This Sunday, little goblins will approach my door and walk away disappointed. Call me curmudgeon, but the mindset whereby “something for nothing” is expected and unearned has infiltrated society, and, thus, I don’t “treat.”
Yes, sharing is admirable, but socialism isn’t and with the current administration peppered with socialists, I’m frankly sensitive to blanket “goodwill.” In Las Vegas, where poor urbanites fan out, comb the suburbs and, without saying “trick or treat,” assume compliance, Halloween has become a presumptuous shake-down.
Message: it’s easier to dip into the pockets of strangers than to address the absence of candy on one’s block. How many dads, it makes me wonder, consider why it is they have to leave their neighborhood in order to fill their children’s sacks? In some cases, even “thank you” goes missing, replaced by the rush to rap the next door.
Thus, I abstain. Thomas Sowell once said, “The entitlement mentality has eroded the once common belief that you earned things, including respect, instead of being given them,” and Sowell is right. Yes, it’s one eve, and I’m loath to argue that because of Halloween generations of sluggards will decimate Capitalism, but it is in fact liberal. Liberals love “giving” as long as the givers are someone else, and write and pass laws inconsistent with self-reliance. The image of hands seizing Snickers, then running off to seize more (no bell un-rung, no porch exempt) is a disturbing reminder that ObamaCare is upon us, and that the self-reliant legacy of our forefathers is threatened. Candy or health care—I see in the eyes of open-palmed children a symbolic dependency on private citizens for whom they have no regard.
Indeed, the “something for nothing” attitude which Halloween symbolizes begs a moral question. It’s bad enough to instill in young minds that they’re entitled to hand-outs, but to do so through secular paganism is worse. Halloween promotes terror. Yes, there are fairies, ambling gourds and the Oz crowd, but, too, and more pervasive (you’re neighborhood may differ) is the psychopath wielding an axe-severed skull. Front yards littered with tombs and bodies, as moans elicit from speakers, sprout like dandelions down my block; and an ad promoting a local Haunted House reads, “More BLOOD, DEATH and SCREAMS than last year!”
Makes you wonder—to what height of distaste will they aspire next year?
It’s disgusting. The cultural appetite for terror meshes with a pattern of secularism, and, no, I don’t buy that it’s “all in fun.” Ronald Reagan once said, “Without God there is no virtue, because there’s no prompting of the conscience. Without God, we’re mired in the material, that flat world that tells us only what the senses perceive. Without God, democracy will not and cannot endure. If we ever forget that we’re one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under.”
And so I must ask, does violence conjure principle? Is there morality in the macabre? From Reagan’s quote, the “flat world that tells us only what the senses perceive” reflects “anti-spirit.” Evil and mischief coalesce on Halloween, packaged as “fun,” and fun, of course, is the metier of progressives. Dick Cheney isn’t fun. War, as a check on tyrants, isn’t fun. To actually read a bill, debate its merits, and hew it to the framework of the Founders—HECK NO! It’s easier, and more fun, to produce sleight-of-hand—the Healthy Choices Act, for instance—than to commerce in reality.
The point being that “fun” should reflect moral values. Halloween, fun aside, is amoral in many instances, immoral in others, and patently void of virtue. Benjamin Franklin once said, “Only virtuous people are capable of freedom,” and there is no virtue in horror, especially when, peddled to children, it’s presented as something to fete and enjoy. Daily, Americans are lied to, rights taken for granted usurped by men who “know better” and who invert the relationship between government and the governed, acting as masters rather than servants of the People.
I therefore question everything before me, perceive symbolism in the “harmless,” and understand that paganism, however subtle, encroaches on children in psychological ways.
I may even take action. Perhaps instead of candy this year, I’ll pass out shiny, pocket-sized Constitutions. The food police will approve, and at the same time I’ll send a message of self-reliance. I’m even prepared for goblin complaint, to tell children that “candy may be dandy” but the “Constitution is groovin,” and that no matter how much nougat they compile, the wisdom of the Founders is the ultimate treat.
