A Christmas Wish
December 23, 2024
Three wise men traveled a long way following a strange star, to a place they had never been, to offer gifts to a newborn, full of faith in the promise this baby would bring to the world. It’s a story told over and over, and the foundation of the many nativity scenes set up beside our country roads at this time of year.
Bearing witness, through our simple existence, expressing love in the best way we know how, is especially important to Christians. In expressing love, we must forgive our enemies. If you think that’s tough, Christians have more to do. We are advised as follows:
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.
As an American with a life invested in love of country, inculcated with America’s celebration of liberty, and its founding value of freedom of speech and thought, Christmas for me is as much an intellectual challenge as it is a spiritual one.
I wonder if my love of liberty and exercise of free speech is more like a nativity scene than the real thing. I wonder if my Christianity is a cultural accommodation, rather than a commitment.
I cannot forgive the monsters among us, and I find very much to despise in our government, at so many levels. I have always heard, hate the sin, not the sinner, but even in local government, the sins of arrogance and greed and self-righteousness infect even the lowliest of bureaucrats.
Joe Biden’s staff released a massive list of pardons and clemencies, including one for the former Dixon, Illinois comptroller, Rita Crundwell, who embezzled $53 Million from the town’s taxpayers until an underling asked just the right question. When they liquidated Rita’s assets, only a tiny portion of the debt was recovered. Crundwell is the epitome of so many small town and big city bureaucrats, who use unelected power over the public checkbook to enrich themselves, without regret.
The clemency list did not include a single pardon for any whistleblowers or truthtellers imprisoned by the USG in the past 20 years. It included nothing for thousands of people rounded up through FBI and NSA geofencing for being in DC, or knowing someone who was, on January 6th, 2021. Crimes against the state are never forgiven, crimes by the state against humanity and morality are buried and forgotten.
There is talk, in this forgiveness season, of pre-emptive pardons for – you guessed it – a number of other rotten and corrupt government bureaucrats and suspected criminals, like Tony Fauci and members of Congress.
The national security state has wasted trillions of dollars to “defend” this country. It used every penny of it to pursue war, pimp out proxies, drain military storehouses, and produce offensive weapons with decades old technology, aimed at fighting another war just like the last one we prevailed in – a war that the Russians ended with 27 million lives sacrificed, not Truman and his unwarranted and cold blooded atom bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
We disparage the Department of Education, which since its establishment in 1979 has created tens of millions of college loan debt serfs, promoted everything but actual learning and achievement in public colleges, and intently supervised the steady collapse of academic performance in public K-12.
Yet, the DoD since 1949 has damaged our defense a hundredfold. It has gutted the US ability to defend our own borders, because our top leadership is brain-dead, approving Pentagon spending for a global domination fantasy that lets the defense industry tell the Pentagon what it wants to build, rather than the other way around. As a result, we get massive and inflexible programs, with ever-changing requirement add-ons, nightmarish logistical tails, and outrageous cost. The F-35 can’t fly in bad weather, is unreliable in good weather, expensive to maintain, unaffordable for the US, and desired by nobody outside of our beholden allies. The F-35 “cooling crisis” would be hilarious if it wasn’t entirely typical.
A Christmas present to the nation may be the DOGE. But increasing the efficiency of “what government does” is no cure for eliminating all that it does that is misguided, corrupt, and wrong. Let’s hope our gift from Musk and Ramaswamy doesn’t make our government more efficiently evil and stupid.
As we consider the season, and the story of the three wise men, we think about the town of Bethlehem, just 46 miles from Gaza City. Today, the Israeli cleansing of Gaza is approaching its objective. The genocide, with the forced removal of the population and destruction of every man-made indication of the lives of Gazans there, is nearing completion. This reality is hard for any American to watch, especially those who understand that this ongoing genocide is US policy, US-funded and -armed, in service to a US vision of global primacy and an unarticulated reordering of that part of the world. Better for Americans to avert their gaze.
If one were to follow a star, and get too close to the new Netzarim Corridor that cuts off the northern third of Gaza, one would be shot on sight by IDF snipers, even as herding the remaining several hundreds of thousands of starving, thirsty and sick southward is Israel’s objective. The technology of war is modern, but the hatred and covetousness of a state seeking Lebensraum is devilishly ancient.
Will
the Israeli expansion and Palestinian extermination project lead to
another trade link to compete with those being built and planned by the
BRICs nations and others? Something like a Ben Gurion Canal, cutting right across Gaza along the Netzarim Corridor? Greater fantasies of Israel-occupied-Washington and Washington-occupied-Israel have already found their footing, and funding.
To know what we should do as Christians, at Christmas and every day of every year, isn’t easy. We get spiritual credit for humility, meekness, mercy and forgiveness. We mourn the evil in the world, and regret the harm we do to others. More boldly, we hunger and thirst after righteousness and justice, we speak truth, seek peace and become peacemakers. Candace Owens models this admirably. My Christmas wish all of us is to be more humble but righteous, more courageous yet kind, and to live the Nativity every day, instead of just driving past, eyes straight ahead.
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