Disney’s ‘A Christmas Carol’: Charity Vs. Big Government
by Darin MillerGenerally after a story has been told as a book, play, musical, numerous animated, live, made-for-TV films, and Muppets movie, its content is completely exhausted. But Disney’s latest, “A Christmas Carol,” by writer-director Robert Zemeckis of “Forrest Gump” and animated films “Beowulf” and “The Polar Express,” resurrects the classic tale through vibrant visuals while sticking to the classic story.
Briefly, “A Christmas Carol” is the story of Ebenezer Scrooge (Jim Carrey), a miser who hoards his money and pays his single employee, Bob Cratchit (Gary Oldman), the bare minimum. Scrooge lives alone in a huge, dark mansion, leading a lonely life. When his nephew Fred (Colin Firth) invites him to Christmas dinner, Scrooge berates him for being happy when he has so little money. When local charity representatives ask for support, Scrooge tells them that he supports the poor through paying taxes. “Are there no work houses? Are there no prisons?” Scrooge asks. To him, taxes are all the dues he owes to society.
Seven years after his business partner Jacob Marley (also Oldman) died, on Christmas Eve, Marley’s ghost returns to visit Scrooge and warn him about the consequences of a life selfishly lived. The money Marley hoarded in life is now chained to him in death, weighing upon him as he wanders the world without rest. Marley foretells the coming of three ghosts to show Scrooge the error of his ways. The rest of the film chronicles the visit of those ghosts and their lasting impression on Scrooge’s life.
Visually the film stuns as it takes 3D flight through London streets. It captures Christmas in all its fun, beauteous glory, but also Hell on earth in its haunting future. From the end of the Ghost of Christmas Present through the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, the film’s darkness make the early November, post-Halloween release more fitting than an early December, pre-Christmas one would be. The story occasionally lags as Zemeckis shows off what he can do with animation and 3D. While the vocal acting is good, the animation can’t quite portray the more emotional moments.
But the main message—keeping the Christmas spirit alive through joyful, selfless giving—rings true. And in today’s culture of big government takeover, it is a lesson that grows increasingly important daily.
Toward the end of the Ghost of Christmas Present’s visit, he shows Scrooge two scrawny children hidden beneath his cloak. They are Ignorance and Want. “They are man’s,” the ghost tells Scrooge. The ghost attacks Scrooge’s philosophy that it is the responsibility of government-run work houses and prisons to care for the disadvantaged in society.
It is important to note that Scrooge, though he does not care at all about the fate of the poor, notes that it is indeed someone’s responsibility to do something. It just isn’t his beyond what he gives in taxes. It is the government’s role. This ideology separates conservatives and liberals, and is important to note as Congress considers health care and unemployment benefits legislation.
In Dickens’ time, prisons and work houses were dismal government-run institutions programmed to discourage the poor from remaining so. Prisons were terrible in those days—see other Dickens works for evidence of that—and work houses, as City University of New York professor Gertrude Himmelfarb notes in her article, “Welfare and Charity: Lessons from Victorian England,” were meant to be demeaning and degrading to encourage the poor to look for dignified work.
This harsh government action seems uncivilized today, but it was really a correction to the original Poor Law system, which had made relief too easily available, encouraging laziness and increasing the number of poor in England. As Himmelfarb notes, “public authorities cannot really judge the merit of individual claimants for relief.” This deceives recipients into believing that they have a right to relief, removing the incentive to work. It also creates animosity between the poor recipient and the taxed donor.
But charity is different, and it is charity, not government welfare, that Dickens supports. As editor Jonah Goldberg notes in a brief article on National Review Online, often those who oppose government welfare are more charitable than those who support it. While welfare and charity attempt to accomplish similar goals, they have one striking, fundamental difference: freedom. Welfare from a government entity draws funding from involuntary taxation. This guaranteed income leads to greater administrative cost, less effectiveness, and low selectivity. Charity relies on free will, and is generally more effective because funds are given willingly to causes that donors care about. Charities can specify to whom funds are given, and also what the recipient must do to receive funds, eliminating the entitlement philosophy.
It’s interesting to note that liberals, who often accuse conservatives of supporting the wealthy, do less on their own to support the poor. Arthur C. Brooks, of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, writes in his study on religious faith and charitable giving, that conservatives, especially Christian conservatives—who tend to oppose big government and support the Republican Party—charitably contribute much more time and money than secular liberals, even when giving to non-religious, secular social interests. By looking at European countries as models, Brooks finds “a link between secular views and strikingly low levels of charitable giving and volunteering.” His findings suggest that the further the Democratic Party tends down the secular, liberal, big government path, the greater this disparity will become.
