One Great Book

I was looking for something to read yesterday, and nothing seemed to grab my attention. Then I noticed my copy of Less Than Words Can Say by one Richard Mitchell. He is better known, but, sadly, not well enough known, as The Underground Grammarian, under which name he called out poor language from 1976 until 1992. Despite that arguably high-falutin' title, the Underground Grammarian was gold for its insight, humor, and warnings about the power of language.

But I digress. In rereading Less, I rediscovered the irony of insights so incisive as to be laugh out loud. Chastising teachers who decry the need to write well, Mitchell says:

This is, they tell us, an age of technology, and that what we need to know is how to program computers, not how to devise grammatical sentences in orderly sequence. As it happens, computers work by reading and devising grammatical sentences in orderly sequence.

Delightful. I did laugh out loud. Basically, if our computers are to work, our instructions must be grammatically correct, at least in computer language. But can we perform that task if we can't employ good grammar in our own language? 

Mitchell's book dwells on how language is used for control, so he has a special vitriol for bureaucrats and lawyers who seem to make a habit of obscuring language as a means of controlling situations. He further despises letter openers such as "You are hearby informed" and "Our records indicate" and "It has been brought to our attention" calling such things the Divine Imperative, words suggesting God Almighty is addressing you. And you best listen. Words used like that are quite successful in their intimidating tone. We dread them.

Yet the best thing which I've reread so far is a fabulous little sentence Mitchell says early on: Words never fail. If they speak reason, reason is passed forward. If they speak nonsense, confusion reigns. In today's society we tend towards the latter. We say less than we can say.

I am only about halfway through but have already resolved to reread this book at least once a year from here out. The only other books I have at this writing put into that category are The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis and Death on a Friday Afternoon by Fr. Richard Neuhaus. We need books like these on our shelves, and I'm sure I'll have more to say about Mitchell in the coming blogs. 

Dr. Haffner

Humility should, perhaps, prevent me from writing this. Yet it has been on my mind a lot lately and I want to talk about it, as it was one of the quickest yet most profound moments in my life. And I knew it at the time. So if you would kindly indulge me and ignore any hint of arrogance, I would appreciate it.

Dr. Haffner was my instructor in a college Education class called Reading in the Content Areas. My apologies but I do not remember his first name. I still don't actually know what the point of that class was either, but so be it.

We argued all semester, as our basic philosophies of education, our outlooks on life, were radically opposite. I won't bore you with details but it began with the fact that he taught that all things, all things, mind you, are relative and that there are no eternal, objective truths. As too many of you probably know by now, I firmly believe in objective truth. Life simply makes no sense without such a doctrine at the core of our actions.

Part of our grade rested on a 20 page term paper reviewing a book about education. I chose to write about The Abolition of Man, a spectacular little book by C. S. Lewis asserting that the doctrine of objective truth is at the center of any good and useful system of teaching. 

On the day of our final exams Dr. Haffner told us that he would give us back our reviews as we handed in our exams, and offer us a word or two on what he thought about them. The students who left before me, I had noticed, had a couple of minutes of quiet talk with him as they were given back their papers.

When I walked up he took my test and handed me my essay. But when I went to grab it he held on, so that we both stood there kind of staring at one other. It's melodramatic to say such things, but it felt as though a hush came over the room. Finally Dr. Haffner said to me, in a kind of quiet, thoughtful tone, "You really believe this, don't you?"

"Yes sir, I do," I answered in a subdued voice.

He released my term paper and offered me his right hand. "Good luck, Marty," he said with a great and deep sincerity. I simply said thank you, a very grateful thank you, and left.

I really feel, in that moment, we had truly understood each other and that we parted with an enduring mutual respect despite our adversarial stances. It was no more than half a minute, but maybe the most profound and sublime thirty seconds of my life. I actually choke up a bit when thinking about it.

I don't know where you are these days, Dr. Haffner. But I hope you are well.

Holding On

His voice was tired and weak. An old friend had called just to chat; among what we spoke about were his upcoming medical tests. "They're looking at my heart, Marty. I don't know what they expect to find." He sounded sad, alone, and isolated, if that makes sense.

I begin to understand the despondency which seems to come with age. This friend, a man I've know over 50 years now, was clearly feeling down not just physically but psychologically too. And I began to feel down for him. It does make you think just that much harder about the passing of time, of things gone by never, it may feel, to be again. With that comes doubt. Doubt is scary.

