Positive Liberty

Reader Ron Belgau responds to my post about The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe:

I agree with you about the artistic failure of the movie. What I particularly wanted to comment on, however, was the accuracy of the three thoughts you expressed. It is a source of continual astonishment to me how rare common sense about the evils of Communism is in Academia. Everyone gets the evil of Nazism, but somehow it is thought that Communism is completely different. Moreover, in contemporary debate, the “fascist” label is almost always deployed against those advocating limited government, not against those advocating a larger, more controlling government.

I would add to your observations one other point. Lewis was often criticized for not paying enough attention to the “big” issues of his time—war, concentration camps, etc. As you observe, I think he was acutely aware of them. But I think one of the things that marked his genius was that he understood that tyrrany does not spring out of nowhere. Big evils grow out of little evils. One of the things I observe in moral philosophy is that the focus on consequentialism results in a big-picture focus in which the hope for some grand social good will justify some (apparently) little evil here and now (e.g. the “ticking time bomb” justification for torture).

Lewis recognized that the fight against evil has to start on the personal level, because liberty requires self-control. The loss of the moral values of the Tao—the loss of the virtues necessary for civilization, deprives us of the virtues necessary for effective self-government. And so instead of seeking to inculcate the virtues necessary for self-government, we try to solve social problems through government control—forgetting that if a people lacks the virtues necessary for self-government, they are manifestly unfit to govern each other. We saw the results of such government in the 20th century.

Anyhow, I’m in the midst of finals and don’t have the time to develop my thoughts further just now. But I wanted to say that I thought your comments were some of the most acute diagnoses of the problems in contemporary political discourse I’ve encountered in a while.

Trackback URI |