Helping the poor is a worthy goal. But our Founding Fathers did not intend the government to fund it. Nor is it healthy for the government to try. Dickens knew that, as did a great Tennessee representative from the 1800s. For a brilliant reason why governments should stay out of welfare issues, see Edward S. Ellis’ writings on Colonel David Crockett. It’s a worthy read, and though it’s a little long, at least it isn’t H.R. 3962.
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106 Comments
It's obvious that you have never read a word Dickens wrote. To paraphrase Woody Allen, if Charles Dickens came back from the dead and read this post, he'd never stop throwing up.
Dickens didn't believe the rick should toss out a few pennies to help the poor at Christmas — he believed in social justice. He saw that the entire political system was designed to keep the rich rich and the poor poor.
If you're actually interested in finding out a little, you should start with his brilliant novel Hard Times, which is astonishingly a mirror image of the Bush years in this country.
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American’s are the most charitable in the world. It is a testament to our character. When we give intelligently we not only help the down on their luck but we better ourselves. When we give it is not institutionalized. It is a hand up not a hand down. When the government takes over charity we become desensitized to the down trodden. I saw a clip of the movie it appears to be a compelling interpretation as well as visually pleasing.
Helping the poor is a worthy goal. But our Founding Fathers did not intend the government to fund it.
Systemic monetary handouts to people makes them bitter and resentful, and simultaneously, binds them in chains and carefully leads them to a hellish existence that is difficult to overcome. Helping people be self-productive is the only way to successful solve problems of "want" and "ignorance".
Allowing the government to be the enslaving institution on the American people is morally wrong, a fact the left cannot seem to understand while under the influence of "if it feels good, do it".
As an example, the stupidity of the left is stunning when they state that we cannot currently afford medications, surgeries, doctors, or hospitals, but that we can afford medications, surgeries, doctors, hospitals, *and* a government bureaucracy to administer health care.
“Welfare is hated by those who administer it, mistrusted by those who pay for it and held in contempt by those who receive it.” The same will be true for government health care, or any other form of fiscal enslavement.
Bad governments account more than anything else for poverty. That's been the story of commodity rich Africa for centuries. The Chinese were all dirt poor before the Communists added capitalist concepts to their economy.
Even in affluent countries there will be the poor among us. There are people because of bad personal habits – drugs, high school drop outs, kids out of wedlock at a young age, and zero work habits – that will be at the economic bottom. Your naive and vague notion of "social justice" will not and hasn't changed that paradigm.
Social justice is a level playing field within a free enterprise system. It serves the most the best. Only in some lame utopian fiction are their no failures.
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wr1 is probably right that Dickens was an economic ignoramus, as he himself no doubt is. For one thing, Dickens might have grasped that poverty,child-labor, etc., was far more widespread in the pre-capitalist era than in the early stages of capitalism, when Dickens lived. If Dickens had wanted to reduce poverty, even further, he would have supported the economic system with the best record of doing so. As for throwing a "few pennies" at the poor, have you any idea of the millions, if nopt billions, that rich "liberals"–Soros, the Beverly Hiills Bolshies, the Park Avenue Pinkoes, etc.–pour into the coffers of the Democratic Party? Instead of using that money to increase statism (thus reducing freedom as well as prosperity), those "pennies" could help the poor immeasurably, although not in the long run as well as a free economy could. But power and coercion, not ameliioration, is twhat modern "liberalism" is all about.
"I remember when 'liberal" meant being generous with your own money."–Will Rogers
"Dickens didn't believe the rick should toss out a few pennies to help the poor at Christmas — he believed in social justice. He saw that the entire political system was designed to keep the rich rich and the poor poor."
It's rather ironic that it is the democrats who keep the poor poor. They belive in tossing out a few pennies in the form of welfare to keep the poor not only poor but also too complacent to bring themselves out of being poor.
Only in a free capitalist market can a poor person come out of that predicament. How else do you account for the millions of people who come to the US without any money, not knowing the language and are able to build successful businesses and yes, get rich in the process.
The problem with social justice is that sooner or later you run out of everyone else's money and everyone else is equally miserable except for the government/ruling class. I grew up in your so-called social justice and it is anything but just.
