Ebenezer Scrooge, in my opinion, is a paragon of of Liberalism, not conservativism. At least pre-ghostly visit.
Ebenezer Scrooge: Conservative or Liberal?
- Thread starter vegascowboy
- Start date
today we are living quite well on borrowed money and time with no real solution in sight
and
not even hollywood can fix it
Buzzword
New member
vegascowboy said:
I'm unable to expound the fullness of my opinion on the subject due to time constraints, but I'm curious where you find abortion in A Christmas Carol?
I assume it's in Bob's family, where access to contraceptives would have led to a smaller family, fewer mouths to feed, and thus more food in each mouth and greater health all around.
MrRadish
New member
Arthur Brain
Well-known member
How so?
You are correct there...let's hope Hollywood never tries to fix anything. The media is bad enough.
Bingo! Of course the word abortion is never mentioned in the text, but its implications certainly are.
It seems to be the liberal mindset (then as well as now) that certain kinds of suffering in this world can easily be remedied by the taking of life via abortion. One must follow their train of thought on the matter...if you don't have a baby, then that baby will have no way of possibly living in poverty. It is a depraved way of thinking. It is destroying human life in the name of public charity. It is "decreasing the surplus population."
:jawdrop: I'm astonished. I didn't see that coming at all.
Hey! :box:
What else? For those of you who feel that Scrooge was a dyed-in-the-wool conservative...where are your arguments? We can dig as deep into the text as you like.
oly:
oly:
Arthur Brain
Well-known member
What else? For those of you who feel that Scrooge was a dyed-in-the-wool conservative...where are your arguments? We can dig as deep into the text as you like.
Well VC, I don't see Scrooge as either conservative or liberal in the story as I've never associated it with politics of any sort. It's essentially the story of an embittered self centered miser who goes through a spiritual transition and comes out the other side a kind and altruistic soul. I've always seen it as a moral tale so perhaps if you can expound on why you identify the pre visit Scrooge as a liberal we can go from there?
PS: Bah humbug etc....
lain:
Arthur Brain
Well-known member
:think:
Paleo conservative prior visit and libertarian after?
Right back at ya!
Meh, looks far too happy....
lain:
Nay! Raging Liberal pre-spectre and Happily-On-His-Way-To-Conservative-Enlightenment post-spectre.
There is much in common, I believe, with the liberal of Merry Ol' England during the 1800s and the Nancy I'd-Love-Nothing-More-Than-To-Destroy-Everything-You-Hold-Dear-That-Makes-This-Nation-Great Pelosi types of today.
Scrooge, as well as other liberals like him, support in a "progressive" manner an economic attitude that it is the government's responsibility to care for the poor and the suffering. This support, they maintain, should come by way of taxation and is a sufficient means to an end, as Scrooge points out repeatedly in his pre-Ghost Hunters International days.
In Scrooge's day, sending people to the work mills and prisons and English poor houses was thought of as a legitimate and suitable liberal way of dealing with the problem of suffering and poverty. Today is rather the same. The goverment provokes us to pay more and more taxes for the building of institutions that will care for drug addicts, prostitutes, abortion clinics, etc.
The spirits who visited Scrooge that fateful night, each in their own way, urged him to look beyond government mandates to deep within himself so that the desire to give freely of his wealth would come from him, voluntarily, and not from the government.
Arthur Brain
Well-known member
Well, lets begin with Dickens himself. He was renowned for being a philanthropist and a vehement critic of how the poor and less well off in society were treat and oppressed. He was a champion for what he perceived as social injustices towards the unfortunate. That's a common recurring theme in a lot of his work not just 'ACC'. This book itself is regarded in certain ways as a criticism of Victorian industrial capitalism which itself is hardly associated with liberalism but more conservatism correct?
I'm not sure why you think it would be a 'liberal' mindset that would support the poor being treat like second class citizens? Nowadays the 'left' may support the welfare/benefits system but the emphasis is on people's 'welfare' as oppose to their being expected to work in unsanitary and dangerous conditions for effectively a pittance, which occurred in Victorian London. Were the capitalists concerned for the boys cleaning chimneys etc?
:think:
Leave him out of this!
lain:Yes, true.
Yes, true.
Whom do you believe he believed should be believed by folks to have the responsibility for taking care of social injustice? (Wait, what? I even confused myself with that one.)
What are those "certain ways," pray tell? I believe we need to dig deeper...
Wherein do you find the modern liberal's emphasis on the "welfare" of those for whom they claim to be assisting? It seems to me, in my backward, cowboy way of thinking, that the welfare system discourages people from ever improving their situation. Why work when it will be given to you with little or no effort? Why come into this country legally when you can enter illegally, get a nice new shiny name like "undocumented worker" and have everything handed to you on a golden plate?
Only Dick van Dyke.
lain:
Arthur Brain
Well-known member
Leave him out of this!
No.
:nananana:
:e4e:
Uh, you're agreeing with me far too much....
lain:Yes, I've just had an out of body experience after reading this appalling morass....still I'm back now and I believe he would support both a welfare system and societal involvement in helping the poor.
Well capitalism is involved with accumulating money (in a basic sense) and the richer elements of Victorian society were hardly renowned for their attitudes towards the poor (not that there weren't those who bucked that trend) so there's a few dots that kinda look close to being joined up so to speak.
Well speaking as someone who's been both employed and receiving benefits (not simultaneously I hasten to add) I can only say I would have been in abject poverty without such a lifeline. Having worked I can say that the income affords a comfortable lifestyle whereas bog standard benefit does not. That's fair enough as such isn't there so one can go for fancy nights out etc but without there's no food coming in or rent for the landlord etc. So what happens if you take that safety net away? How are you going to guarantee that society will take care of the poor if it's reliant on charitable donations? Realistically I don't see how you can....
Only Dick van Dyke.
Aye, he should have been more concerned about his appalling attempt at a Cockney accent...
lain:
Because I believe in the goodness of people. I believe that, when those safety nets are removed, people will saddle up and go to work. They will take a step out of their comfortable surroundings into the darkness and find the way lit before them. Many already do.
MrRadish
New member
Bob Cratchit is a perfect example of somebody to whom no welfare was available and therefore had to work, even though his employer exploited him horribly and he had a sick child who he could barely afford to keep alive. If there were a welfare state then he'd have the option of refusing to work for Scrooge unless he were paid and treated better, but as it was - it was submit to his boss' unreasonable demands or allow his family to die.
I honestly don't understand how you can persist in holding the viewpoint that most people are on benefits because they're happy and comfortable with things that way. Unless you're actively cheating the system (which isn't a problem with the principle but rather with its implementation) then living exclusively on state benefits is an extremely spartan existence.
Incidentally, I also don't really understand why opponents to welfare make such a distinction between 'the state' and 'the people'. Absent excessive corruption or elitism, a democratic state is made of the people; it's just a particular way of organising them. If you're a taxpayer, voting that the government increases taxation in order to fund benefits for the poor is, in effect, giving money to the poor yourself, albeit with a greater national effect.
Finally, I don't think you've yet shown how Scrooge's pre-ghost values differ at all from those of a right-wing libertarian capitalist.
Wow. Did not see that comin'.:chuckle: