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Sunday, July 02, 2006
Fran’s Sunday Ruminations: Christ v. Miniluv
I have no idea what today's English teachers in the public high schools assign their students as reading, but I'd bet a pretty that few recent high school graduates have read George Orwell's 1984. For me and my contemporaries, it was required eleventh-grade material, along with Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and William Golding's Lord Of The Flies.
The three books make a single, inexorable point about power, one that had already been made rather more concisely by John Edward Emmerich Dalberg, better known to history as Lord Acton: It corrupts. Granted, the forms in which power manifests itself in those novels varied greatly, but in all three cases, those who had achieved hegemony over the lives of others proved incapable of restraining themselves, whether out of immaturity, a conviction of superior wisdom, or simple power lust.
From a dramatic standpoint, the standout novel of the three is 1984. Orwell, one of the master stylists of his day, spares us nothing. He depicts a totalitarian England whose State is unwilling to allow its subjects to dissent from its dictates even in the confines of their heads:
"The Party is not interested in the overt act: the thought is all we care about. We do not merely destroy our enemies, we change them."..."We are different from the persecutors of the past. We are not content with negative obedience, nor with the most abject submission. When finally you surrender to us, it must be of your own free will. We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us: so long as he resists us we never destroy him. We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him. We burn all evil and all illusion out of him; we bring him over to our side, not in appearance, but genuinely, heart and soul. We make him one of ourselves before we kill him. It is intolerable to us that an erroneous thought should exist anywhere in the world, however secret and powerless it may be. Even in the instant of death we cannot permit any deviation. In the old days the heretic walked to the stake still a heretic, proclaiming his heresy, exulting in it. Even the victim of the Russian purges could carry rebellion locked up in his skull as he walked down the passage waiting for the bullet."
"But we make the brain perfect before we blow it out. The command of the old despotisms was 'Thou shalt not'. The command of the totalitarians was 'Thou shalt'. Our command is 'Thou art'. No one whom we bring to this place ever stands out against us. Everyone is washed clean. Do not imagine that you will save yourself, Winston, however completely you surrender to us. No one who has once gone astray is ever spared. And even if we chose to let you live out the natural term of your life, still you would never escape from us. What happens to you here is for ever. Understand that in advance. We shall crush you down to the point from which there is no coming back. Things will happen to you from which you could not recover, if you lived a thousand years. Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling. Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you with ourselves."
Those words were spoken by Inner Party functionary O'Brien to helpless captive Winston Smith, who had made the mistake of trusting him. The setting was a torture chamber in the Ministry of Love, or Miniluv, the Party's police apparatus.
In real history, no State has yet approached the all-pervasive State of 1984, though a couple have tried. No State has achieved the Party's degree of success at remolding individuals so completely that they become incapable of an unorthodox thought. But every State, without exception, has erected its own version of the Ministry of Love.
What's that? You don't believe it? Well, of course you don't! Like as not, you bought into Miniluv's premises so long ago that you don't remember the process. I'm here to refresh your memory.
At this time, a greater fraction of Americans' tax money goes toward "charitable" programs than toward the Departments of Defense, State, and Justice combined. Anyone who refuses to "contribute" to this "investment in our people" is put into a reinforced concrete box watched over by guards armed with automatic weapons, to keep company with friendly sorts unusually concerned with one's anal anatomy. In other words: like it or not, pay up or suffer horribly.
The rationale for these exactions is that only the State can truly insure that the "human needs" of the "underprivileged" will be looked after in an adequate fashion. Or, as President Bush, a generally admirable man, put it, "When somebody hurts, government has got to move." Forgive him, Father, for he knew not what he said.
This isn't charity as a Christian understands it. This is armed robbery and worse, for a "private" thief makes no pretense about altruistic motives. The social contract, insofar as we have one, does not extend to the seizure of nearly a trillion dollars a year from persons who have no recourse and no effective way to protest, regardless of the money's ostensible employment.
Christ commanded us to practice charity toward one another as individuals, not as subjects of a rapacious State. The "charitable" action of the State undermines true Christian charity in at least five ways:
- It deprives us of the means.
