Will Nanny State Decree How Many Christmas Presents Constitutes Too Many?
Outrage has erupted over a British mother that spent $1800 on Christmas presents for her three children.
She has been accused of spoiling her offspring and even abusing them.
Busybodies in both the social and mainstream media have decreed that she should instead teach her children about the true meaning of Christmas by redirecting the gifts towards charity.
Perhaps the amount spent is a bit excessive.
But is it PROPER (to invoke a term the British like to articulate) to invoke the specter of abuse?
For in overly regulated quasi-police states such as the United Kingdom, the phrase “abuse” usually serves as the bureaucratic pretext to justify intervening in a home for the purposes of subjecting a family to a variety of investigative and surveillance techniques.
Have the British become so totalitarian as to produce actuarial tables detailing what number of presents are allowed before anti-social tendencies begin to set in?
And if it is unacceptable for a parent to spend $1800 at Christmas, why is it acceptable for the Queen to have so many corgis or Prince Charles to have an even greater number of sports cars despite his insistence that he is an environmentalist?
Gifts piled high probably aren't the meaning of Christmas.
But neither is the Pavolian reflex endemic throughout Northern European social democracies that what the nanny state decrees to be excess wealth should be confiscated and bestowed upon the chronically destitute with no strings attached.
It has been claimed that the extravagance $1800 can accumulate will spoil these children.
But what about those making their livelihoods from institutionalized penury demanding increasingly sophisticated levels of luxury instead of expressing a modicum of gratitude for what private or public generosity they have been extended?
Are BBC “news readers” interviewing academics or policy analysts warning of the dangers that might take place as result of too many unearned entitled programs?
Anyone doubting the legitimacy of such a concern or observation only needs to be reminded of the British jihadist born of immigrant parents that not only murdered a member of that nation's armed forces in a ditch alongside the road but also proudly uploaded a video glamorizing the shocking atrocity.
Perhaps that is the subversive element that this concern regarding the consequences of incorrectly reared youth ought to be focused.
Frederick Meekins is an independent theologian and social critic. Frederick holds a BS in Political Science/History, a MA in Apologetics/Christian Philosophy from Trinity Theological Seminary, and a PhD. in Christian Apologetics from Newburgh Theological Seminary.
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