It's the holiday season and all the Republican candidates are in the mood.
Here's Michele Bachmann: "Our nation needs to stop doing for people what they can and should do for themselves. Self-reliance means, if anyone will not work, neither shall he eat."
Neither shall he eat.
For a chorus to this Scrooge-like sentiment, consider as the chorus the booing at that GOP debate when a solider fighting in Iraq identified himself as being gay.
Or when Congressman Ron Paul said that if some 30 year-old in a coma didn't buy life insurance, he should die.
Or when Rick Perry talked about all the executions he's approved and that audience cheered.
Or when Herman Cain kissed off waterboarding as okay with him, he being the man who said that electrocuting people who cross the Rio Grande as equally okay with him, that putting alligators in a moat on our side of that wall would be just what the doctor ordered.
All these calls for action have a certain ring to them, don't you think - pain, punishment, misery, sometimes death.
All offer the same approach to people Republicans don't like - not just the condemned but border crossers coming here to find work, shirkers of all kinds, terrorist suspects, and gay people.
All propose the very worst on those they don't like, accompanied by a sheer totality of glee, joy at the misery of others; indeed, joyous triumphalism of the spirit. They suffer and die; we survive and get on.
Fa la la la la! La La la la