So long as I am offering iconoclastic interpretations of iconic literature, I thought I might make a brief series out of it. And, in so doing, radically alter the average number of posts this year. Oh, and, uh, people’s perceptions, too. Yeah, definitely those. So just post-date this one to Christmas (and remember that I have dibs on this for my English dissertation).

You have surely read or heard of Ebenezer Scrooge, from Charles Dickens’ classic A Christmas Carol. Or seen one of the movie adaptations. Or heard the radio play. Or seen the musical. On ice. Ebenezer Scrooge has become a byword for the justification for wealth redistribution. The lesson, we are told, is that we should all care enough about our fellow man to support welfare programs. Only people who are as hard-hearted as Scrooge would object to welfare programs, would begrudge the honest and hard-working Bob Cratchit a living wage, or Tiny Tim the simple preventative care that will save him.

First, if this were intended as an argument for public policy, it would be the single most egregious example of stacking a deck or manipulating evidence (or for that matter, emotions). Bob Cratchit wouldn’t drink away public assistance down at the pub (and only a Scrooge would suggest the possibility), and he wouldn’t use it to purchase lottery tickets or bet on horse races, or to make food out of questionable animal organs covered in gravy of suspect provenance. (Hey, it has to go in the list of British vices.) Bob Cratchit was a paragon of virtue, unlike most of us (and yes, liberals, “us” includes you).

And therefore no one would suggest that Mr. and Mrs. Cratchit might bear some responsibility for their situation. Bob didn’t make bad career decisions, or spend his time in school vandalizing books rather than reading them. It would be heartless to suggest that perhaps they could have stopped procreating sooner—who would deny them the happiness of another child?

That is to say, if this is evidence to support a policy claim, it is a single case, and a rather exceptional one at that. However, I would argue that Bob Cratchit is not offered as evidence to advocate for a public policy. The focus is indeed on an individual case, but it is not Bob Cratchit. It is advocacy, but not for public policy.

Read the original story. Scrooge’s retort to the men soliciting on behalf of a charity is very telling. “Are there no workhouses?” he asks. For those unfamiliar with history, workhouses were the public welfare system in Victorian England. Those with no other place to stay could check themselves in and out; the workhouses provided barracks-like housing and meals, but those who stayed there were organized into work crews to maintain the grounds and prepare the meals (at least, if I remember the details correctly).

Surely the workhouses were not pleasant places, but Dickens is not making a plea for their reform; he is making a plea to make them redundant. That is, his focus is on Scrooge as an individual, not on public policy. The lesson the ghosts teach Scrooge is about him and the state of his heart. In other words, if men privately, individually, voluntarily took care of the needs of the less fortunate, they would learn to be better people, and we would not need government to coerce charity. As Hayek reminds us, forced charity has no merit.

Indeed, the only lesson Dickens seems to offer on public welfare is that it provides an excuse for the hard-hearted not to change their ways. After all, as Scrooge says, the government has already taken my money to provide for the less fortunate. They are no longer my concern. In other words, public provision of charity crowds out private provision.

That loss of fellow-feeling, that permission to withdraw from society and isolate oneself, is a phenomenon Tocqueville calls individualism. It will, he warns, cause a society to fall apart, and increasing equality only encourages it. It is to combat this that he recommends both associations and religion, which turn the attention away from the self and toward others. Or, to paraphrase Dickens, that teach us to keep Christmas—the season of considering others before ourselves—all year round.

The lesson of Scrooge is that public provision of welfare reinforces the hard-hearted, that only the change of an individual’s heart to produce voluntary action can make a difference in the world. Note that all of Scrooge’s actions, once reformed—the actions that, to borrow from Dr. Seuss, involved his heart growing three sizes—were individual, voluntary sacrifices.

And that may be the very first time Dickens has been accused of promoting classical rather than modern liberalism.