Although Dickens' work has often been used by socialist douchebags to advance their agenda, no where in any of his novels does he espouse socialism or condemn capitalism. Nor does he advocate the government redistribution of wealth. The main theme that runs through Dickens' work is that "social justice" is the result of compassion prevailing over greed. Think about that the next time you read a Cliff Notes version of one of his books.
Para[phrasing Clemenceau, "Social" justice is to justice what military music is to music.
A liberal's idea of charity is government charity; a conservative's idea of charity is personal charity.
Case in point: Comrade Obama would rather reduce the tax on charitable giving to charities such as the Salvation Army, religious-run charities, and dole it out to his own worthy charities such as ACORN, the NEA, and Planned Parenthood.
You're right! This "rick" person is not tossing enough pennies.
Social justice is neither social nor justice.
You want to see social justice as defined by government, look no further than Mugabe's Zimbabwe.
That's what you get when government decides to implement social justice. Ten million dollars for a loaf of bread.
Here here!
Here's one of my favorite charities, if anyone is interested in donating.
http://www.stlabre.org/
Education is a great charity, because it help breaks the cycle of poverty. Once a kid is educated, and they escape poverty, there's excellent chances their descendants will stay out of poverty for the most part.
Gee, you almost make Comrade Obama sound evil (not just wrong, but evil). Snicker.
As far as I know, Dickens was absolutely committed to social and economic reforms that would help the poor in his country. However, I have no idea whether he believe the government should be the main engine of those reforms. He was known for personal acts of philanthropy and encouraged the same by others. The Urania home for "fallen women" was one example. He also wrote pieces critical of American slavery, which would have made him less than popular in some circles. The impression I get is that he wasn't as doctrinaire about reform as modern liberals and conservatives. He didn't care where the help came from, as long as it came.
I couldn't agree more.
As Dr. Walter E. Williams, esteemed economist wrote, putting one's own hand in one's own pocket to help their fellow man is one of the most noble acts a human can do. Putting one's hand in some one else's pocket to help their fellow man is theft.
Which is to say, don't equate Dickens with a modern American liberal in search of "social justice." He and his world were more conservative and way more complicated than the original commenter makes it seem.
Dickens may or may not have been a socialist, or even a communist, I don't know.
But when it came to selling his writing he was a capitalist through and through.
By the way, my favorite incarnation of this story was "Scrooged." I'm pretty sure they hired the Solid Gold dancers for it.
@wr1 you are just another liberal troll , an please dont try to pretend you care about anyone but yourself, or that you understand what a true giving person is all about, as i am sure you have never given freely of anything except of your stupid words.
Bravo!
To compare Dickens' Elizabethan England to the massive wealth created in the Bush era seems a bit odd- or is it us? It's amazing the convoluted logic that passes for discourse nowadays. Suffice that Charles Dickens was a capitalist, entrepeneur, and fiercely protective of his intellectual properties.
His everyman persona was simply that- a persona. He did care about his fellow man. As does conservatives. He was not redistributive by nature. Nor was Wells, or Orwell.
Our liberal friends need to bone up on their facts. Upton Sinclair? sure. Charles Dickens? not hardly…
You want to talk ecoonomic disparity. Socialistic and Communistic governments have ALWAYS had a huge economic disparity between the "ruling" class and the people. Look at Communist Russia. The people starved while the elite govt officials sold arms from the Soviet stockpile to enrich themselves, or got in good with the govt to get a fatter paycheck. Nothinng like making a dollar for the govt and having the govt give you ten cents.
I don't think Dickens would have been at all in favor of a classless society – the kind the "social justice" pleaders seem to desire. I think what he really wanted was for people of wealthy, powerful classes to be more compassionate to the poor – to stop treating them like animals in order to make a profit, to help them live less dreadful lives, to educate them and make them more useful and productive, and to give them some pride. I don't think he would have believed in the government-enforced equal distribution of wealth and advantage as a once-and-for-all solution to the problems of poverty and class. He worked hard for his money. He gave of it freely. I don't believe the kind of government coercion "social justice" liberals believe in would have sat well with him at all.
You personify the Deconstructionist school of literary criticism, which allows you to interpret Dicken's work to fit your own 21st Century biases.
You can't read Dickens honestly and come away with the impression that he was a proto-Marxist.As for "Hard Times", it is much more a mirror image of our current economic situation, in which an insulated rich elite, lauding themselves on their stated intentions, continue to take actions which have resulted in ever higher unemployment while proclaiming that "recovery" is taking place.