- It deprives us of the opportunity to exercise our judgment about the needs of others.
- It corrupts officialdom, by creating an incentive to expand human poverty.
- It corrupts the beneficiaries of the State's transfer programs, by addicting them to no-strings-attached giveaways awarded without oversight or discipline.
- It stimulates the growth of organizations and institutions looking for a piece of the action, as lobbyists, vendors, and activists.
But to the promoters of the Ministry of Love, these observations are heresies deserving of death. At the very least, they will subject the utterer to the vilest of denunciations and imprecations. I've been on the receiving end of such; perhaps you have, too.
A Christian, a remote extension of Christ's ministry among men, is commanded to practice Christian charity. Many of us give it an honest effort. No small number of us reel back from it in disgust at the attitude of entitlement that State "charity" has fostered among the "needy." American "poor" -- "the richest poor people in the world" -- are all too often heard to complain about not being able to afford iPods, designer clothes, and wide-screen TVs. The revulsion of the generously inclined is inevitable.
It can no longer be sincerely maintained that this is a good arrangement. In its advanced forms, it's disassembling the economies of the largest nations in Europe and turning their populations into welfare addicts.
Many a sincere Christian would like nothing better than to pretend that if he and his fellows would simply do unto others as they would have others do unto them, State welfarism would wither away and its noxious effects would fade. But Miniluv will have none of it. Every development of any sort, in any direction or degree, is employed as a rationale for extending the welfare state. An increase in private charitable giving merely "proves the need." A decrease, of course, "leaves important needs unmet." When the country suffers a recession, clearly the number of sufferers has increased, which calls for State aid. But when the economy is booming, then equally clearly, the "resources" with which to reach the as-yet-unreached have become available; besides, taxing them away from us will help to "prevent inflation."
Use faith-oriented institutions to alleviate genuine suffering? Don't be silly. How could we trust them? They'd try to talk religion to their supplicants, instead of just handing them cash.
Our Ministry of Love is the implacable enemy of any alternatives to itself. It has no direct control of police power...yet. But it has been remarkably successful at starving out those alternatives, and at defaming the ones that persevere despite all. A bit like the "public" schools, Miniluv's most ardent promoters, which do their best to bend the minds of the young to Miniluv's preferred shape.
In the grandest irony of all, a hefty majority of Christian preachers and denominations have aligned themselves with the social justice / welfare State political movement. They endorse welfarist candidates for office; they denounce political figures who present evidence that State "charity" is detrimental to all concerned, most especially its supposed beneficiaries. These persons and institutions, whose mandate is to spread the Christian gospel and advance the work of Christ on Earth, have adopted stances that are the exact reverse of the stances implied by that mandate -- and they're self-righteously proud of it.
My own Church is not blameless, though its record is less spotted than many others.
Yes, this is a rant. You probably didn't expect it from me on a Sunday morning. My apologies. But I've grown very tired of the accusations of "stinginess" and "hard-heartedness" from the Left because its beloved State's redistributionist programs aren't bulging with cash.
The heart of the conflict came home to me this morning at Mass. Our celebrant, a priest born and raised in the Philippines who arrived in our parish only two weeks ago, spoke most movingly about the Christian call to love one another, to exert the healing power of Christ's message, which acts upon both body and soul. He knew whereof he spoke. He'd spent eleven years as a hospital chaplain in his native land, ministering to the impoverished sick, and nine years ministering to a flock in the arctic reaches of Canada. He had confronted true suffering, true need. He had seen Christians unimpeded by the State, actually reaching out to the genuinely wretched and oppressed. I couldn't help but wonder what he'll make of America, its "poor," and its Ministry of Love.
May God bless and keep you all. And pray for me, please. I have such a need of it.
Comments
On going dear friend.
Posted by on 07/02/2006 at 01:29 PMIt’s curious how the Left seems to want to impose virtuous actions, while refusing to engage in virtuous behaviour. That in itself is the dichotomy that exposes the Left in my eyes.
Posted by on 07/02/2006 at 03:32 PMYou shall know the truth and the truth shall make you mad, Amen.
Posted by on 07/02/2006 at 06:09 PM
