The Timelessness of C.S. Lewis: 'tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive'

Photo Cred: Sigurdur Jonsson's flickr

Via My Old Man, from C.S. Lewis's essay anthology "God in the Dock" (1948):

My contention is that good men (not bad men) consistently acting upon that position would act as cruelly and unjustly as the greatest tyrants. They might in some respects act even worse. 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.

 (Emphasis added)

It's tough to make common cause with Progressives, for the libertarian ends I support (for instance, to legalize marijuana), when they fail to see any problem with the i-legalizing of things like soda over a certain size, or banning trans fats.

It's not helped by certain of my progressive friends, who call themselves libertarians (for contrarian, not principled, reasons), who believe their support for pot legalization and their 'why can't we all just marry who we love' attitude towards same sex marriage makes them libertarians.

Their position on these issues is buttressed by their support for an out and out expansion of the nanny state--especially Obamacare.

When confronted with the inconsistency of their position on these and other issues of the day, they (I kid you not) tell me, 'well, Obamacare is [editorial insert: not yet] as bad as the Iraq War, so there.'

These are the people who elected Barack Obama to a second term.

Sorry, buddy, wanting to be able to smoke your pot legally and thinking that your friends ought to be able to get gay married does not make you a libertarian--at least, not when you also think government should expand its services and increase taxes to support that growth.

That just makes you a liberal. Or a progressive. Which label you prefer makes no difference to me.

The Myth Of Tolerant Liberalism

This is an interesting video--a McCain/Palin march in Manhattan's Upper West Side. I happened to be in NYC last summer and observed one of their many gay pride marches and, uh, the response from the "tolerant liberals" is definitely different. That is to say, they are tolerant of people who think like them, intolerant of people (McCain/Palin supporters) who don't think like them.

(h/t Sister Toldjah)


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Exploiting The Troops For Political Gain: Part II

I first wrote about this on Monday: During his trip to Iraq, Obama lobbied Iraqi leadership to delay troop withdrawals--the exact opposite of his campaign platform which was to bring the troops home immediately, regardless of the facts on the ground.

This is a continuation of the theme that Democrats are willing to play politics with anything--anything!--so long as it means they win the White House & the Senate, if they can. The DNC video I posted last night is proof positive of that fact.

(h/t Hot Air)

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Compassionate Conservatives: Putting Their Money Where Their Mouths Are

I've had an ongoing debate with so-called moderate/independents (post-partisans, if you will. and I know Morgan will) about supposed conservative hypocrisy. They bought into the pro-abortion talking points about conservatives which allege that social conservatives only care about babies until they are born, and then, well, who cares. I have argued, w/o getting much headway, that this is a grossly inaccurate characterization.

A new book by economist Arthur C. Brooks provides the empirical evidence to back up my arguments. Thank you Mr. Brooks. According to one write-up/review of Brooks' forthcoming book:

The book's basic findings are that conservatives who practice religion, live in traditional nuclear families and reject the notion that the government should engage in income redistribution are the most generous Americans, by any measure.

Conversely, secular liberals who believe fervently in government entitlement programs give far less to charity. They want everyone's tax dollars to support charitable causes and are reluctant to write checks to those causes, even when governments don't provide them with enough money.

[...]

liberals give less than conservatives in every way imaginable, including volunteer hours and donated blood.

Finally, evidence for something I and others have known intuitively for some time.

Anytime you read something like this: Christians are hypocrites, etc. You should exercise a little skepticism. There is a hostility towards religious persons and especially Christians among elements of the political left, secularists, and in higher education.

Alternatively, the title of this post could have read:

Compassionate Conservatives: As Charitable With Their Own Money As Secular Democrats Are With Other People's

Hopefully this will quiet the critics who say that conservatives hypocritically only care about the unborn, etc., etc, whatever.

And, lest you think this is some conservative screed, consider this quote from a Harvard professor:

Harvey Mansfield, professor of government at Harvard University and 2004 recipient of the National Humanities Medal, does not know Brooks personally but has read the book.

"His main finding is quite startling, that the people who talk the most about caring actually fork over the least," he said. "But beyond this finding I thought his analysis was extremely good, especially for an economist. He thinks very well about the reason for this and reflects about politics and morals in a way most economists do their best to avoid."

For more information, take a look at these findings on charitable giving.

(h/t M. Lybbert, Greg Mankiw)


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Does This Surprise Anyone?

In an article in today's Washington Times, Matthew Sheffield writes about the profane difference between conservative and liberal bloggers.

Dividing the number of instances of profanity by the number of pages of the sites on which they appear, then multiplying the result by 100 yields what might be called a "profanity quotient."

The top 10 liberal sites (Daily Kos, Huffington Post, Democratic Underground, Talking Points Memo, Crooks and Liars, Think Progress, Atrios, Greenwald, MyDD and Firedoglake) have a profanity quotient of 14.6.

