A friend of Hinderaker’s apparently recently saw a holiday performance of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol* at the Guthrie.

In the program notes, the Center acknowledges the truth of the actual title chain for much of what we now call America. The Guthrie… in sum, tells a truth:

People arriving from Europe, in the main, simply took the land they crossed. In most cases, hideously paltry sums were only belatedly “exchanged” — for these takings. [This is true of essentially all the land and waterways Minneapolis now sits upon.]

As a lawyer, John should at least be willing to admit that this was addressable, lamentable error, under all then-known Anglo-Saxon law. [Dickens would have admitted as much.]

A capacity for genuine, humble self-reflection, and accepting and reconciling with the responsibilities, for the darker parts of our nation’s rise — is part of the social gospel John hears on many a Sunday.

 But as we’ve long noted, John reads most of Christ’s social gospels out of his New Testament.

And that’s a shame, for it writes him down, from his own hand, no less — as a small, embittered old man. Perhaps that is, in the end, all he… is. I would hope not, but after nearly two decades of watching now, I see scant evidence to contradict that assessment.

Saying one is sorry is a virtue, not a vice, John. It seems here is what he fears most, I guess:

“…You may wonder, what is the point? What are the activists after? They want to recast American history — your history and mine, not theirs — as evil. They want to bend the rest of us to their will, by imposing “land acknowledgements” and renaming sites and buildings.

And, of course, as with all political activism of this sort, the day will come when money is expected to change hands….”

So… [aside from boastfully claiming a history he did not author alone — to the exclusion of others], that’s the nut of it: he’s afraid of having to pay… for what we as a people… outright stole. And he is congenitally incapable of admitting his… errors. [But to be clear, no one has asked him to pay.]

A lethal combination — to be certain: his sub-conscious guilt [one he hides from his own conscious mind, no less] — married to his… entitled sense… of self.

Onward.

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• This entire post by Hinderaker is ironic, indeed — as Dickens wrote the “Carol“… as at least one Christian’s apology of sorts, for the mean-spirited, rapacious and property-grabbing, money-grubbing capitalism… he saw as then-ascendant in old England. Irony. A Christmas Past gift, entirely lost — on Mr. Hinderaker.