Animal Farm   The Stand   A Christmas Carol

Once in every generation, a writer comes along that is able to cut to the chase….to get beyond the meat of the matter right down to the bone.

Today, in a landscape where every fourth person is a writer, and every fortieth one of those is an accomplished writer, only one stands alone upon the mountaintop with a fiction work that stands the test of time and thrives within the dark corridors of the ages. That person is yet to be proclaimed. I put Stephen King into nomination. However, we have a good idea of the winners of past ages.

In a world that many of us can barely understand, conservatives often describe reality with simple examples to illustrate their various points. They often speak in parables. And often, they hit the mark, but only temporarily. In the next five minutes, the world changes again, and whatever point they were trying to make is lost in the white noise that is the result of so much information bombarding us.

However, once in a generation, there comes a writer that produces something so profound and elemental that it alone transcends the times and events. Below, find my choice for the three most important works of fiction ever written to help the modern conservative make sense out of the white noise they wade through.

3. Animal Farm

Animal Farm debuted in August 1945, and was penned by George Orwell. It’s a novel that tells in a way that even a child can understand the dangers of a Utopian vision that is clearly and squarely aimed at Communism and Progressivism, by using the allegory of Animalism.

The story, of course, revolves around the premise that the animals, tired of working for nothing, seize the farm and toss their human owner off the property.

They develop a set of communistic laws, and from nearly the outset, sew the seeds of their own destruction when they put the pigs in charge. Over time, the greedy pigs narrow it down to, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

Does this sound familiar in our world of political elites? Everything you need to know about the guts of communism, to which this country has flirted with for the last two years is in the book Animal Farm. Simple, direct, and to the point, laid bare so that anyone can use it as a simple model to understand what we’re dealing with in our modern times. It says it in a way that even the most conservative website cannot.

2. The Stand

The Stand, by Stephen King takes place in 1990. The “super flu” developed by the government, namely the military, gets loose and kills nearly everybody in the civilized world.

The Stand would have been a pretty good book regardless. God knows the science fiction theme that it employs has been done often enough. But what sets it apart is the ability that King has to cut to the chase and slither along bone with his writing. He knows how to manipulate the most base fears and joys of man, and use them as the foundation for whatever prose he chooses to place on top.

As far as I know, King is still a super sized Obama supporter. On January 19, 2008 UPI reported that King had this to say, “Obama has the least baggage of the two and is willing to try new things,” he said. “It wouldn’t be business as usual. Also it would do wonders for us in the world community to have a black man in the White House.”

Obviously, Stephen King had never read The Stand. This just goes to prove again, that when it comes to identifying and manipulating the elemental items that make us tick, politics don’t matter. In King’s case, as it can be said for so many writers…he doesn’t take his own advice.

In The Stand, human kind forms into two groups. One group coalesces around a little old black lady they call Mother Abigail, in Boulder, Colorado, while the other forms around a mysterious apostate of Hell called Randall Flagg. One group is mostly good and the other is mostly bad. The fate of all human kind depends on which group wins.

As you read The Stand, you will be struck over and over again at the currents and parallels between that fiction novel and the politics swirling around us today. Author Stephen King could not have written a more predictive book, though he didn’t set out to do it, and to this day doesn’t know he did it.

On July 30. 2010 democrat King wrote in EW.com, “I sort of dig on Glenn Beck. He reminds me of certain people you encounter in big cities. You know, the ones wearing robes, sandals, and signs proclaiming that the world is going to end because American men are eating too much red meat and American women are wearing their pants too tight. He’s crazy, but — like those urban nutcakes — he actually seems to believe what he’s saying. I can get behind that.”

That was obviously a reference to the prophesying New York bell ringing “Bring out your dead” character in the made for TV six hour miniseries. King sort of digs that guy too. Beck didn’t think much of it.

As you read the book, you’ll see that it goes through many stages very similar to the throes our nation has endured since January 2009. Toward the end of the book, four men are sent west to confront Randall Flagg. As they near his capital, Las, Vegas, they are intercepted by Flagg’s men waiting for them at a roadblock.

The three good guys from Boulder stand facing Flagg’s goons. One of the good guys turns to the other and says, “It’s almost over for them now, Larry. Can you feel it?”

The import of this scene is that as goodness and sanity confronts evil and insanity, evil melts away from the light of God. Sort of like secularism and progressivism vs conservatism and old fashioned American values. Real life conservatives have begun to ask each other if “they can feel it.” And they can.

Near the very end of The Stand, when one of the good guys finally meets Flagg, and Flagg orders him shot. The good guy says to Flagg’s enforcer, “His world is crumbling, and we both know it. I think we also both know he can do a lot of damage on his way down.”

The was a prophetic reference to the 2010 lame duck session of congress and the mischief that it could inflict.

The Stand is a science fiction book, yes. But it is so much more, and in its way places a face on the monster the bell ringing man tried to warn about, even moreso than Rush on Facebook.

1. A Christmas Carol

A Christmas Carol, the book by Charles Dickens, was released just before Christmas of 1843. It’s a contemporary tale of an old miser that employs flashbacks to the past, present, and future to make the point that the only way to true happiness is to follow the precepts of the golden rule.

A Christmas Carol has been made into movies several times. The basic two version seem to be, A Christmas Carol, which attempts to follow the book faithfully, and the musical, “Scrooge” mode, which is a bit more fanciful. Every other decade it is rediscovered and a new version or two is produced. Perhaps the next shall be for 3D-TV.

To us in America, of the 21st century, England, 1843, which is the setting for the book is about as close as ancient Rome. Yet, so many influences from that time still linger in our own society, that it isn’t a bit alien to us. It’s sort of like…going home, each Christmas, as we gather around with the family to watch a Scrooge movie or two.

Untold thousands, maybe even millions of people have decried the way old Scrooge, the old stock trades king treats his hired help, Bob Cratchit. And just as many have personally identified with the relationship of Scrooge to Cratchit.

Yet, inexplicably, our bosses never, ever, seem to get it, unless we are very very lucky and fortunate. Even the boss with one helper often behaves like old Scrooge. If you haven’t had a Scrooge for a boss, you’re very lucky indeed.

In the more than 167 years since the pen of Charles Dickens struck the first scratch on manuscript paper, bosses have not changed. The story is elemental, and cuts to the very marrow of human interaction and existence in the western world.

A Christmas Carol is the greatest of all books for a conservative to read, at least once a year, in the days leading up to Christmas. For at the end, it promises redemption for even the most egregious old sinner. That hope is that the oil of the lamp that has always burned brightly in the most cherished hopes of man.

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