C. S. Lewis I believe spoke of obstinancy in belief. If I take it rightly he meant that sometimes all we can do is hold on tight to what we know is true and damn the torpedoes. There are days when that's just all we have. In this case, it means remembering that this world, though important, isn't the end. We have a journey here and what we do and say and think and experience is critical. Yet it isn't all. There is more, and greater, on the horizon.

I promised my old buddy prayers and I will say them. I will also try very hard to be obstinate. I hope he can be too.

The hubris of the do-gooders

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may 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. Their 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.

- C. S. Lewis

Please indulge me that somewhat lengthy quote, but I find it very applicable to recent history. Since COVID we seem cursed by those in positions of power who apparently feel they know better for us than we do for ourselves. And they appear quite certain of themselves indeed.

Follow the science! Not that science which clearly states that there are only two genders and that human women have human babies of course. Well established criteria are noxious and foreign to them while concepts rushed and obviously in flux (Do masks make a difference or not? Will the vaccine keep me from getting the disease or not?) are beyond criticism. That's precisely how they try to shove us into a box, treating us like 'infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals'. I suspect, however, like Ernst Blofeld and his cat, they treat their animals with greater respect.

Or are we just, and by just I mean only, animals to them? That's my great fear. Are we nothing more than creatures who might, who must, who can only be, ordered about because they, the faux scientists and very real gender benders, know best, have cornered truth? It is a scary thought. Are they 'omnipotent moral busybodies' whose hubris will not, cannot allow them to consider that they may be wrong? If so, they are exactly the wrong types of people to be in government or the Centers For Disease Control. Or running Facebook and Twitter.

Their very kindness stings with intolerable insult. My dear Mr. Lewis, you certainly do know how turn a phrase.

The Bleeding Charity

“Then do. At once. Ask for the Bleeding Charity. Everything is here for the asking and nothing can be bought.”

The above quote is from The Great Divorce, an intriguing novel from Mr. C. S. Lewis. It isn't about divorce as you likely might think, but about the divorce, the gulf, between Heaven and Hell. The quote comes in response to a soul which is rejecting the offer of grace due to his own pride. The man wouldn't request God's great gift because he didn't take bleedin' charity. The scene is very fitting for this or any Easter Day.

God has offered us everything we could ever want, a happy and eternal life, if we would just take it. All we have to do is follow His commands, be sorry for our sins and try to make ourselves better. He knows He won't get perfection but He does expect the effort. He is willing to help us make the effort. All we have to do, as the priest told us at Mass today, is receive it. Receive His love and we will be given it in the form of complete and total happiness. It is, yes, charity.

And that is my Easter message to you. Ask for it. At once. Ask for the Bleeding Charity. 

The Simple Truth

There is only one thing which it takes courage to say and that is a truism.

- G. K. Chesterton

Chesterton had a way about him, didn't he? He could cut to the chase better than anyone, and today's quote is a prime example of that.

Why is it so hard to mouth a truism? All truth is built on things so obvious that no rational mind would reject them. Call them truisms, axioms, first principles, self evidence; it's all the same thing. And all reason is built upon them. All that an anti-abortion activist need point out is that human beings have human babies and all other truths about the pro-life issue fall squarely into place. For the rational mind, that is. That's why so many pro-abortion activists are simply shrill. They have no rational option to offer.

Still, I can see where speaking a truism can be difficult. There is a degree to which they appear too simple, and simplicity can be scary exactly because of that. Another great British Christian, Mr. C. S. Lewis, famously remarked that he was never less sure of an issue than right after he had successfully defended it. That makes sense to me. It's daunting to believe that's that's all there is to it, so to speak. There's a part of us which has trouble believing the great questions have simple answers. The questions appear, at a glance, too great to have answers so obvious.

That's where trust comes in. No matter how obvious something may be, scientifically, philosophically, or theologically, we have to take a leap of faith to fully accept it. We see what seem to be apparent complications in the world and have a tough time cutting through all that noise to understand truth. That is why, to employ Mr. Lewis again, we must be obstinate in belief. Until the proof is incontrovertible that our position is wrong, then believe it is right. There's no shame in that. Why ought anyone abandon a position merely because the wind might be blowing against them?

