“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.” (From “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment,” paragraph 8, from God in the Dock [Eerdmans, 1970]. p. 292.)
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“Wherever there is a jackboot stomping on a human face there will be a well-heeled Western liberal to explain that the face does, after all, enjoy free health care and 100 percent literacy.”
— John Derbyshire
I agree with Lewis completely, but I don’t think this is a side of him a lot of people like. I think he was talking about the therapeutic state before the term was coined. (Echoes of N.I.C.E. – which I think represents social engineering.)Is there any tyranny which some totalitarian elite hasn’t defended on the basis of trying to make people better? (Not themselves of course.)
By an interesting coincidence, the national board in England which decides who will, and will not, get care is called the N.I.C.E. I forget what it stands for.
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