Thursday, December 23, 2010

‘Tis the season ... to be sanctimonious

It’s Christmas and Peter Foster reflects on those annoying, self-righteous scolds intent on sucking the joy out of the season:

It is a time for tolerance. I have to confess, however, that I have a problem being tolerant with one group that tends to surface around Christmas: the no-cakes-and-ale brigade, who invariably castigate shallow materialism and berate us for daring to be happy amidst so much global wretchedness.
Two groaning examples have appeared recently — ... I shall not use the full names of the authors. Let’s just call them Jerry and Larry.
Jerry and Larry want to take all the joy out of Christmas, not just by nagging us for buying too much “stuff,” and for the fact that there are poor people about, but by thrusting their own conspicuous virtue down our chimneys.

Jerry wrote a piece with the product warning headline “Consumer Overload,” in which he bemoaned the volume of product fliers in his mailbox, but also let us know that he sponsors a 12-year-old Nicaraguan boy.
... instead of seriously examining the roots of poverty, Jerry wants to indulge his lack of understanding by guilt-tripping the rest of us....
[But] Jerry’s moral self-inflation is as a mere balloon when set against Larry’s towering blimp.
... Larry wants a lot more Communist Manifesto in our lives, or, as it is now called, “social justice.”
One cannot argue with Larry that charity is a great way to feel “valued and connected,” but he doesn’t seem to have grasped that there is a big difference between giving of your own time and money, and extorting the time and money of others.
Good one, Peter! Made my day :-)

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Eat, drink, and be merry, buy whatever your bankroll will allow. Wallow in the joy of the season and give the killjoys of the world the old rigid digit; and, above all, do not let these joyless misanthropes rain on your parade.

JR said...

Amen! :)

harebell said...

it's interesting watching the right holding two opposing views in their heads at the same time.

Damn lefties attacking christmas because they don't want to acknowledge christ and all he stood for. They want to replace it with paries hedonism and material things.
And
Damn lefties criticising us for daring to have fun indulging in excesses of everything.

If you like a party you're a corrupting influence and forgetting about the true message of xmas. If you remember the true message of xmas, then you're a self=loathing socialist anti-capitalist.

Hardly coherent.

Byrddydd Gaeaf hapus.

JR said...

Well, hairball, there is no contradiction. First, "the right" aren't necessarily Christian and vice versa. Second, in any case there's no reason Christians can't or shouldn't celebrate the true meaning of Christmas with charitable good works, etc and enjoy their material good fortune. Foster makes clear that what the right objects to is the leftist penchant for promoting "charity" using other people's money while crowing about their own moral superiority.

Anonymous said...

If there's no God, if death is the end, if no one has to give an account for their life, if everything is forgotten and lost upon death, then what is the point of living? Then who is anyone to tell me I shouldn't kill myself or do evil things while I'm alive? Why is anything "wrong" if death is the end of all things? If the meaning of life is my decision, then why should I give a crap what other people think if I believe the meaning of life is to do what makes me happy - no matter what activity makes me happy (perhaps torturing others), even if people don't like it? And if right and wrong is a matter of personal choice, then why can't I personally reject your beliefs about morality? In other words, who are you to tell me that evil is wrong?

But of course God exists. Ever watch frost form on a window?

JR said...

'Ever watch frost form on a window?'

... or contemplate the mysteries of quantum physics - like Richard Feynman who said: "I think I can safely say that no one understands quantum mechanics."