The socialistic welfare state is extolled by liberal-socialistic-progressives as more Christian then Christianity, because the welfare state purports to help the needy. So did Hitler’s National Socialism.

Traditional Christmas spirit, depicted in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, was the warmth of family gatherings, friendship, and loving kindness to everyone.

Today, however, many people insist that socialism IS Christianity. It’s certainly true that the early churches established by the Apostle Paul grew rapidly, because people found there the Christian love and fellowship, as well as support for the poor, sick, elderly, and disabled, that was available nowhere else.

The socialist political state, however, is expressly atheistic and materialistic. There can therefore be no identity between Christianity and socialism, simply on the superficial basis that they nominally espouse some of the same objectives.

The collectivized compulsion of the socialistic state is exemplified by bureaucratic rules mandating certain conduct, described in tens of millions of regulations.

The spirit of Christmas is written in every individual human heart. We must soften our hearts and listen to God’s commands. We must look inward and ask ourselves what is the right thing to do. Going to the Federal rule books is no substitute.

From the purely practical viewpoint, there is also the historical fact that, before the New Deal in this country, those sorts of social needs were better cared for by families, churches, emigrant societies, the mutual-support organizations found in every community, and local governments, without the vast social destruction of the welfare state. Before 1933 there was, for example, no society-wide illegitimacy or single-parent problem and no vast horde of people who, for three of four generations, never sought work, preferring to make living on welfare their life’s career.

Caring for the poor, elderly, sick, and disabled ought to be individual Christian responsibilities of families, churches, emigrant societies, and local governments (towns preferably, but no higher than the state level). Caring should flow from the desire of every individual to love God and therefore to reflect God’s love in dealings with everyone else.

Caring concern for others, a central aspect of our Judeo-Christian heritage, ought to be an every-day matter. It should be especially prominent in our minds at Christmas time.

In the past, such things were moral responsibilities. Today they are political issues, made so by the socialistic political state. It becomes too easy for people to shirk their moral responsibilities by objecting sourly that they’ve “already given at the office” via confiscatory taxes.

The socialistic welfare-state is no substitute for the spirit of Christmas.

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Thomas E. Brewton is a staff writer for the New Media Alliance, Inc. The New Media Alliance is a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of writers, journalists and grass-roots media outlets.

His weblog is THE VIEW FROM 1776 (http://www.thomasbrewton.com)