As one old enough to be entitled to a senior discount (for cash) at Shirley’s Hardware, the activity of sanding new drywall corners at the top of a stairwell is likely to provoke some philosophical musing. So it was that on the Friday after Thanksgiving I was ruminating on the nature and meaning of that holiday.

I came to this country 22 years ago (becoming a citizen six years later) so I lack the gut feeling for Thanksgiving that comes with growing up with this as a major family gathering time of the year. In the same way the American emphasis on freedom — we value our freedoms — resonates in the mind but not the gut. Diverting my attention from a face full of fine white dust I saw a connection between these two icons of America.

As one of the two most significant national holidays, Thanksgiving must mean more than just a personal thank-you for individual blessings. It seems to me that it is an appreciation by the American community of the communal benefits that this country has created for its citizens — the valued freedoms to which we frequently refer — those set out in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

At the time these documents were created — or hammered out by long and arduous debate — they were a radical and forward-looking prospectus for individual liberty. After some 230 years, the Beacon of Liberty which shone out in the late 18th century has kindled the fire of freedom around the globe, and the Constitutional freedoms of the U.S. are the standard by which the countries of the world are to be measured.

Citizens of many countries now enjoy the same freedoms as we do, and it seems to me that there are some freedoms which by us are still to be won. Thanksgiving seems an opportune time not only to consider and be thankful for what we have (as the community of Martha’s Vineyard and the larger community of the USA) but to identify what we have yet to attain, and work toward this in order to achieve the more perfect union foreseen by the founding fathers.

I was brought up with the principle that for every right there is a responsibility, and as I enjoy the rights of a U.S. citizen, I feel the responsibility to make this country a better place for all. With this in mind I propose below three freedoms which we as a nation still lack and for which I believe we should strive:

• Freedom from hunger: In 2008 more than a million American children went to bed hungry (all these numbers are from a U.S. Agriculture Department report which President Obama describes as “unsettling”); 50 million U.S. residents — one sixth of the population — were unable to afford sufficient food to stay healthy at some point during 2008. The numbers for 2009 will be even worse. These are not all unemployed or unemployable — 40 per cent of those helped by the charity Feeding America were in families with at least one wage earner. This may be the land of the free and home of the brave but it is also the home of the impoverished and starving, which is not, I believe, what the founding fathers had in mind. When ordinary working folks cannot earn enough to live on there is something deeply wrong which all the good efforts of the food pantry cannot solve.

• Freedom from fear of illness: Or the financial consequences of this. Even with medical insurance the costs of illness can be unpredictable and burdensome and without this they are catastrophic. Our country is the only industrialized country in the world without public health care. The citizens of 36 countries in Europe, 11 in the Americas, 18 in Asia and two in Australasia enjoy to different extents the freedom that we lack here. Singapore and Iceland enjoy the lowest infant mortality rates in the world due to their public health care systems. Over 100,000 preventable American deaths occur each year. One such in my country of origin would lead to public enquiry and high level resignations. FDR planned public health care as a follow up to other elements of the New Deal, but he died before it could be implemented; 60 years on, it’s way past time.

• Democracy: Freedom and democracy are inseparable partners in our cultural ethos, but it is useful sometimes to question what democracy means, and compare the answer with what we have here and now. Democracy’s standing definition is government of the people, by the people and for the people. The New York Times revealed on Nov. 15 that in the House at least we have Government for Genentech (a subsidiary of Roche Pharmaceuticals of Switzerland). More than a dozen lawmakers published statements in the Congressional Record that were written on behalf of Genentech; in total 42 members of Congress picked up and repeated at least some of the talking points fed in by the Swiss giant’s subsidiary.

This is not to pick on those lawmakers involved; they were merely following the system as is.

The old adage, “you dance with those who brung you,” applies here. It costs maybe $50 million to run for the Senate and this money is not going to come from ordinary working people or from you and me. If democracy means free and fair elections, $50 million is not free in anyone’s language (the John Conyers report on Ohio in 2004 showed compelling evidence that fair was still beyond our grasp). Until big money is out of the electoral system we cannot expect those in office to be beholden to the ordinary folk.

We have much to do to make this country of ours what the founders intended it should be, but the great ability of the U.S. is to make rapid and effective change when the will is there.

Let us provide that will, and share comment on progress in the pages of the Gazette over the coming 12 months, so that at Thanksgiving 2010 we can, both as the community of Martha’s Vineyard and the larger community of the U.S., have some real progress to be thankful for in the achievement of freedoms now beyond our reach.

Nick Mosey lives in Vineyard Haven.