One of my odd holiday season traditions is to re-read Charles Dickens’ festive classic, “A Christmas Carol”.
After today’s re-run of this tradition, I felt – as I often do – that it’s not quite the appeal to a religious/social democratic way of life it’s often portrayed. Is there something of the libertarian – if not Objectivist in Ebinezer Scrooge by the end of the story?
Turns out, I’m not the only one who’s had the same thoughts. Here’s a comprehensive look at this idea from the very thoughtful Robert Davidson on the Rebirth of Reason site.
Davidson makes some thought-provoking points, this one really caught my eye:
Dickens argues here for an integrated rational, full-faceted individual who is as comfortable in the counting house as he is with spiritual values and the fulfillment and happiness they provide. The spirit of Christmas is a metaphor for the integrated life. Dickens describes Christmas as “the only time I know of in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of other people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.”
Whenever I think of that powerful scene, when pre-transformed Scrooge asks the two gentlemen soliciting charity for the needy, he asks “Are there no prisons? Are there no work-houses?…I help to support the establishments I have mentioned: they cost enough: and those who are badly off must go there.”
Is that really the attitude of an Objectivist? Or is it more someone who relies on the state, to perform the functions of charity and forbearance? If you want a large state to redistribute wealth, look after the poor, and support us from cradle to grave, then you’ll be the sort of person who wants taxes to provide those services; those institutions. It would be someone who believes in self-reliance and thinks that charity should be precisely that: charity, then you can’t support Scrooge’s sentiment.
Anyway, I’m jotting this out of my phone on Christmas Eve night, so maybe I’m not thinking it through.
Either way, wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, happy holidays.
Andy Jones Online 