Objectivists make a valuable distinction between "benevolence" (a guiltless, commendable generosity) and "altruism" (the superstition that the individual has no right to his own happiness but an obligation to sacrifice for the good of others). Seen without whatever dopey socioeconomic ideas Dickens may have had, the story of Scrooge is essentially that of someone learning benevolence. The generous Scrooge at the end is a much happier individual than the miser whose tightfistedness is essentially fear-based. I like the Geor ge Scott version best because it expresses that best, of all the versions I've seen. Even so, I've never understood why Bob Cratchit having more children than he can afford imposes some kind of obligation on Scrooge to support them beyond paying Bob the wage he has agreed to pay him.
Big government takeover, Darrin Miller? Really? Where the Hell was your smug righteousness when big government began waging a billion dollar a day oil war? Where was it when big government began spending 10 times more on roads for the half of Americans living in the suburbs while the other half living in the urban centers make do with far less mass transit and road funding? Where was it when big government found it necessary to give more aid to Israel than to all other nations, combined? Where was it when big government decided to give right wing owned corporations more human rights than human beings, themselves? Where was it when Bush spent our national treasure out of existence and where was it when Obama printed money out of thin air, which will soon cause runaway inflation, in order to bail out those same right wing owned corporations?
What a great, big hypocrite you are.
Hope a few ghosts visit you sometime, too.
"Where was it when big government decided to give right wing owned corporations more human rights than human beings, themselves?"
Assuming this isn't some party-line BS, could you give some specific examples of this?
Unless you can run your car on Pepsi and can keep a modern economy alive on solar power be damn glad we have a presence near ME oil wells. That's the hard cold reality of the world. Those "right wing owned corporations" gave more to Obama than McCain. You really think Google, GE, Goldman, Microsoft, Hollywood and Big Media are "right wing" corporations? Get a grip.
Otherwise, I'm still trying to wrap my mind around your rant.
Big Government is the negation of Liberty. Regardless of what party is in power.
A Christmas Carol is one of our most beloved books; in our house, we read it every year, starting on Dec. 20 and finishing on Christmas Eve. I love the Alastair Sim's personification of Scrooge the very best, followed by George C. Scott's performance. My hesitation with seeing this movie is that the emphasis, at least from the previews I've seen, seems to be on the visuals mentioned in this review as opposed to the emotions. Scrooge's entire transformation comes about because of the feelings that become awakened or reawakened in him–shame, guilt, joy, fear, loss, regret, love, nostalgia, forgiveness–and I'm just not sure this 3D experience will do that.
mmc2068, I've got to hand it to you, your post is the most nonsensical, fact-lite, reality-free group of sentences that I've heard or read since Nancy Pelosi's last press conference. Now you know who you're competing against. Planning on running for Congress as a Democrat? You may be overqualified, as you did capitalize Hell…do you capitalize Heaven as well?
Um, that would be Vicky's England, not Liz's…
Best Scrooge: Alastair Sim
2nd Best: Mr. Magoo
Best re-telling of the tale: Lord Buckley
You sir, don't know Jack about dickens. But nice try on spinning a classic tale to fit your own bias.
I'll give you that–Mr. Magoo is a pretty awesome Scrooge–much better than Fred Flintstone.
EdSki, I LOVE Scrooged!
It's become a Chrismas tradition in our house for the last fifteen years or so.
After our roast goose, with all the trimmings, we sit back and watch Scrooged.
I'd have to say Patrick Stewart's performance was the best although sending the young lad off to buy the Christmas goose with, "Make it so." was a bit irritating
The Magoo Christmas Carol was very well done — aside from the typical-early-'60s cheap-o TV animation — it was fairly faithful to the source material and had nice original musicial scoring and songs.
I hope this movie does illustrate the benefits of CHARITY and the motivations to be charitable instead of just sending out a blanket message of feel sorry for the poor and do ANYTHING to help them.
But with how CG'd out and explosive as the film looks, I feel like any sort of message will be diluted anyways by Scrooge flying around to loud noises and being frightened of spooky ghosts.
"It is only on account of your great love that the poor will forgive you for the pain you cause them." St. Vincent de Paul.
This might seem an odd statement by the founder of a well-known charitable organization, but St. Vincent recognized the effect of even necessary, personal charity on its recipients. It is a crime against the human spirit to enslave any group to dependency.
Trivia: the Poor Laws were a result of the Protestant Reformation in England, especially the dissolution of the monasteries, which had previously handled the provision of charity. When the church became state-run, then charity devolved onto the local governments.
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Isn't that kinda the point?
