Over the past two days Charles P. Pierce has looked at Dickens classic and measured where we are today against the moral imperatives in the story. He's rolled it out in three posts: First, Second, and Third. Here's a key section from Part 2:
But this is the argument in season over these holidays. That the poor must suffer in order to be redeemed. That hunger is a moral test to be endured. That only through pain can we hope. What doesn't destroy you, etc. Santa Nietzsche is coming to town. The idea that we should -- hell, that we must -- act out of charity for each other through the institutions of self-government is lost in the din of a frontal system of moral thunderation aimed at everyone except the person who is out there thunderatin' on behalf of personal-trainer Jesus, who wants us to work, work, work on that core. That was the way that government operated once before; the specific institutions that Scrooge mentions, and with which the Spirit eventually reproaches him in his own words - the prisons, the union workhouses, the treadmill, and the Poor Laws - were all government institutions based on the same basic philosophy that drives the debate over the food stamp program today.(We even seem to be going back to debtor's prisons.) We have speeches on self-reliance given by government employees to people who increasingly have only themselves on whom to rely, day after grinding day. It is a way to keep the poor from having a voice in their own self-government. It is a way to keep the wrath of the boy at bay. There will be a reckoning, one way or another. But it can be staved off by platitudes, and by verses from Scripture wrenched from the obvious context of the Gospels. The sepulchers brighten whitely while the bones inside grow increasingly corrupt. This is what this Congress believes, as it goes home proud of itself and its members dress themselves to sing the midnight carols with no conscience sounding in counterpoint, and this is Christmas in America, and it is the year of our Lord, 2013.
As with Dickens, Pierce points out that the world we live in is not some inevitable result of imponderable natural forces in collision; it is the result of choices made and not made, acknowledged and covertly. As with Scrooge we can close our eyes to the things we do not wish to see, or we can look, learn, and choose to do differently.
Pierce's series is a powerful indictment, even more so because of the parallels with Dickens tale of meanness in spirit corroding all it touches, one that resonates even more strongly today. Yet like Dickens, Pierce also offers a chance for redemption in the third part of his series. Read the Whole Thing, starting here.
Merry Christmas to all, the blessings of the season upon those of good will and those most in need. May we work to carry them through the entire year, keeping the Spirit of Christmas not just in our hearts but in our works as well.