I have always considered feel-good Christmas stories in general, and A Christmas Carol in particular, to be the ultimate examples of what I call meta-messaging, which is the communication of messages which promote reason and goodwill in general rather than as applied to specific policy issues dealt with in mutual isolation from one another. I didnt know until sometime after that identification, and sometime after writing this variation on A Christmas Carol, how intentionally Dickens had intended it as such, challenging the recent victories of the Malthusians in Victorian England who had succeeded in rolling back Englands formerly relatively generous welfare policies by recourse to the argument that those polices just encourage the poor to reproduce and become a greater burden on the productive classes (sound familiar?). I have since seen a sincere argument in favor of Scrooge, before the transformation, on a libertarian site. So, folks, at Christmas time, when we celebrate compassion and goodwill, lets remember that the struggle to make them ever-more a part of what defines us as a people continues, and will continue for some time to come.
Posted on: Sat, 20 Dec 2014 23:15:45 +0000
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