Scrooge vs. The Hunger Games
The View from the Middle
From the beginning of our country, our founders struggled over the proposed size of our government, especially our federal Government. They understood the need for some government to protect our citizens from selfish, unscrupulous people who might abuse their power and they wanted to provide for our national defense. They also feared the bondage which would accompany an all-powerful, despotic government that would strip away the freedoms and rights of our citizens and replace them with forced compliance.
There are two books/movies that will help illustrate the perils of erring on either extreme side of this ideological spectrum – too little or too much government. The first is the classic novel written by Charles Dickens called A Christmas Carol. In order to deliver this story of eventual redemption, Dickens created the selfish, greedy character called Mr. Scrooge. Scrooge is the personification of what a country could look like without empathy for and protection of all of its citizens. The disparity between the rich and poor would become exaggerated and the disadvantaged would be frustrated by their inability to affect change.
If you haven’t watched my video on “The Wealth Gap” you should do so immediately. I’ve pasted a link to that video below. Just copy this link and paste it into your browser to view.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMFiGQ55qjw
While I still think this is the greatest country in the world, you will see that I believe we should be paying some attention to the gap between our have’s and have not’s. There are also some mostly private sector solutions to this problem in my video so I really encourage to take a look.
The second book/movie, The Hunger Games, is a classic tale of government gone wrong or government gone too big. The story begins after the people have given away all their rights or had them stripped away by a now gluttonous, pampered and arrogant “Capitol”. The citizens of Panem have traded in their rights for a guaranteed life of bare existence and servitude. I’m sure that’s not how the deal was initially described by “The Capitol”. The promise probably went something like this. The country and you personally are doomed, but if you give us (the government) complete control of your lives, we will guarantee a utopian existence.
Yes, fearmongering accompanied by vague, even outrageous promises can convince people to do almost anything, which brings me to the Green New Deal. If you haven’t read it, I encourage you to do so. It is only about 13 pages long in its double space, wide margin format. It could be reduced to a typical newspaper article if a little efficiency of space were applied.
I only bring it up because it is an excellent example of the other end of the extreme ideological spectrum. Its first goal is scare the living (you know what) out of everyone. Of course, that’s no problem for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC). She’s already predicted that the world will end in 12 years, so put a stop order on those “Class of 2031” T-shirts. Next, AOC promises to solve every issue in our country from the wage gap to racism by retrofitting every building in the country, totally eliminating air travel and completely decimating our current energy industry in the next 10 years. She also suggests that The United States should finance this fantasy (sorry, I couldn’t help myself) globally without suggesting a cost to any of this anywhere in the document. This is the very definition of “over promise and under deliver”. Her motto is, “Scare, Promise, Tax, Repeat”.
As you all know, I’m a global warming agnostic. I agree with Al Gore’s climatologist who said years ago that our world’s climate is so complex that it is impossible to predict. We can barely forecast if it’s going to rain tomorrow, let alone predict what the globe’s temperature average will be almost 100 years from now. Even MIT estimated that if all the promises were kept by all the countries in the Paris Climate Accord, it would only reduce the world’s temperature by one degree Celsius by 2100. And let’s face it, that’s not a promise but a forecast. So much can change between now and then it’s almost worthless to even go through that exercise.
Now, I’m also not in favor of trashing the environment. We are stewards of God’s world and we should be doing all we can to protect it, short of committing economic, social and physical suicide. We should be conserving our resources and developing renewable energy sources and applying advances when they are ready, but we shouldn’t give up our freedom to fearmongers today who promise utopia in the future.
We don’t want to be Scrooge or Katniss Everdeen. We will never find truth or well-being in the extreme elements of our political ideologies. If we are to survive and even prosper, we must compromise and find solutions in the middle as our Founding Fathers did at the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Their accommodations to each other delivered a document and structure that has guided us for over 230 years and established the greatest country in the world today and maybe in all of history. Don’t abandon that approach now. Throw out the extremists in Washington and replace them with patriots who care more about the country than they do about their own political futures. Oh, and support term limits in Congress. It may be our last, best hope to save ourselves from ourselves.
Someone please sit the liberals down and make them read the classic book 1984. It’s quite instructive on totalitarianism. Hunger Games brings me to my knees in prayer for our country. Great article Kevin.
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As usual...good insight and comentary. I join Brenda in prayer...come Holy Spirit!
ReplyDeleteReading through this commentary reminds me of some lessons in history. The Roman Empire tried many iterations upon which to build itself. Each one proved insufficient to sustain the culture amidst the growing tensions within society - whether it was the polis, the elite, the Greco-Roman gods, Ceasar, and finally Ceasar as god...when Ceasar Augustus's father was declared by the senate to have been a god, making Ceasar Augustus into "son of god". Like a bridge each iteration was insufficient in strength to sustain the moral corruption and apathy which ate away at the foundation of the nation. Notice that the final attempt was to make Ceasar god. It was an attempt to obtain a single point of reference by which to keep the nation unified. It was as Francis Schaeffer calls a tyranny avowed. It was a voluntary submission to have an single absolute ruler in order to mitigate the growing problems in society, the economic issues and the moral corruption. Rome fell from the inside out. Why is this relevant? The Hunger Games is an amalgamation of the Greco-Roman culture wrapped in modern clothing. As a second confirming history lesson, France went through the same. The Saint Bartholemew Day's massacre they murdered 500,000 Christians, kicked the rest out in the next thirty days, crowned reason queen, and rejected every moral basis for the Rouseau ideal that all men should be absolutely free if they refuse to be free they should be forced to be free. Robspierre then led the nation into the infamous reign of terror...where everyone did what they wanted and France collapsed as a world power. What was the solution? Napoleon. He arose with military might and set the nation back in order while declaring himself emperor. Net relativism led to chaos and anarchy which opened the door to the people accepting a totalitarian leader (regardless of his position) in the hope they could survive. The united states is moving along the same path. it is a matter of time. We have rejected the first principles of our founding documents, we have rejected the Bible as the moral standard upon which our laws are based (and as Noah Webster said...when this happens the nation will collapse), and now we live with worldview confusion where everything is true if you want it to be even if it contradicts and even it if doesn't relate to reality. The path is uncanny. It is following the same pattern of every nation which walks this path into relativism. In the end it leads to chaos which then must be controlled by military might. I believe we will see that people will be willing to accept less than the best if they believe it will ensure their individual happiness... the sad part is that it will most likely happen without a moral compass to indicate whether the one or the who is in power is good or bad. All it take is a moral flip of the coin and all the military might which defends us can be used to subjugate and enslave. We must stand up to speak truth. We must pray for our nation. We must engage in the debate. We must help people understand where we are headed and what the solutions are.
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