There's no point making the world a more complicated place that it may seem, and certainly no point complicating issues through nothing more than ignorance and human frailty. The truth is indeed out there. It can be expressed in the most simple ways as well. Take strength in that. Take that leap of faith.

We know not what

C. S. Lewis speaks of something which, in German, is called Sehnsucht. He translates that as the inconsolable longing. It is a wish, says Wikipedia, for we know not what. But we know not what, don't we? And it hurts very deeply, doesn't it?

We want what we cannot on this earth have. We want to be free and brave and bold and happy. We want peace and love; we want there to be no hunger or strife in the world. We want to be with our friends and families always, doing only the good things, the things which will make us truly happy. Simply, we want all the things not fully available in this world.

Lewis takes that a step farther. He argues, quite sensibly, one should think, that we would not have such a feeling if it were not possible that such a feeling could not somehow, someday, be assuaged. We live and love today, in this world, under these circumstances; but it is all so incomplete. Yet we hope there is more. But more than hope; in our hearts, we know there is more.

That is why we so often feel sad even with good things in good times. We're wistful. We have the knowledge that things ought to be better. We know that there has to be a somewhere where things are as they should be. We sense it; we feel it; we are, by a very taut cord, spiritually attached to it. It is there. It has Being.

And we are nonetheless detached from it as long as we live on this world. Therein lies the pain, the yearning; the inconsolable longing. We know that it is possible, indeed, we know that it is likely (if we know anything at all) and true. We know that things are not as they should be. We know that someday it will all be put to right.

If we wish it only because we need a sense of the ideal in order to make it day to day this world, and nothing more, then our actions are vain. Only if things will be as they should be in the end can any of our hopes and dreams and fancies of this world have meaning. Pretending is merely a child's game, a fool's errand. Only if we trust that that something better, that more perfect reality, exists, will our labors and sentiments be of value.

The inconsolable longing. It hurts. Hopefully you have it and hurt as well.

The religion of Mr. Lewis

If it isn't obvious enough by now, I am a huge fan of Mr. C. S. Lewis. My wife found a copy of The Screwtape Letters at a garage sale almost 30 years ago: I read it and was hooked. As is my usual habit when I discover an author I like, I proceeded to seek out and read all of his books.

I haven't quite made it. Not being particularly interested I have never read any of his books in his academic specialty, Medieval and Renaissance literature. And two of his books, Dymer and Spirits in Bondage, being published early on in his career and before his reconversion to Christianity, well, I haven't honestly looked very hard for them. I have read a passage from Dymer and it sounds interesting, though.

I cannot begin to tell you enough about a later edition of Screwtape which includes the addendum Screwtape Proposes a Toast. As it happens he was addressing American education, and was dead on in his assessment. I have used his arguments there quite often in my dealings with, ahem, modern educators.

The Abolition of Man may be the best work of nonfiction outside of the Bible. Mr. Lewis' defense of the doctrine of objective knowledge is far more fantastic and profound than the small book in which he delivers it. In short, I adore the man, and must credit him to a great degree in cementing my belief in God.

Yet there is a skeleton in the closet which most of his admirers, Catholic and Protestant alike, tend to downplay or ignore. And that is his refusal to make pronouncements about certain particulars of Christian doctrine. He asserts that he is not enough of a theologian to do so.

I am not aware that one must be a theologian in order to understand most theology. I understand, as a Catholic, that the consecrated host is really the Body of Christ. Lewis famously says in regards to this that Christ's directive is, take, eat, not take, understand. I say with all due respect that he rather begs the question. Why would God not want us to understand? Wouldn't we want that closer relationship with Him?

Much of it can be linked to the psychology of Mr. Lewis I'm sure. Dr. Joseph Pearce wrote a very good book called C. S. Lewis and the Church of Rome which deals with the issue of why Lewis never became Catholic as he certainly was very close to it. Dr. Pearce's answer was, essentially, because of Lewis' background and his Ulster stubbornness (he was from Northern Ireland).

I would have to agree. And I don't mean that without sympathy: sometimes, and I say this with absolutely no disrespect intended, invincible ignorance gets in our way. Lewis may not have had the capacity to take that next step; it's the same as I think of my dear maternal grandfather who, though he came to accept and respect my father's Catholicism, could not be expected to easily let go of his Southern Baptist background. Thankfully, God will accept us on those terms, if the situation is real and sincere, and not an intentional blindness.