Where was it when big government began spending 10 times more on roads for the half of Americans living in the suburbs while the other half living in the urban centers make do with far less mass transit and road funding
Well because people in those areas are far less likely to have cars, and those mass transit systems are usually so rotted out with grafitti and whatnot that it's more dangerous to travel in them then its worth.
Then when someone like Guiliani comes along & cleans them up you whine anyway.
You live in a fantasy world.
The case is simple. It's not about private vs. public as political factions keep attempting to see,
it's about stingyness vs. fairness and generosity.
That's kinda what "Scrooge" came to mean.
Scrooge was shorting his workers and so made it up to them with a lavish party, not a Privately Administered job training program.
The work houses and prisons were unaffective hellholes, and leaving it at that arbitrary minimum requirement was stingy. Clinton legalise territory.
Tiny Tim was doomed not because of who paid, but that not enough was paid, because Scrooge was a scrooge.
Though Dickens was a raging, foaming at the mouth, big L LIBERAL, he wasn't for the government to dole out everything to everyone, using confiscatory taxation on the so-called "rich".
He hated lawyers, government offices of various kinds, dilettantes ( usually focusing in on women, but he also bashes men too ) who spend all of their time doing charity work, whilst completely ignoring their own children, to name just a few he took shots at. The main person he always placed in a very bad light was his own wife; sadly.
From Cromwell's time, until 1843 ( when A CHRISTMAS CARROL was published ), Christmas customs and traditions were completely different from what we would think of, when we think about Christmas. Our present day ideas of Christmas celebrations are all because of Dickens and this one book; though cards and wrapping paper came a bit later.
Dickens was a raging, knee-jerk, bleeding heart LIBERAL, but he was the farthest thing ever, from having any Marxist/Socialist/Communist tendencies.
For me, the Sims version is and shall ALWAYS be the ne plus ultra movie version of the book.
Like you, our family has always read A CHRISTMAS CAROL during December.
I've seen the clips on T.V., that are being used to advertise this film. Personally, I find it to be horrible, ugly, and the antithisis of what Dickens had in mind, when he wrote the book.
You've never read the book, nor seen any of the movies or cartoons made from it, have you?
Scrooge had but ONE employee.
He never threw a parrty, lavish or otherwise for "employees".
The word is INEFFECTIVE, not unaffective.
Tiny Tim, as well as the whole of the Cratchit family and the rest of Victorian lower middle class, was not all that badly off. Tiny Tim was most probably a polio survivor and a frail child. Medicine was not as advanced and it wasn't the "poverty" that caused his problems. All of his siblings were hail and hearty.
Having seen the film, I'd consider the "Look at this, it's 3D!" moments to be fewer and/or more unnoticeable than expected. The movie seems actually quite accurate towards the book, using large segments of word-for-word dialogue taken from the pages directly. Trailers and commercials make it seem much more "explosive" than it is overall.
Hint: the talking points you blindly parrot aren't made real by the umpteenth squawking.
you are indeed correct- thanks for the heads up
No. Do your own damned homework.
I don't want or need a car. And I live in a high rise, mass transit-rich, walkable city. Better to keep my hands clean of the blood of Arab children.
Nonsensical? Fact-lite? Reality-free? You must be talking about the Bush Administration and your wet dream, George Dubya.
BTW, has anyone found those weapons of mass destruction, yet? Because we could really use those daily billions of tax dollars for public health care.
Read my statement again and try TRY to understand the inherent injustice of it: the government spends TEN TIMES MORE on just HALF the people who are suburbanites/motorists than we do on the HALF of the people who are urbanites/mass transit riders/bicyclists/pedestrians.
Get it? Half gets 10 times more money than the other half. See? Unfair!
As for urban blight and decay, don't put the cart before the horse. Blight and decay exist precisely because the government favors suburbanites over urbanites, not the other way around.
How virtuous you are.
I'm happy too that a generation of Kurdish kids are safely away from Saddam's genocide.
Oh, and, the bomb detonating yobs in the ME are Arabs killing Arab kids.
You don't get out much.
No. You do. The country, the economy and the envirnoment are collapsing around you because of it.
Wake up!
What did you say, Molester? I can't hear you through your squawking.
Rubbish. Big government is good when it doesn't favor white, wealthy, conservative, "heterosexual" male-owned oil, auto, weapons and financial companies.
Because putting specific words in CAPITALS makes it SO MUCH SMARTER.
