Thanksgiving is a welcome time for us to count our blessings — loving family members, loyal friends, a bountiful feast, a free country. None should ever be taken for granted. As we sit down to eat far more and better food than much of the world enjoys, we shouldn’t let our dinner table conversations focus on what separates us but what unites us. And we should reaffirm our commitment not just to be passive recipients of a free democracy but active supporters of it.

All around us, there are growing signs of government wanting to exclude we, the people, from its operation. Much as some will say this is the fault of the liberals or the fault of the conservatives, both are equally guilty.

We no longer get to listen to public safety broadcasts on police scanners — a right ripped away from us not so coincidentally, we believe, on the exact same day that disgraced police chief Gideon Cody returned to face criminal charges for allegedly trying to destroy evidence related to his disavowed raid on our newsroom and two homes.

We increasingly see law enforcement officers, especially in the sheriff’s office and highway patrol, delaying or censoring material from official reports that, by law, are open public documents.

We stand watch, unable to act, as the number of secret, closed door sessions of governmental bodies increases precipitously. In Illinois, as in many other places, state law requires that each closed session be recorded so a judge can listen and decide whether it legally qualified for closure. The result has been massively fewer closed-door sessions, leading even a blind squirrel to the acorn of truth that many of these sessions may be improperly secret.

We even see a local prosecutors granting, without explanation on his way our the door, overly generous pleas to gravely serious felons.

The latest assault on the free flow of information comes from President-elect Donald Trump, pleading in social media posts — bedazzled with exclamation points but totally lacking in reasons — that Congress should block codification of laws that allow journalists to obtain information from confidential sources.

The once and future president apparently believes that all those talking heads on cable news channels at night are actually journalists, not entertainers, and he’s tarring the rest of us with a stick that he should be using — often deservedly — on cable show hosts who are little more than quasi-journalistic hucksters.

Last year’s raid on our newsroom was all about how we obtained certain information. It turns out we legally had obtained it — and at least some of the police knew this and questioned both Sheriff Jeff Soyez and Cody whether raiding a newsroom was legal, which it almost never is. This is secret information only now beginning to come out, some of it gagged by a court order prohibiting release of results of investigations into local officials’ handling of the raid.

The most interesting thing about the raid is that true and accurate information we obtained never was acted upon even though it clearly proved that someone other than us had violated the law. Raiders were more concerned about who got the information than whether what should have been done with it actually was done. Even after worldwide attention spawned by the case, such action never appears to have been considered.

Facts are not good or bad. What you do with them may be, but facts in and of themselves are neutral. We’re thankful that our democracy continues to allow us to report them, so the public has an opportunity to make informed decisions. But we’re a little tired of elected officials acting as if they were the rats or children of Hamlin, following the Pied Piper off a cliff simply because Donald Trump posts something.

To our legislators, congressmen, senators, and others who were conspicuous by their absence in failing to reaffirm their support for us and the First Amendment after last year’s raid: You now have a chance to make up for your silence by politely declining to follow Trump’s advice and instead consider the merits of shield laws that guarantee the free flow of information that democracy depends upon. The alternative is to stifle openness by shoving it into top-secret boxes stashed in some Mar-a-Lago suite.

— Eric Meyer