That question, can anybody get to Heaven?, used to plague me yet now I can accept it. But even in that light, we still must address our skeletons as honestly and openly as we can. C. S. Lewis did what he could with what he had, and has accomplished with it a far sight more than anything most of us have managed. So he perhaps could not take that last step towards full Christianity. How many of us can? It is an area in which we must be supremely grateful for God's mercy.

Hell and the petty bureaucrat

"Who can endure a doctrine which would allow only dentists to say whether our teeth were aching, only cobblers to say whether our shoes hurt us, and only governments to tell us whether we were being well governed?" -C. S. Lewis

This isn't the quote we were seeking. Yet it will have to do, and is a decent enough lead in to the subject we wish to address today. The quote we wanted, and we confess right off that this will be a horrible paraphrase of it, dealt with Lewis, speaking through his famous character Screwtape, on the power of bureaucracy. Lewis seems to fear not the Hitlers of the world, but the mousey little bureaucrats who actually run so much of it. He despises the small, well manicured, spectacled man in an office who will not allow another man, a fellow citizen, the right to chop down a tree on his own land to make boards to fix his own steps (or outbuilding or some such) without the proper permits and permissions.

Such folk can so easily be made to appear comic; indeed, Douglas Adams (if we may cross reference the views of a devout Christian with those of a rabid atheist) makes light of them rather well in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Unfortunately, such an interpretation isn't so useful as that of Mr. Lewis. The bureaucrat is far more dangerous than funny. And the government is brimming with them.

We have witnessed both attempts and triumphs by similar elected politicians (and all too often merely appointed civil servants) to force people to drink no more than 16 ounces of a soft drink at a time. We see leaders who don't want to find any trans fats in our food. We find officials who don't want us mowing our lawns or filling our cars with gas on ozone action days. And you don't even have to go to the newest suburbs to hear wails against urban sprawl. Yet what might these all have in common with Hitler?

Only the simple fact that they're all arguably tyrannical people committing arguably tyrannical actions.

Liberals cannot, or choose not, to see this. Overt and powerful evil, yes, they recognize quite readily. But who wouldn't? Hitler, Mao, Stalin; only a true fool could not see the threats they were. Yet our leftist friends do not see the petty tyrant. The truth is, they encourage him. Or her, lest the speakers of the v-word be insulted by a mere masculine reference made with no intention to offend.

To be sure, any one of these actions seen by itself doesn't seem so bad. Some of them indeed may not be bad. Any one by itself might even simply be a misplaced emphasis, may only be mere stupidity, or may even be honest good intention. It is all too easy to say of any individual person or instance, they mean well. Still, the question rarely asked is whether any of them ought to be the province or persons of government and the bureaucracy at all, and if so, which ones really.

What is also overlooked is that no matter what they mean, they may be a symptom of a greater disease. Every petty action by every petty official seen against the big picture demonstrates that small evils may lead to larger ones. Little Hitlers may one day become big Hitlers. It may well be, it likely as not is, that not a one of these people understand that their little sin against their fellow man can lead to far worse sins against him or the world.

Skin cancers by and large are the most curable of cancers. Yet if one ignores the blemish on their arm, thinking that it's nothing and could not possibly come to harm and thus pays it no mind, what will happen? Several years later doctors will be telling him that they can do nothing for him. But if he had done something about it when he first noticed it...

This is not to say that every bureaucrat or indeed every liberal thinker (in the modern American sense of the term anyway) is an evil person, or that every act of theirs must lead to tyranny. But it is meant to caution us that sometimes things do go in directions which we cannot immediately envision, that we are responsible not only for the direct effects of our actions but also for the sometimes unpredictable consequences of them, and that the road to Hell is indeed paved with the best of intentions.

None of that will matter when and if an American or Canadian or British Hitler rises to power. Yet the truly sad thing is, should that actually happen, no one will claim to have seen it coming. They will be all too correct.

Is God God, or am I God?

There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done.'

- C. S. Lewis

I have long believed that there is only one God. There can only be One; Plato eons ago rightly pointed out that perfection implies singularity, as multiplicity must infer defect. To wit, complexity must allow for great error because there are so many parts of it. There's more to go wrong. Conversely, One Whole Something must be essentially simple so that nothing can be wrong with it.