It's NOT unfair. It's LOGICAL. WHY spend TONS of money on building ROADS in places where PEOPLE DON'T EVEN OWN CARS TO BEGIN WITH?!?
Considering how bad urban congestion was in the pre-motorist days (Go read The Good Old Days, They were Terrible) would it be -smart- to suddenly throw down 2 million cars into that situation.
Urban decay & blight existed because the governments that ran the cities couldn't run them worth salt. They were digusting cesspools of filth & blight since the 19th century, and even more so beforehand, so people fled. And if it's that way, then why, after a half-century of urban renewal programs does the inner city still suck?
I prefer George C. Scott's portrayal of Scrooge, but I am a fan of the Blackadder version of A Christmas Carol.
Ah, so the "I know you are but what am I" response combined with the childish insult.
Thank you. With that and your other frantic responses I can confirm that you are not worth debating. I guess you were rattled by someone actually expressing with your rant, oh sorry did you consider it some noble exhortation of Revealed Truth™ that we were supposed to silently accept?
So the Soviet Union was good to you?
How cute, you have your enemies list. A veritable legion of Emmanuel Goldsteins.
I have watched more versions of "A Christmas Carol" than I can count, but every single one of them comes up short. It is an almost perfect story, and the mistake that is invariably made is for the screenwriter or director to add and subtact too much Dickens. Why are the Muppets the only ones to include Dickens' most interesting character, The Narrator? Why is the eerie, morphing figure of The Ghost of Christmas Past turned into either an annoying kid or a simpering senior citizen? Where is the hearse that precedes Scrooge up his own staircase? Instead, we get cheap special effects or tinny musical interludes or pseudo-psychological "backstory". Here's a sure recipe for a classic retelling of the tale–take the book, add not one single line of dialogue, subtract as few as possible, and film it.
You're predictably too focused on the road aspect of my complaint, when the larger point was the lack of adequate funding for mass transit. As for roads in the high rise urban centers of America, they, too, suffer from lack of funding because the government is too busy spending the tax dollars of the half of America that doesn't drive on the other half of America that does drive.
Why can't you people just pay your for own addiction to cars and sprawl? Why do you have to make the rest of us subsidize it? And why, for that matter, do Muslims have to die for it?
Genocide is the one million Muslims that have died in America's and Israel's war for oil and land.
It's also the millions of Native Americans, Latinos, African-Americans, Asians, women and gays who have died because of white, European, conservative, Judeo-Christian hatred like yours.
China's doin' all right. As for the Soviets, they might have done all right, too, if not for Reagan and subsequent conservative administrations big government, budget-busting to outspend them, militarily, while indebting whole generations of Americans in the process. The market manipulations and failures of the Soviets, meanwhile, ain't got nothin' on the bailouts of American banks and auto companies.
We, too, now stand at the brink of collapse.
All right. Only about 70 million of their own people slaughtered either by deliberate action or incompetence.
I can see why you look up to them.
Accusing me of squawking is what you call debate?
Please.
NEXT!
Accusing me of squawking is what you call debate?
Nope. I call it pointing out facts in the form of a hint. Glad to see you're impervious to such things.
NEXT!
Yawn.
Go back under your bed and dream those Red Utopian Dreams and Dream of what might have been if it wasn't for AMERICA.
Excellent! I've usually seen it about 5 times in the weeks before Christmas, it's in heavy rotation. I also like It's a Wonderful Life and Die Hard.
Yes, I know I'm strange. Never pretended I wasn't.
If you can expand on what you mean, I'd love to hear it. As I see it a modern liberal is a Marxist/Socialist/Communist. And a true classic liberal is more along the lines of Jefferson, Adams, Madison. De Tocqueville, etc.
What other kind of liberal is out there? Because I was pretty sure I had them nailed down. Having been born and bred by them.
Please don't take this as any kind of shot, I'm really interested in your opinion.
Oh I didn't take it as a "slam"; I'm very familiar with your posts.
I've always been a big fan of Dickens' writings; from early childhood. As an adult, I've read many bios of him and re reread most of his books many times over, so what I said wasn't just something off the top of my head, but rather, an educated statement of fact.
Yes, ther terms "LIBERAL" and 'CONSERVATIVE" are somewhat different now, than they were in Victorian England. No, Charlie wasn't a Marxists/Socialist/Communist, but he was a bleeding hearted LIBERAL; not to mention someone who wanted lots and lots of public adulation. These are things that his closest friends and acquaintances said about him, at the time.
