Now that we are approaching the Christmas celebration this week, it becomes urgent to answer some mail similar to this one from perennial correspondent, Virginia:

Dear columnist Waxman:

I am 8 years old.

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Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.

Papa says, ‘If you see it Inside Tucson Business, it’s so.’

Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?

— Virginia (last name withheld to protect from pedophiles)

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. Your big friend, too. They have been affected by the skepticism of cynical, rascally Republicans. They do not believe except what they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be Republicans or Democrats, are little. In this great universe of ours, the common people are mere insects, ants in their intellect as compared with the boundless sagacity of all the government bureaucrats around them, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge, and the whole of my money and yours.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He is probably better known to you as Hank Paulson. He exists as certainly as Paris Hilton, Ron Gettelfinger and Bob Walkup exist. And you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy.

Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no such Treasury Secretary. It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias or Arizonas or Alaskas. There would be no childlike faith, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable the endless blathering of preposterous politicians of this heavily taxed existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in what little they may give back of what they take from us. The eternal light with which utopian government fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Hank Paulson? You might as well not believe in global warming or Rio Nuevo! You might hire all the United States senators and representatives on Christmas Eve to catch Secretary Paulson.

But even if they did not see Mr. Paulson sneak down your chimney with his bags of billions, what would that prove? Nobody sees Hank Paulson any more except on TV. But that is no sign there is no Hank Paulson. We know him by his bailouts.

The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see or understand.

Did you ever see Barney Frank prancing on the lawn of the White House? Of course not, but that’s no proof he is not there.

Did you ever see Jim Click driving a Mercedes? No, but that doesn’t prove he’s not just an animated TV character.

Did you ever see Nancy Pelosi propose a bill that didn’t in some way benefit her personally? Of course not. But that’s no proof she never did.

Did you ever see President-elect Barack Obama’s real birth certificate? Certainly not. But that doesn’t prove he’s not from Kenya.

Nobody can conceive or imagine all the shenanigans there are unseen and unseeable in this country.

You may tear apart Ted Kennedy’s conscience to see what makes that sloshing sound inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not Jesse Ventura, nor even the united strength of his and Gov. Janet Napolitano’s could tear apart.

Only faith, fancy, gullibility, ignorance, malleability, naïveté, romance, skullduggery, cupidity, and President-elect Obama can push aside that curtain and view the supernal beauty of all-encompassing government.

Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing so real and abiding as a government based on the force represented by the oxymoronic principle of universal volunteerism.

No Hank Paulson! Thank God he lives. And Barack Obama, too. A hundred days from now, Virginia, nay, 10 times 100 days from now, they will continue to make glad the hearts of redistributionists.

 Contact Lionel Waxman at territorial@waxmanmedia.com or visit his website: www.waxmanmedia.com. Lionel Waxman’s Flashpoint commentaries are published in The Daily Territorial.