Ignore for the moment any pleas within your mind which may ask, so which God is God? I am merely establishing that there can only be one. Christ, Yahweh, Allah; Animism and Mother Earth: we can deal with all that another time. What I am concerned with here is how this truth affects us in our day to day actions.

When we discuss morality it often seems to devolve into an us against them rant. "Who made you God?", we may often be asked. The reply "Who made you?" generally is left unasked, yet is just as fair. Be that as it may, the overall implication is that that other person doesn't have to listen to you because you aren't the final arbiter of right and wrong and, further, that maybe there isn't actually a God for us to bother about anyway.

That is dangerous on two fronts. The first is that you never, ever want to even broach the idea that you are God. The second is that it begs that question of who is. To the former, what kind of God would you be if you did in fact call the shots? Could you stay good with all the power that implies at your control? To the latter, if there is a God who can make those calls, hadn't we best find out who He is and what He wants? For surely our poor opinions and actions would pale next to His.

Still, God allows us some share of that power. He will, as Lewis says above, tell you 'thy will be done', and cast you off. He will allow you your choice on the ultimate matter: to be with Him or not. You can be the god of your own destiny.

But ask yourself whether you would like where the trail must lead.

Religion and Mercy

If it isn't obvious enough by now, I am a huge fan of Mr. C. S. Lewis. My wife found a copy of The Screwtape Letters at a garage sale almost 30 years ago, and I read and was hooked. As is my usual habit when I discover an author I like, I proceeded to seek out and read all of his books.

I haven't quite made it. Not being interested I have never read any of his books in his academic specialty, Medieval and Renaissance literature. And two of his books, Dymer and Spirits in Bondage, being published early on in his career and before his reconversion to Christianity, well, I haven't honestly looked very hard for them. I have read a passage from Dymer and it sounds interesting, though.

I cannot begin to tell you enough about a later edition of Screwtape which includes the addendum Screwtape Proposes a Toast. As it happens he was addressing American education, and was dead on in his assessment. I have used his arguments there quite often in my dealings with, ahem, modern educators.

The Abolition of Man may be the best work of nonfiction outside of the Bible. Mr. Lewis' defense of the doctrine of objective knowledge is far more fantastic and profound than the small book in which he delivers it. In short, I adore the man, and must credit him to a great degree in cementing my belief in God.

Yet there is a skeleton in the closet which most of his admirers, Catholic and Protestant alike, tend to downplay or ignore. And that is his refusal to make pronouncements about certain particulars of Christian doctrine. He asserts that he is not enough of a theologian to do so.

I am not aware that one must be a theologian in order to understand most theology. I understand, as a Catholic, that the consecrated host is really the Body of Christ. Lewis famously says in regards to this that Christ's directive is, take, eat, not take, understand. I say with all due respect that he rather begs the question. Why would God not want us to understand? Wouldn't we want that closer relationship with Him?

Much of it can be linked to the psychology of Mr. Lewis I'm sure. Dr. Joseph Pearce wrote a very good book called C. S. Lewis and the Church of Rome which deals with the issue of why Lewis never became Catholic as he certainly was very close to it. Dr. Pearce's answer was, essentially, because of Lewis' background and his Ulster stubbornness (he was from Northern Ireland).

I would have to agree. And I don't mean that without sympathy: sometimes, and I say this with absolutely no disrespect intended, invincible ignorance gets in our way. Lewis may not have had the capacity to take that next step; it's the same as I think of my dear maternal grandfather who, though he came to accept and respect my father's Catholicism, could not be expected to easily let go of his Southern Baptist background. Thankfully, God will accept us on those terms, if the situation is real and sincere, and not an intentional blindness.

That question used to plague me yet now I can accept it. But even in that light, we still must address our skeletons as honestly and openly as we can. C. S. Lewis did what he could with what he given, and had accomplished with it a far sight more than anything most of us have managed. So he perhaps could not take that last step towards full Christianity. How many of us can? It is an area in which we must be supremely grateful for God's mercy.

That Inconsolable Longing

C. S. Lewis speaks of something which, in German, is called Sehnsucht. He translates that as the inconsolable longing. It is a wish, says Wikipdeia, for we know not what. But we know not what, don't we? And it hurts very deeply, doesn't it?

We want what we cannot on this earth have. We want to be free and brave and bold and happy. We want peace and love; we want there to be no hunger or strife in the world. We want to be with our friends and families always, doing only the good things, the things which will make us truly happy. Simply, we want all the things not fully available in this world.