All of his novels contain massive amounts of examples of his ultra Liberal leanings. For the most part, the poor and criminals ( though he does show some disdain and disgust for some of the poor criminals, he levels far more of it towards wealthier people, who have committed less violent crimes ) get his heart to bleed quite a lot. "Victimhood" runs a bit rampant, for the poor, downtrodden, whilst those with even just a middle class station, who he feels are too haughty, too involved with trying to make money/keep their station are the ones to make fun of/trash. Lawyers and government officials are always shown in poor light. Okay, so even Shakespeare put down lawyers, but if you notice, lawyers get trashed in many of Dickens' novels; some without real cause.
I'll pull some of my books and promise to post some quotes made by his contempories, that will state it all better than I have.
If it helps any, let me just say that he was a Gladstonian LIBERAL, as opposed to being a Disraeli Conservative.
It's not their job to back up your claims.
I sure hope that you will take the next plane heading that way. If they are so great and America is so wrong, please just leave. It will be better for everyone. Otherwise just please go rant and rave somewhere else.
I agree with you, Carolyn. One of my best memories is watching that version every year with my mom. Mom died in 2005, but I still watch it and think about her when I do. It is a great moment for me.
You are so right. It seems like each version takes a part that another version leaves out. It is a great story and I am more angered when they try to add to it. Leave the dialog alone and just do the movie. However, the times being what they are, I doubt they would do it like how we would want it. There are some religious elements that would not be considered "politically correct." Remember, we don't want to offend any one. (Yeah, right!)
Better stop using everything plastic then…..petroleum is pretty involved in the production of everything you bleeding heart libtards use. How about a mud hut along the river then you could feel good about yourself !!
"You've never read the book, nor seen any of the movies or cartoons made from it, have you?"
I psychically matched them, and made "Scrooge" a miser term? Which version is gospel?
"Scrooge had but ONE employee."
He had a partner and is old and "rich". Is there a Lost Cartoon Chapter specifying always just one business with one employee, and he was ghosted for that? I kinda assumed Scrooge was Scrooge and old, and quadruple ghost visits meant epic wrongs. Loooong chains.
"He never threw a parrty, lavish or otherwise for "employees"."
Shorting his workers, he made it up to "them" – the current employee's family, with the anti-Scroooge fattest gooseturkey and presents. Ever been to a party?
"The word is INEFFECTIVE, not unaffective."
The word is UNEFFECTIVE. I missed a letter and you a word.
Google first hit: uneffective – not producing an intended effect; "an ineffective teacher".
"Tiny Tim, as well as the whole of the Cratchit family and the rest of Victorian lower middle class, was not all that badly off."
Gee, all those damning ghosts and portents for nuthin then. "struggling family".
"Tiny Tim was most probably a polio survivor and a frail child. Medicine was not as advanced and it wasn't the "poverty" that caused his problems."
That must be why the weakest child was litterally doomed pre-visits and Old Scrooge, and spared by New Scrooge generosity. Did Lost Chapter ghosts cure him too?
"If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, the child will die". Seems up to Scroogey's change of heart.
And the word was party, not parrty, look up Posting Karma and nit-picking.
Try losing the nits and caps and troll gene. Cheers, Miss Marm C+
Why did this of all threads turn so many trolly?
Coolness!
I look forward to your quotes. We can pick this up over at the open thread, or continue here if you like. Either way is fine with me.
About the best way I've come up with so far to describe how I view politics, removing all the labels, party affiliation, and other scrub brush, is it seems to come down to two main themes that seem to cover pretty much everything.
Supremacy of the state over the individual vs. supremacy of the individual over the state.
I put all modern liberals (to differentiate them from classical liberalism, which I truly admire) into the former, along with many so-called conservatives, and an awful lot of republicans, and all socialists, communists, and the new term progressives.
I place my self in the latter.
Here's the question as I see it: Can you, as an individual, run your own life, realizing it won't be perfect, and may indeed be tragic, or do you need some one to run it for you, because you can't handle the fear of the unknown.
Here's my answer to that question: "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death! "
http://libertyonline.hypermall.com/henry-liberty….
First, I'd like to thank you for sending me into my library to pull a few old favorite books, that I hadn't looked at for many years, to joggle my memory. This made for lovely evening of reading, for me, and I now plan on rereading two of them.
I was just about to post this, which was far longer, when the site wouldn't let me and told me that my time had run out. So I logged out, logged back in and 90 % of the post had disappeared. RATS !
I'll add most of the rest of this in a bit………………….