The top 10 conservative sites (Free Republic, Hot Air, Little Green Footballs, Townhall, NewsBusters, Lucianne.com, Wizbang, Ace of Spades, Red State and Volokh Conspiracy) have a quotient of 1.17.

(CORRECTED PARAGRAPH:) That's quite a disparity. Liberals are more than 12 times likely to use profanity than conservatives on the Web.

One thing that is interesting to note is that the profanity ratio of a particular site seems somewhat related to the writing style of the bloggers who run it.

For instance, the Ace of Spades blog has the highest profanity quotient on the right. This is likely due to the fact that "Ace," the anonymous proprietor of the site, regularly uses profanity in his own writings and therefore is much less inclined to want to crack down on readers who respond using it.

In the interest of full disclosure, we'll point out that Sheffield is our boss. However, haters, this isn't brown nosing because we're 99% sure he doesn't read this blog.


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Differing Worldviews

In our "Religious Generosity" post of a few days ago, we posited a philosophical difference between conservatives and liberals that we believe persists in this election.

Namely, we see conservatives, with their focus on individual giving, contrasting sharply with liberals who want to institutionalize every native, generous impulse. Then, they create confiscatory tax policy that unfairly taxes the rich simply because they're rich.

This they do to fund their behemoth federal bureaucracies and programs--bureaucracies and programs which too often fit the old maxim about the cure being worse than the disease.

We wrote about one example of this a few weeks ago.

And we know we're a little late to the game with this example, but Barack Obama's speech to the graduates at Wesleyan perfectly exemplifies the difference in worldview between conservatives and liberals. To wit:

But during my first two years of college, perhaps because the values my mother had taught me —hard work, honesty, empathy — had resurfaced after a long hibernation.

. . .

I wrote letters to every organization in the country I could think of. And one day, a small group of churches on the South Side of Chicago offered me a job to come work as a community organizer in neighborhoods that had been devastated by steel plant closings. My mother and grandparents wanted me to go to law school. My friends were applying to jobs on Wall Street. Meanwhile, this organization offered me $12,000 a year plus $2,000 for an old, beat-up car.

And I said yes.

Wow. Blatant self congratulation aside, other observers have noted that $14k/year was pretty average for college grads in the early 80's--not the pittance it seems today. And last year, he and Michelle took in $4.2 million--less than the Clintons, but far more than most Americans.

In all his talk of service to country and the world, you might expect to find a graph or even a throwaway sentence acknowledging service in the military.

You're going to be disappointed. There's nothing--not a word.

Certainly public service is important and admirable, but it is the dynamism of capitalism and the American economy--all those selfish people working their selfish jobs to give their families a better life--that make it possible for America to do anything remotely philanthropic anywhere. And obviously military service plays a large role here. Without a strong military and economy, we would have zero influence and power to "do good." Obama's view of America is one in which people in the Peace Corps are the only ones with souls and the rest of us are just out there to get ours.

*UPDATE 26 June 1:51pm: Dennis Prager sums up the attitude of many of today's progressive leftists--an attitude embodied by Obama's comments above and his repeated campaign boilerplate that "we (meaning he and his ilk) are the change we have been waiting for" or the other version "we are the ones we have been waiting for." Prager:

The modern secular liberal knows that he is not only morally superior to conservatives; he is morally superior to virtually everyone who ever lived before him.

Utopia? Yes We Can!

(commence self-immolation)


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Echo, Echo: Democrat Lovefest

It's no wonder the Democrats trumpet the superficial diversity of their primary candidates--a woman, black, latino, etc.--there is no diversity of opinion.

We watched today's debate hoping to find out what was different about each candidate. Asked about taxes and the economy, each one blamed Bush and called for increased taxes on corporations and the wealthy. Health care? Each one wanted a universal, euro-style socialized system. At one point we closed our eyes and tried to guess which one was speaking--only Hillary's shrill voice set her apart from the rest, her politics certainly didn't.

Granted that Presidential primaries cause each candidate to appeal to the extreme base, but still, the Democrats might as well all have the same policies and platforms. Republicans may all be white and male (thought not all Alan Keyes!!!!!), but there are differences of opinion on abortion, the environment, taxes, campaign finance, immigration, trade, stem-cell research (though with recent findings, those differences are diminishing), Iraq (Ron Paul), etc. Among the Republican candidates, there exists a strong diversity of opinion.

For as long as we can remember, we've heard that the liberals were the open-minded party. Anyone listening to today's debate would know that's not true.


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Everyone Loves Lists

From the Telegraph, a British publication, comes a rank ordered list of influential liberals and conservatives in American politics. Beyond a simple ordering of libs and cons, Toby Harnden (the author) gives a short bio of each person and how/why they're influential. Fascinating reading. Thus far they've only listed numbers 61-100. Click here.

No, we didn't crack the top 100.


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