Lewis takes that a step farther. He argues, quite sensibly, one should think, that we would not have such a feeling if it were not possible that such a feeling could not somehow, someday, be assuaged. We live and love today, in this world, under these circumstances; but it is all so incomplete. Yet we hope there is more. But more than hope; in our hearts, we know it is there.

That is why we so often feel sad. We have that knowledge that things ought to be better. We know that there has to be a somewhere where things are as they should be. We sense it; we feel it; we are, by a very taut cord, attached to it. It is there. It has Being.

And we are detached from it as long as we live on this world. Therein lies the pain, the yearning; the inconsolable longing. We know that it is possible, indeed, we know that it is likely (if we know anything at all) and true. We know that things are not as they should be. We know that someday it will all be put to right.

If we wish it yet only because we need that sense of the ideal in order to make it day to day this world, and nothing more, then our actions are vain. Only if things will be as they should be in the end will any of our hopes and dreams and fancies of this world have meaning. Pretending is merely a child's game, a fool's errand. Only if we trust that that something better, that more perfect reality, exists, will our labors and sentiments be of value.

The inconsolable longing. It hurts. Hopefully you have it and hurt as well.

Clive Staples Lewis

Joy is the serious business of Heaven.

We think that what we do here on Earth means something. And it does, to be sure. But not what we believe of it.

A smile, a glance, a kind word. Very important little moments. And very small just the same.

All the while these moments make us very happy. But why?

Because they are glimpses of a very real and true happiness which we all sense, which we all fathom quite profoundly even when we refuse to allow that it exists.

Many people remember JFK fifty years later. They do not remember another soul lost to the world that same day.

They should.

Paved With Good Intentions

"Who can endure a doctrine which would allow only dentists to say whether our teeth were aching, only cobblers to say whether our shoes hurt us, and only governments to tell us whether we were being well governed?" -C. S. Lewis

This isn't the quote we were seeking. Yet it will have to do, and is a decent enough lead in to the subject we wish to address today. The quote we wanted, and we confess right off that this will be a horrible paraphrase of it, dealt with Lewis, speaking through his famous character Screwtape, on the power of bureaucracy. Lewis seems to fear not the Hitlers of the world, but the mousey little bureaucrats who actually run so much of it. He despises the small, well manicured, spectacled man in an office who will not allow another man, a fellow citizen, the right to chop down a tree on his own land to make boards to fix his own steps (or outbuilding or some such) without the proper permits and permissions.

Such folk can so easily be made to appear comic; indeed, Douglas Adams (if we may cross reference the views of a devout Christian with those of a rabid atheist) makes light of them rather well in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Unfortunately, such an interpretation isn't so useful as that of Mr. Lewis. The bureaucrat is far more dangerous than funny. And the government is brimming with them.

We have witnessed both attempts and triumphs by similar elected politicians (and all too often merely appointed civil servants) to force people to drink no more than 16 ounces of a soft drink at a time. We see leaders who don't want to find any trans fats in our food. We find officials who don't want us mowing our lawns or filling our cars with gas on ozone action days. And you don't even have to go to the newest suburbs to hear wails against urban sprawl. Yet what might these all have in common with Hitler?

Only the simple fact that they're all arguably tyrannical people committing arguably tyrannical actions.

Liberals cannot, or choose not, to see this. Overt and powerful evil, yes, they recognize quite readily. But who wouldn't? Hitler, Mao, Stalin; only a true fool could not the threats they were. Yet our leftist friends do not see the petty tyrant. The truth is, they encourage him. Or her, lest the speakers of the v-word be insulted by a mere masculine reference made with no intention to offend.

To be sure, any one of these actions seen by itself doesn't seem so bad. Some of them indeed may not be bad. Any one by itself might even simply be a misplaced emphasis, may only be mere stupidity, or may even be honest good intention. It is all too easy to say of any individual person or instance, they mean well. Still, the question rarely asked is whether any of them ought to be the province of government and the bureaucracy at all, and if so, which ones really.

What is also overlooked is that no matter what they mean, they may be a symptom of a greater disease. Every petty action by every petty official seen against the big picture demonstrates that small evils may lead to larger ones. Little Hitlers may one day become big Hitlers. It may well be, in fact, it likely as not is, that not a one of these people understand that their little sin against their fellow man can lead to far worse sins against him.

