C. S. Lewis on Politics

When one thinks about the incomparable C. S. Lewis one normally thinks about the great Christian apologist that he was, or the author of famous children’s books, or the celebrated professor of English literature. One does not usually think of him as one who spoke or wrote much about political matters.

But he did. Scattered throughout his writings are various discussions about political matters, democracy, freedom, equality, law and justice, tyranny and the like. From talks he had given, or essays he had written, political matters quite often appear in the Lewis corpus.

And they are fully relevant for the times we now live in, especially as we see Statism on the rise, and the suppression of individual liberties. Here then are just a few of his writings on politics to whet your appetite for more. I urge you to try to read the whole context of each quote.

C.S. Lewis > Quotes > Quotable Quote
C.S. Lewis
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Nothing explains the horrors of Liberal leaders than this...

"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 [greed] 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."

Most folks end the quote there, but the nex paragraph is just as powerful.

"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."

-- C.S. Lewis, God In The Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics (1948)

Wonderful thoughts but how appropriate for our current multiple hoax crises as excuses for totalitarian rule? If we take the perception of reality of the Oligarchs and Mega Bankers behind all this, we are running out of money to fund the welfare state including life insurance funds which often serve as the financial backstop for our pensions, government, etc.

Who is the dictator when it is we with our entitlement mentality and dependence on the false promises of governments to continue to fund our pensions, medicare, social security, etc. when there is not enough money for that? We won’t let any politician tell us we have to reduce all these programs or we will throw them out of office. So, what good is democracy if it only perpetuates doom? It is not as CS Lewis poetically writes. Democracy is the problem, not the solution. It is we who are the dictators and tyrants of ourselves for wanting endless goodies that can no longer be afforded.

So government has been compelled into scaring us into austerity by hyperinflation, a phony epidemic which is nothing but the common flu, and manufactured race riots to get mainly Black citizens into the military instead of cutting their benefit programs off.

If we adjusted the virus deaths for the population bulge of the elderly baby boomers, for the increase in chronic illnesses of the elderly caused from taking too many drugs and antibiotics and poisonous foods, and for allowing waves of immigrants to enter the country with dormant tuberculosis that has the same symptoms as C-19, then there is no real net increase in virus deaths at all. But we don’t want to hear that we are the source of all of this, do we? Because we believe we are the good guys and are innocent, when we are not. So our tyrants tell us the population must be culled back. But who goes first? Government has now morphed into a secret society that is malevolent and not run for our welfare because we won’t let it be anything else but dysfunctional.

Nothing in our institutions is what it seems to be anymore. False epidemics, race riots, phony gendered leaders, feckless fake religion, etc. It is called a clown world.

Sorry, but I don’t buy CS Lewis’ depiction and diagnosis of our current situation, no matter how poetic.

They are both excellent books, but my personal favorite is "The Great Divorce". With "Til We Have Faces" close behind.

In fact, just about anything Lewis wrote is worth reading. Including, surprisingly, his volume of the Oxford History of English Literature - covering sixteenth century literature excluding drama, which was the only good stuff at the time. Most of the poets were crashing bores of whom no-one has ever heard unless they are in the business. Lewis made even *that* interesting, with a goodly helping of snark.

As it happens, the title of "That Hideous Strength" is taken from a very long and very dull poem by David Lindsay of The Mount, d. 1555. (Who? He was Lord Lyon King of Arms at one point, and a diplomat. But who?)

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