The following is an article that was just published under my by-line at Ether
Zone,
http://www.etherzone.com/2009/beam121809.shtml
Roderick T. Beaman,D.O.
Board Certified Family Physician
When government does other than its legitimate functions, it enters into the
realm of evil. The true patriot recognizes this and strives to obstruct
government in these immoral and indefensible activities and even reverse them.
In this, the patriot endeavors to save both himself and the government.
SCROOGE - BEFORE OR AFTER?
WHICH ONE WAS RIGHT?
This Christmas season, like so many others, we are being bombarded with one
holiday special after another. Lifetime is programming exclusively with
Christmas themed stories. Television, in general, is offering many versions of
‘A Christmas Carol’.
It’s been done so many times as to be about countless. The first version, and
for years the only one I remember starred Alistair Sims from 1951. His
portrayal is regarded as one of the best. My mother said that she had liked
Lionel Barrymore’s but I have never seen it nor could I find it listed in his
filmography at Wikipedia. Albert Finney played the role in ‘Scrooge’, Bill
Murray did a modern version as a TV mogul in ‘Scrooged’ and Henry Winkler a
wealthy New Hampshirite in ‘An American Christmas Carol.’ Fans of Donald Duck
recall Donald’s rich, miserly uncle, Scrooge McDuck. Scrooge can be an epithet
Many, myself included, regard as the definitive portrayal, George C. Scott’s in
the 1984 television version. It’s hard to imagine anyone outdoing George C.
Scott in any portrayal but if it was Patrick Stewart’s goal in the 1999 TV
version, that otherwise gifted actor failed. Scott’s version, like his
portrayal of George Patton, towers, so any actor is likely doomed by
comparisons, nevertheless, they are inevitable and Scott’s is the definitive.
Currently, we have Disney’s A Christmas with Jim Carrey as Ebenezer which has
gotten generally favorable but still mixed reviews. Is there even a medium
sized city that doesn’t have a production of the play at this time of year?
I’ve read the story many times and seen Scott’s and Sims’ versions at least
three each, as well as Stewart’s.
During The Ghost of Christmas Past sequence, we see Ebenezer as a young man at
boarding school with his beloved sister, Fan, whom he tells the ghost died
several years later, leaving him a nephew, Fred. She tries to persuade him to
return home with her for Christmas, to their father, whom she says has changed.
There obviously had been a conflict between them. We also see his youthful
love, Belle, who left him when she saw the miserly path he was choosing. We see
that he stays at the boarding school while the others pursue some holiday
happiness and celebration.
The subsequent sequences of Christmas Present and Christmas Future eventually
turn him into the generous soul of his final years.
Written by Charles Dickens and published in 1843 as a novella ‘A Christmas
Carol’ was a critical and popular success. According to Wikipedia, ‘The tale
has been viewed as an indictment of nineteenth century industrial capitalism
and has been credited with returning the holiday to one of merriment and
festivity in Britain and America after a period of sobriety and sombreness.’
That shouldn’t surprise given that the squalor of London has been held up as a
reason to reject capitalism. In fact, England of that time was hardly a paragon
of the free market, my preferred term. Protectionism was in full swing.
Europe was awash in socialistic even revolutionary thought. It flourished in
London and Berlin but especially Paris. Just five years later, in 1848, Karl
Marx would publish his Manifesto which gave rise to the bloody socialist and
collectivist disasters of Germany, Russia and China, et al, of the twentieth
century.
Still, through all the viewings and readings, I’ve never been too sure what it
was that turned Scrooge onto the path he chose. Dickens gave that short shrift,
a glaring plot oversight in my opinion. All we are given is that he rejects the
celebrations.
Of course, after seeing his legacy with the Ghost of Christmas Future, he
becomes the reformed Scrooge who turns into a paragon of generosity. He
anonymously sends Bob Cratchit, his harried clerk, a Christmas goose, makes a
gift of an extraordinary sum to two men from a charity whom he had rebuffed the
previous day, visits his nephew, Fred and joins in the merriment. He would
later pay the medical bills of Bob Cratchit’s crippled son, Tiny Tim, saving
his life, and when Cratchit arrives late for work the day after Christmas,
gives him a raise.
This last scene has never worked for me, no matter which version I’ve watched.
Maybe it did for nineteenth century audiences but I always thought it needed
Scrooge to explain how he regretted how he had been to Cratchit or how he
really valued his service. No matter, I always felt there was something missing
in that final scene.
The lessons of ‘A Christmas Carol,’ have been bruited back and forth for years.
As Wikipedia noted, socialists have used it to blast the excesses of
unrestrained capitalism and the free market, which are not really the same
thing. The free market is when anyone can exchange their labor and capital for
anything of their choosing for any goal they desire. Capitalism, roughly, has
always struck me as the pursuit of and the use of capital for production of
more capital, a much more restricted idea.
Free marketeers have often extolled the unreformed Scrooge as a role model,
pointing to how his accumulation of wealth has numerous benefits for society. I
have read several articles maintaining exactly this. As an unreconstructed
proponent of the free market, I am inclined to prefer this position with some
very important qualifications, though.
Scrooge is guilty of greed, one of the Seven Cardinal Sins or vices. Along with
wrath, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony, it leads to man’s destruction.
Scrooge pursues money and wealth for their own sake, not for any benefit or the
enjoyment of other important things for himself or anyone else. That is his
failure. He measures the world in shillings, pounds and crowns, just as today’s
liberals, Democrats, socialist and communists do. Their’s is the materialist
philosophy. Karl Marx even called his philosophy, dialectic materialism. There
is no room in his life for anything else including simple pleasures, just as
there is none in theirs.
The Ghosts who led Scrooge that early Christmas morning show him that, in
devoting himself to his miserly ways, he has missed out on life’s pleasures,
the things we are created for. Dante told us of the same thing in ‘The
Inferno."
In one of his circles in hell, hoarders and wasters constantly scream at each
other, "Why do you hoard?", "Why do you waste?" but one never giving the other
an answer. Dante knew they were just flip sides of the same coin, just as the
misers on one hand and the liberals, Democrats, etc. are on the other today.
They have no appreciation of mankind, despising all others for not being like
them. They are the materialists, not the believers in the free market.
Thomas Jefferson told us the same thing in The Declaration of Independence that
we are entitled to the pursuit of happiness. What is most important, so did
Jesus when he asked what a man profits who gains the world and loses his
immortal soul.
That’s the message that should be taken from Dickens’ story. It’s Dante’s,
Jefferson’s and Jesus’.