How about the tens of millions of his own people that Mao killed? That Stalin killed? The thousands that died at the hands of Latino Communists/Socialists/Statists in Central and South America and Cuba? The millions in the Killing Fields?
Out of tens of thousands of years of human history – both unwritten and written – and you want to have a pissing contest about what group of people killed the most? Honestly? Have you NO CONCEPT OF HISTORY AT ALL? Obviously you don't. Your rants are nothing more than that – leftwing rants devoid of facts, devoid of any understanding of human nature and history.
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boff, you're not strange Ed.
Definitely within what I consider "normal", parameters.
I love Die Hard also.!!!
While we're on Bruce Willis, major knee tremblers are "The Fifth Element", and "Last Man Standing".
oooaaarrrggghhh!
The Fifth Element was on a couple of weeks ago. A lot of weird stuff, but I love it!
Answer me this, ladykrystalmethsmoker: why do us Latinos, Native Americans, blacks, Asians (and struggling, non-Jewish middle class white, for that matter) have to foot the bill for Israel? More aid than is sent to all other nations, combined! Even if a case could be made that white European-Americans bear some sort of indirect responsibility for the Jewish holocaust, why make racial minorities pay to make amends by creating an Israel that, itself, requires a Muslim holocaust?
Put that pipe down and focus!
Please. Our addiction to cars and middle eastern oil isn't because of plastics. It's the 150 million cars on the roads, you idiot.
No. YOU leave. I'm going to stay right here, pointing out the ineptitude and treason of right wingers and closet-conservative, liberal suburbanite car-addicts, ESPECIALLY the ones who live in Southern California.
You mean the America that is going through another Great Depression?
Or the America that once existed, but was all but destroyed by white conservative Judeo-Christian closeted homosexual men?
You right wing traitors certainly didn't back up your claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Yet we're still there.
Wonder why that is?
Oh yeah. Oil and Israel, both far more important than America and all of Western Civilization to you people.
Here's a hint: it's better to keep your mouth closed and be thought a fool, than to open it and remove all doubt.
"This harsh government action seems uncivilized today, but it was really a correction to the original Poor Law system, which had made relief too easily available, encouraging laziness and increasing the number of poor in England."
Wow a conservative actually defending the harsh work houses as described by Dickens. I sure hope the republican party follows your lead in this. "Bring back the work house! The poor are too lazy!" Those sound like some real election winners to me , go for it guys.
Shouldn't you be hiding under a bridge somewhere, harassing passing goats?
Here's a hint: it's better to keep your mouth closed and be thought a fool, than to open it and remove all doubt.
Darn, there goes another irony meter.
Boy, you really look up to China and the Soviet Union.
You sound like your shell shock. Stop eating peanuts in bed.
I'll give you Russia, but why shouldn't China be held in high regard, especially as of late? They are achieving the perfect blend of communism, socialism and capitalism that you conservative closet-homos are too afraid to try, for fear of upsetting your banking industry masters, doing what they had the blasphemous nerve to call "God's work" this week.
They ought to be in prison, not rewarded with public taxpayer bailouts and bonuses. Speaking of the bailouts, tell me how that isn't socialist or communist? Oh, yeah. It's only socialism to you people when it helps the little guy, not when it helps the fat cats.
Irony is better demonstrated by upper and middle class showbiz types cutting off their nose to spite their face by supporting policies that benefit only the superwealthy.
LOL You mean the ones you right wingnuts already committed bestiality with?
ALLAMERICAN needs to stop eating penis in bed. Yes, him do! Because him even more shell shock from him in closet.
ALLAMERICAN needs to stop eating p-e-n-i-s in bed. Yes him do. Because him even more shellshock from him in closet.
They are achieving the perfect blend of communism, socialism and capitalism that you conservative closet-homos are too afraid to try, for fear of upsetting your banking industry masters, doing what they had the blasphemous nerve to call "God's work" this week.
More like because it's fascism.
Odd I thought it was best demonstrated by a loud incoherent troll blathering and flinging insults who then starts admonishing the people mocking him to shut up lest they be seen as a fool.
Probably fits under hypocrisy as well, though the person in question is shielded by not having any standards save what supports Teh Narrative.
Have you had your fill of attention, little one? I'm going to have limited time to access the network later this week and I really don't want you to feel ronery.
[...] propaganda, vilifying the rich and glorifying a sacrifice for the common good. But as Darin Miller argues at Big Hollywood, it’s really no such thing. In fact it’s quite the opposite: A [...]
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