those selfish people who drive themselves to work every morning.
But it hasn’t happened because Governor Charlie Baker’s transportation secretary, Stephanie Pollack, thinks that punishing drivers isn’t the solution to traffic congestion.
That has the left-wing “transportation advocates” in a snit. (When everyone bikes to work or rides a unicycle or carpools to the T or commuter rail station that doesn’t have enough parking, we shall be free.)
The upshot is that the Massachusetts Turnpike is still affordable, and Route 128, the Southeast Expressway, Route 3, and Interstate 93 are all still toll-less. So if you don’t count state gas tax, income tax, and car excise tax, it’s like you’re not paying to use the roads at all.
2. No State Intervention Against Parents Who Seek Conversion Therapy
Restorative therapy for children 17 and younger is now theoretically illegal in Massachusetts, but the state’s child-services gendarmes can’t claim it’s child abuse for parents to seek it out.
A portion of the original version of the bill making it illegal to provide therapy designed to change a young person’s sexual orientation or gender identity also defined pursuing conversion therapy as child abuse, in the same category as sexual abuse and malnutrition. That got taken out of the bill as a bridge-too-far before it passed and was signed into law by the governor in April 2019.
So now if you like your kids, you can keep your kids, even if you want your kids to identify as masculine if they are male and feminine if they are female.
1. Infanticide Is Still Illegal
An abortionist in Massachusetts who just unsuccessfully tried to kill an unborn baby only to inadvertently deliver a just-born baby theoretically has to try to save the life of the newborn, under current state law.
The proposed ROE Act bill would remove from state law that extreme-right-wing view that already-born babies have a right to continue living.
It hasn’t passed yet, in part because its supporters seem to have no good answer for otherwise-sympathetic state legislators who wonder why they should support post-birth baby killing.
Massachusetts state flag 
