I have asserted it before, but I thought this holiday season would be a perfect time to dissect why the attitude of Charles Dickens' notorious central character in A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge, more closely resembles the American left than he does conservatives, and why the book is a lesson against the liberal mentality that currently pervades our society.

At the beginning of the book, Scrooge is approached by gentlemen collecting for charity for the Christmas season. Scrooge vehemently detests the idea, insisting that he has already paid his taxes to support the orphanages and poorhouses (implying, obviously, that he has done his duty). When informed that many would rather die than go to the poorhouses, Scrooge insists that they should, thus decreasing the surplus population, a decree eerily prescient of the mentality that would be expressed decades later by Planned Parenthood founder and eugenist Margaret Sanger, an icon of the left.

There's a temptation to point at Scrooge's working conditions and insist that he is a "capitalist", but again, a closer inspection is in order. You see, Scrooge's firm was not a UNION shop, and thus, without a mandate from the collective bargaining of his employees, he was not obligated to give beyond the bare minimum. And so he gave as little as possible.

When the Ghost of Christmas Past took Scrooge back in time, he revisited his youth and the shop of his mentor, Fezziwig, who threw lavish Christmas parties and celebrated the accomplishments of his employments, without government mandates to force him in that direction.

Over the course of the novel, Scrooge realizes the error of his ways, and sees that he IS his brother's keeper, and should not rely solely on what the government MANDATES for him to run his business. Instead of going to the Parliament and lobbying for changes in labor laws, he changes his heart and gives generously to those for whom he is financially responsible by being their employer. He does not demand worker reform for others, but realizes that the change must be made in his OWN heart, and among those with which he makes contact.

Although Ebenezer Scrooge is a fictional character, the story A Christmas Carol is a strong moral play outlining the personal responsibilities we have to make the world a better place and eschewing the Marxist philosophy of government-as-caretaker. The fictional Scrooge learned his lesson that storied Christmas, and I'm hoping a few fence sitting libs might read this piece and learn theirs too.