Last fall, my family and I stood looking at Plymouth Rock next to the harbor where our early founding fathers disembarked almost four hundred years ago. Little of the Rock remains today, and the tiny ship they called home has been replaced by a replica, but the freedoms they set out to find are strong and flourishing. For this, we can be thankful.

Not far from the Rock is Plimoth Plantation. The first homes of the Pilgrims have been re-created there and populated with actors who convincingly play the parts of the early settlers. They wear the same rough, homespun clothes, speak the same language, cook the same food and generally go about living on their plantation the same way those settlers did long ago.

Visitors are free to roam the plantation and visit what passed for early homes. When you stick your head inside these thatched-roof structures with dirt floors and open fire in a corner and think about these primitive living conditions, you have to marvel at the settlers’ determination to survive and succeed in their quest for religious and political freedom. That they did only serves to underscore how lucky we are as a nation.

We may not have a perfect political system. Nor do we have a perfect economic system—an economy can be efficient or just, not both. But what we do have is the most stable political environment and economy the world has ever known, with our rights protected by an enduring Constitution and body of law drawn up by the great-great-grandchildren of these early settlers. For that, we can be thankful.

A number of years ago, I was working with several cohorts from Switzerland on a business venture. They asked me the simple question, “How long will it take to form a corporation?” I explained that as soon as we could have an attorney draw up the papers and register our corporation with the State of Colorado, we were in business. “It could be done that afternoon if I could pry our attorney off the golf course,” I reported.

They were surprised we could start a business that quickly, because in their country, they do not have the freedom to start a business enterprise without going through a number of layers of government approval, a process that could take up to a year. We take for granted the fact that we have entrepreneurial rights, almost unfettered by bureaucratic red tape, to take our ideas for legal commerce and make them a reality. We are often constrained only by market forces and our own creativity. Under a similar lack of boundaries, the early Pilgrims quickly became entrepreneurs and began the capitalist system that is the envy of the rest of the planet. For that, too, we can give thanks.

Outside the walls of Plimoth Plantation sits a tiny Wampanoag Indian village. These Native Americans shared their land with the strange new visitors. They taught them how to hunt on land and in the sea. They taught them how to cultivate and grow the food they would need to survive.

The descendents of these Native Americans still exist today—as a matter of fact, they own a good deal of the real estate known as Martha’s Vineyard. A number of them were my family’s hosts in their village, where they shared their culture and way of living with Plantation visitors. Without their shared survival secrets, the seeds of our great nation would have had a difficult time sprouting. For this as well, we can be thankful.

I hope that the tradition we call Thanksgiving recognizes the efforts put forth by a small group of people a long time ago to give us all that we have and enjoy today. Keep that in mind, as I will, when you sit down to dinner . . . and be thankful.