{"id":65470,"date":"2017-12-18T05:00:17","date_gmt":"2017-12-18T11:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=65470"},"modified":"2017-12-17T21:08:45","modified_gmt":"2017-12-18T03:08:45","slug":"ebenezer-you-dickens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=65470","title":{"rendered":"Ebenezer, You Dickens"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>If the pre-ghost Ebenezer Scrooge were alive today, he\u2019d be a Liberal.\u00a0 The post-ghost Scrooge would be a Conservative.<\/p>\n<p>Pre-ghost Scrooge was asked to contribute to a fund for the poor, because Christmas is a time when want is keenly felt and abundance rejoices.\u00a0 Scrooge declines, citing the Poor Law, Workhouse and Prisons as places for the poor to find help, which he supports through his taxes.\u00a0 Those who are too proud to take government help should die, and thereby decrease the surplus population.<\/p>\n<p>Bell ringers are not allowed outside Target, where good Liberals shop.\u00a0 The poor will get no help from holiday shoppers there.<\/p>\n<p>Post-ghost Scrooge continued to support those same institutions but also donated to the fund for the poor and in addition, took a personal interest in Tiny Tim\u2019s welfare, digging into his own pocket to pay for medical care.<\/p>\n<p>Conservatives routinely give more to charity than Liberals.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA Christmas Carol\u201d is not only a heart-warming story of personal redemption, but also a piercing commentary on politics that has lost none of its relevance.<\/p>\n<p>Joe Doakes<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Pre-ghost Scrooge obeyed one iron-clad &#8220;progressive&#8221; tenet; he saw people, individuals, as liabilities to be supported to everyone&#8217;s detriment.\u00a0 Post-ghost, he saw them as the miracles a good conservative sees.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll alliow it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: If the pre-ghost Ebenezer Scrooge were alive today, he\u2019d be a Liberal.\u00a0 The post-ghost Scrooge would be a Conservative. Pre-ghost Scrooge was asked to contribute to a fund for the poor, because Christmas is a time when want is keenly felt and abundance rejoices.\u00a0 Scrooge declines, citing the Poor [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68,16,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-capitalism-v-socialism","category-conservatism","category-culture-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65470"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65471,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65470\/revisions\/65471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}