Capitalism is the precondition of generosity.
By Kevin Williamson....The pope’s argument, fundamentally, is that we can have capitalism on the condition that we feed the poor. This is exactly backward: We can feed the poor if we have capitalism. To give away wealth presumes the existence of that wealth, whether it is an annual tithe or Jesus’ more radical stance of giving away all that one owns. Giving away all that you own does not do the poor an iota of good if you don’t have anything. You can’t spread the wealth without wealth.
Conservatives sometimes protest that the Left presents government as though it were Santa Claus, but Santa Claus, bless him, is a producer. He has a factory up there at the North Pole, full of highly skilled (and possibly undercompensated) labor. He has logistics problems — serious ones. He has production deadlines. The entire point of the Santa Claus myth — at least the animated Christmas-special God Bless America version of that myth — is that those toys aren’t going to make themselves, and they aren’t going to deliver themselves. Government cannot do the work of a captain of industry such as Santa Claus, because government creates nothing. More to the point, government cannot satisfy Jesus’ command that we feed the poor — it produces no food. It has no wealth of its own.
Government isn’t Santa. It’s the Grinch.
Think about it: The redistributionist impulse is driven by envy and bitterness. It is an economic position held, not accidentally, most strongly by people who cringe at the sight of a manger scene — by people who resent and suspect the very word “Christmas.” The redistributors are the people culturally inclined to abolishing Christmas from the public sphere, who will spend the solstice wailing in angst if a public-school choir should so much as hum “Away in a Manger,” never mind singing the verboten words “Little Lord Jesus.” And, in the Grinchiest fashion, they want to take your stuff.
...There is little, if any, virtue in giving gifts to the people we love. Giving gifts to those we love is like giving gifts to ourselves. There is still less virtue in taking what’s under somebody else’s Christmas tree and distributing it to your friends and allies while congratulating yourself on your compassion. To do so is unseemly. Pope Francis is quite right to argue that economic growth alone does not ensure the humane treatment of the poor and the vulnerable — where he is mistaken is that he assumes that there is another side in that argument. Nowhere in the classical liberal tradition, and certainly not in the Anglo-American liberal tradition, has the idea taken root that capitalism is a substitute for generosity. Capitalism is the precondition of generosity. If you want to feed the Lord’s sheep, you must begin by planting the fields.
2017 and the End of Ethics
Will the Obama-era hypocrisy continue when the next president takes office?
By Victor Davis Hanson...The result, in the Age of Obama, is a deeply rooted cynicism that works out something like the following: The president of the United States is now an iconic figure and thus cannot be held to the minimal standards of veracity demanded of other Americans. The press is an advocate of his agenda and picks and chooses which scandals can be half-heartedly pursued without endangering their shared vision.
How could the media possibly repair its sullied reputation without appearing abjectly hypocritical or artificially zealous? How can the next president resist assuming the extra-constitutional prerogatives of the current one?
We have three years before January 2017. If we are to have any credible press left at all, it has just 36 months to rediscover its ethics and professionalism — or more or less forfeit its integrity for a generation. The president too must either start respecting the Constitution or expect that his successors will follow in his footsteps in pressing their agendas by any means necessary — while always citing the Obama example. Will the next president simply drop the employer-mandate portion of Obamacare? And if he did, would the media point out that he was not faithfully executing the laws that had been enacted?
Because we are now right in the middle of this conundrum, Americans often fail to appreciate how low we’ve sunk — and how little time our president and press have to restore the institutions that they have so undermined for such paltry political advantage.
Planned Parenthood Releases 'Twelve Days of Contraception' Christmas Carol
By Dr Susan BerryStaff members of the Arizona affiliate of Planned Parenthood are celebrating the season by changing the lyrics of the traditional Christmas carol, “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” to accommodate the abortion industry.
Planned Parenthood Arizona says it "wants to wish everyone happy holidays and a wonderful 2014!" They add, "We hope you will enjoy this original song written by staff and performed by volunteers. And, if you want to know more about the different types of birth control mentioned in the song, visit www.ppaz.org."
Introducing "The Twelve Days of Contraception" or, as Planned Parenthood has named it, "The Twelve Days of Christmas (the contraceptive version)," where your true love will bestow upon you a box of Plan B, condoms, Depo-Provera shots, NuvaRings, birth control pills, dental dams, diaphragms, and other contraceptive goodies
The Light of Christmas
Christopher S Brownwell....You see, kids, if Christmas means something different to everyone, Christmas has no meaning at all.
To Griswold [National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation], the true meaning of Christmas was to bless his family with a pool. To Frank Shirley, it was to cancel Christmas bonuses and give out one-year subscriptions to the Jelly of the Month Club. To Margo and Todd, it was to avoid things that are dirty and messy and corny and clichéd. But these different meanings ultimately clashed.
Post-modernism doesn't believe in a fixed, absolute truth. Everyone defines his own "truth." Existentialism is about defining your own meaning of life through your own personal experiences. Pluralism has devolved into a personal philosophy comfortable with believing in contradictory truth claims.
Despite Griswold's postmodern, pluralistic, existential philosophy, Christmas has a fixed meaning. The message has been the same for 2,000 years. That message is that Light has come into the world to make a way for us to escape the darkness. "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it" (John 1:5).
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