C.S. Lewis on Mere Liberty and the Evils of Statism

I have never been a big fan of C.S. Lewis in general. When I received the following email I very nearly responded back with a negative response:

Dear Joe,

Could I interest you in please posting a notice on your blog of the following new YouTube video from the C.S. Lewis Society of California of my keynote talk at the first annual conference of Christians for Liberty, that was held at St. Edwards University in San Antonio, TX, August 2, 2014?

Thank you for your kind consideration!

Best regards,

David
——
David J. Theroux
Founder and President
The Independent Institute
100 Swan Way
Oakland, CA 94621
(510) 632-1366 Phone
(510) 568-6040 Fax
http://www.independent.org

I decided that I should at least watch a minute or two of video before rejecting it.

This quote at about 2:25 in the video made me decide to post it:

Could one start a Stagnation Party—which at General Elections would boast that during its term of office no event of the least importance had taken place?

C.S. Lewis
1940

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4 thoughts on “C.S. Lewis on Mere Liberty and the Evils of Statism

  1. I’m doing my part for the cause by doing as little as possible. I admit I may misunderstand the principles of the Stagnation Party…

  2. The Democrat Party, like all authoritarian organizations, is in effect the stagnation party, and their system party is the Republican Party. Together, the good cop and the bad cop, will have you in handcuffs in no time. It’s just that they’re far too dishonest to to admit it. Indeed, for if they were honest their power to stagnate would be greatly diminished. It all depends on ruse.

    Excellent speech, Mister Theroux! It makes the perfect juxtaposition to Obama’s State of the Union Show the other night. Would that more people could be exposed to such.

    On the other hand, there are truth seekers and those who’ve been conditioned to reject truth. It may well be that the truth seeker will find such things (or they him) while the truth rejector would dismiss it if it were handed to him on a golden platter. The fact that it is out, and available, is all it takes, and you, and Joe, have made it more available.

    Welcome, my brother (from a different mother)!

    And so we are faced with, as I see it, two Systems, which might be called the authoritarian system, and…..isn’t that odd; I don’t really have a name for it. What is the name for the system that is not authoritarian? Libertarian? But that hardly seems appropriately descriptive. There are endless different names of systems and isms, but in fact there are only two; authoritarian and libertarian. For lack of a better term for the latter.

    Each of the two systems seeks “freedom” from the other. One seeks freedom from right, do to wrong, and the other seeks freedom from wrong, to do right. They’re both “freedoms” in that each system stands in opposition to (impedes) the other. Evil is tired of hiding in the shadows, angry for having to pretend, and to hold back, and has been in the process of imposing those restrictions (through intimidation) on the good, and THAT, my friend, is “Social Justice” when you get right down to it. It only works when we’re intimidated, angry or otherwise irritated, and thus it gets it’s power directly from us.

    It is entirely parasitic as you mentioned, and as such cannot exist without us. On the other hand we can carry on quite remarkably well without the authoritarian system. That’s a dirty little secret we’re not supposed to learn, and in many societies merely learning it can get you killed if you’re not careful. You tend to get crucified, for example.

    And this is something that is not generally understood, even among libertarians. Many have struggle with the question, for example, of why it was the Nazis targeted Jews, who, it could be argued, had contributed more than their share of culture, knowledge and productivity to German society.

    Ah, Young Grasshopper; but that is precisely why they were targeted! They knew too much, they we’re too bright, too capable, and worst of all they didn’t need authoritarians in any way, shape matter or form in order to prosper, and we can’t have THAT now, can we. That would ruin everything. It would be inequitable, it would be, in the mind of those carefully and painstakingly inculcated into the authoritarian system, the end of everything held dear.

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