Since we're only on the sixth day of Christmas (the wife and I will observe the season until Twelfth Night), I thought I'd post a line or two from Dickens's "The Chimes." Although "A Christmas Carol" and "The Cricket on the Hearth" are better-known, I believe "The Chimes" is more timely and relevant. The attitudes expressed by Dickens's "Mr. Filer" and "Alderman Cute"(which is to say, the attitudes of the self-proclaimed elite towards their presumed "inferiors"), hasn't changed a bit.
"A man may live to be as old as Methuselah," said Mr. Filer, "and may labour all his life for the benefit of such people as those: and may heap up facts and figures, facts on figures, facts on figures, mountains and mountains high and dry; and he can no more persuade 'em that they have no right or business to be married, than he can hope to persuade 'em that they have no earthly business to be born. And that we know they haven't. We reduced it to a mathematical certainty long ago!"
Sounds rather like our "liberal" friend Ted Turner, doesn't it?
And lest anyone think I'm "bashing" the globalist left to the exclusion of their equally inhuman (and inhumane) brethren on the so-called "right": Ponder the following excerpt, which might have dropped from the lips of any ultra-Confucian neocon:
"Now I give you fair warning, that I have made up my mind to Put distressed wives Down. So, don't be brought before me. You'll have children -- boys. Those boys will grow up bad, of course, and run wild in the streets, without shoes and stockings. Mind, my young friend! I'll convict 'em summarily, every one, for I am determined to Put boys without shoes and stockings Down. Perhaps your husband will die young (most likely) and leave you with a baby. Then you'll be turned out of doors, and wander up and down the streets. Now, don't wander near me, my dear, for I am resolved to Put all wandering mothers Down. All young mothers of all sorts and kinds, it's my determination to Put Down. Don't think to plead an illness as an excuse with me; or babies as an excuse with me; for all sick persons and young children (I hope you know, the church-service, but I'm afraid not) I am determined to Put Down. And if you attempt, desperately, and ungratefully, and impiously, and fraudulently attempt, to drown or hang yourself, I'll have no pity on you, for I have made up my mind to Put all suicide Down!"
Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year.
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