Skin cancers by and large are the most curable of cancers. Yet if one ignores the blemish on their arm, thinking that it's nothing and could not possibly come to harm and thus pays it no mind, what will happen? Several years later doctors will telling him that they can do nothing for him. But if he had done something about it when he first noticed it...

This is not to say that every bureaucrat or indeed every liberal thinker (in the modern American sense of the word anyway) is an evil person, or that every act of theirs must lead to tyranny. But it is meant to caution us that sometimes things do go in directions which we cannot immediately envision, that we are responsible not only for the direct effects of our actions but also for the sometimes unpredictable consequences of them, and that the road to Hell is indeed paved with the best of intentions.

None of that will matter when and if an American or Canadian or British Hitler rises to power. Yet the truly sad thing is, should that actually happen, no one will claim to have seen it coming. They will be all too correct.

The Road to Hell

"Who can endure a doctrine which would allow only dentists to say whether our teeth were aching, only cobblers to say whether our shoes hurt us, and only governments to tell us whether we were being well governed?" -C. S. Lewis

This isn't the quote we were seeking. Yet it will have to do, and is a decent enough lead in to the subject we wish to address today. The quote we wanted, and we confess right off that this will be a horrible paraphrase of it, dealt with Lewis, speaking through his famous character Screwtape, on the power of bureaucracy. Lewis seems to fear not the Hitlers of the world, but the mousey little bureaucrats who actually run so much of it. He despises the small, well manicured, spectacled man in an office who will not allow another man, a fellow citizen, the right to chop down a tree on his own land to make boards to fix his own steps (or outbuilding or some such) without the proper permits and permissions.

Such folk can so easily be made to appear comic; indeed, Douglas Adams (if we may cross reference the views of a devout Christian with those of a rabid atheist) makes light of them rather well in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Unfortunately, such an interpretation isn't so useful as that of Mr. Lewis. The bureaucrat is far more dangerous than funny. And the government is brimming with them.

We have witnessed both attempts and triumphs by similar elected politicians (and all too often merely appointed civil servants) to force people to drink no more than 16 ounces of a soft drink at a time. We see leaders who don't want to find any trans fats in our food. We find officials who don't want us mowing our lawns or filling our cars with gas on ozone action days. And you don't even have to go to the newest suburbs to hear wails against urban sprawl. Yet what might these all have in common with Hitler?

Only the simple fact that they're all arguably tyrannical people committing arguably tyrannical actions.

Liberals cannot, or choose not, to see this. Overt and powerful evil, yes, they recognize quite readily. But who wouldn't? Hitler, Mao, Stalin; only a true fool could not see the threats they were. Yet our leftist friends do not see the petty tyrant. The truth is, they encourage him. Or her, lest the speakers of the v-word be insulted by a mere masculine reference made with no intention to offend.

To be sure, any one of these actions seen by itself doesn't seem so bad. Some of them indeed may not be bad. Any one by itself might even simply be a misplaced emphasis, may only be mere stupidity, or may even be honest good intention. It is all too easy to say of any individual person or instance, they mean well. Still, the question rarely asked is whether any of them ought to be the province of government and the bureaucracy at all, and if so, which ones really.

What is also overlooked is that no matter what they mean, they may be a symptom of a greater disease. Every petty action by every petty official seen against the big picture demonstrates that small evils may lead to larger ones. Little Hitlers may one day become big Hitlers. It may well be, it likely as not is, that not a one of these people understand that their little sin against their fellow man can lead to far worse sins against him or the world.

Skin cancers by and large are the most curable of cancers. Yet if one ignores the blemish on their arm, thinking that it's nothing and could not possibly come to harm and thus pays it no mind, what will happen? Several years later doctors will telling him that they can do nothing for him. But if he had done something about it when he first noticed it...

This is not to say that every bureaucrat or indeed every liberal thinker (in the modern American sense of the word anyway) is an evil person, or that every act of theirs must lead to tyranny. But it is meant to caution us that sometimes things do go in directions which we cannot immediately envision, that we are responsible not only for the direct effects of our actions but also for the sometimes unpredictable consequences of them, and that the road to Hell is indeed paved with the best of intentions.

None of that will matter when and if an American or Canadian or British Hitler rises to power. Yet the truly sad thing is, should that actually happen, no one will claim to have seen it coming. They will be all too correct.