God Bless Us Everyone

Nothing goes on in a vacuum:

If you enjoyed, in the last few days or hours, one of the many fine versions of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, then you should know something of its meaning, and how it relates to this day, when we celebrate the birth of a child that wasn't murdered in the womb by Planned Parenthood, or killed in its crib by Planned Parenthood's moral ancestor, King Herod.

Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol after the long, tedious, and pietistic era of the English Puritans had, THANKFULLY, ended.  The celebration of Christmas, suppressed during the English Commonwealth as undisguised papistry, had returned.  It was blooming in the land again.  But there were other equally noxious things afoot.  The teachings of Thomas Malthus, for example, were widely known and debated.  His erroneous and miscreantical teaching included that God had designed the world so that it was incapable to provide for its growing population, thereby guaranteeing the rise of calamities that disciplined man for his fallen condition.  Under the Malthusian view, the population increase among the poor was the object of scorn, derision, and a rail on the track to calamity.

Dickens embodied Malthusian ideas in Ebenezer Scrooge.  His disdain for humanity reeks Malthusian.  And it is from Malthusianism that Scrooge is converted after the visits of the Ghosts of Christmases Past, Present and Yet to Come.

One of my favorite scenes in the story finds Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Present at the home of Bob Cratchit, Scrooge's humble clerk.  Despite evident poverty that grinds, the family joyed to be together, eating their christmas goose, and rejoicing in life.  Tiny Tim, of course, figures mightily in the melting of Scrooge's malthusian mien.  After the dinner, and just before Bob Cratchit induces his family to drink Scrooge's health as the founder of the feast, there is an exchange between Scrooge and the Spirit:

At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the hearth swept, and the fire made up. The compound in the jug being tasted, and considered perfect, apples and oranges were put upon the table, and a shovel-full of chestnuts on the fire. Then all the Cratchit family drew round the hearth, in what Bob Cratchit called a circle, meaning half a one; and at Bob Cratchit's elbow stood the family display of glass. Two tumblers, and a custard-cup without a handle.

These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, as well as golden goblets would have done; and Bob served it out with beaming looks, while the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and cracked noisily. Then Bob proposed:

`A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us.'

Which all the family re-echoed.

`God bless us every one.' said Tiny Tim, the last of all.

He sat very close to his father's side upon his little stool.

Bob held his withered little hand in his, as if he loved the child, and wished to keep him by his side, and dreaded that he might be taken from him.

`Spirit,' said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt before, `tell me if Tiny Tim will live.'

`I see a vacant seat,' replied the Ghost, `in the poor chimney-corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved. If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, the child will die.'

`No, no,' said Scrooge. `Oh, no, kind Spirit. say he will be spared.'

`If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none other of my race,' returned the Ghost, `will find him here. What then. If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.'

Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words quoted by the Spirit, and was overcome with penitence and grief. `Man,' said the Ghost, `if man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus is, and Where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die. It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man's child. Oh God. to hear the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust.'

Scrooge bent before the Ghost's rebuke, and trembling cast his eyes upon the ground. 

Oh God.  To hear the insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust.

Oh God.

To hear the Malthusians eating beef pronouncing on the too many children of Appalachia. That jab is for the moron, Pat Robertson, who referred to the children of Appalachia as ragamuffins, while he bemoaned the NOT ENOUGH birth control among the population of Appalachia. 

Dickens clearly gets the better on Malthus, and his cranky TV contemporary, Pat Robertson, just as Cratchit, though living in low estate, got the better on his employer, Scrooge, because he lived in love, and surrounded himself with family.

Former ACLJ Employee: Robertson's Ragamuffin Remark Evinces A Godless Stupidity

Sometimes you just have to "man up."  Sometimes, "manning up" means apologizing for being stunningly, amazingly, incredibly stupid.

Pat Robertson just has to apologize for his offensively stupid and amazingly idiotic remarks this past week.

On the 700 Club program on July 31, Pat Robertson spoke about poverty and contraception.  He touted the importance of birth control to population control as an important affect of humanity.  Ben Johnson, at LifeSiteNews has reported:

On today's episode of the 700 Club, a woman asked whether the use of birth control is sinful, something about which Catholics and Protestants disagree.

When Robertson's co-host, Wendy Griffith, said not all families could afford to have multiple children, Robertson replied, “That's the big problem, especially in Appalachia. They don't know about birth control. They just keep having babies.”

“You see a string of all these little ragamuffins, and not enough food to eat and so on,” he said, “and it's desperate poverty.”

“I'd say yes, birth control is absolutely an important thing for people to use,” he added, saying contraception “is a very important part of humanity.”

Robertson said that “birth control in the Protestant churches has always been permitted,” because they “feel that the care and rearing of children is a tremendous obligation.”

Robertson heartlessly concludes that contraception had an laudable value in the moral hierarchy.  But why?  Well, and there's not polishing this immoral apple of thought:  because contraception can suppress the number of Appalachian ragamuffins.  Robertson's comments reveal a chasmic distance between the heart of Robertson and the heart of God.

It wants noting, as well, that Robertson's assertions are flawed for other reasons.

First, the "Protestant" Church has not always, or uniformly, approved of contraception. 

Second, Natural Family Planning is not a violation of the Old Testament.  It certainly does not replicate the sin of Onan.  Nor does it equate with the levitical prohibition on sexual relations during menstruation, as Robertson implied.

Robertson's remarks are triply offensive. 

First, for their historic dishonesty -- the Protestant Church has not always approved of birth control (unless "always" is limited to mean "as long as Pat has been around."  Second, for their mischaracterization of Natural Family Planning -- baselessly portraying Natural Family Planning as some sort of Catholic plot to drive men and women into a lifetime of menstrual intercourse.  Third, for their heartless inhumanity -- making out the sons and daughters of impoverished Appalachia as drags and anchors on their families.

That last offense and sin strikes harder and cries louder:  it is so distant from the love of Christ, who rebuked His own disciples and warned them, "Suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven."  Indeed, Robertson seems to have drunk a very old elixir of Malthusian kool aid.  For me, when malthusians burp their crap onto the social stage, I find no more soothing salve than a short passage of Dickens that eviscerates their heartless spiel:

``Spirit,'' said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt before, ``tell me if Tiny Tim will live.''

``I see a vacant seat,'' replied the Ghost, ``in the poor chimney-corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved. If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, the child will die.''

``No, no,'' said Scrooge. ``Oh, no, kind Spirit! say he will be spared.''

``If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none other of my race,'' returned the Ghost, ``will find him here. What then? If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.''

Scrooge hung his head to hear his wn words quoted by the Spirit, and was overcome with penitence and grief.  

``Man,'' said the Ghost, ``if man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus is, and Where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man's child. Oh God! to hear the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust!''

Scrooge bent before the Ghost's rebuke, and trembling cast his eyes upon the ground. 

It remains to be seen whether Robertson will have the humility to "bend before the Ghost's rebuke, and trembling cast his eyes upon the ground."