Posted on 04/08/2020 6:11:21 AM PDT by Kaslin
It was not unusual in ancient times for individuals to sell themselves into servitude -- as “bondservants” -- which was often described as a form of slavery. Usually this was due to excessive debt, but sometimes it was done simply to have a roof over one’s head and food in one’s belly. In other words, for millennia, in order to satisfy their most basic needs, human beings have often been willing to suffer under many a heavy yoke. As C.S. Lewis put it, “A hungry man thinks about food, not freedom.”
In today’s Wuhan virus-driven hysteria, a corollary to Lewis’s above quote would be, “One living in a pandemic thinks about remaining healthy, not about freedom.” Writing about the “great issues” of his day, Lewis wrote in 1940, “Lord! How I loathe great issues… 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?”
Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute John G. West writes that, “According to stepson David Gresham, Lewis was skeptical of politicians and not really interested in current events. His concern was not policy but principle; political problems of the day were interesting to him only insofar as they involved matters that endured.”
Nevertheless, West adds that Lewis did indeed have a “great deal” to say about politics, writing about such things as crime, obscenity, capital punishment, communism, fascism, socialism, war, the welfare state, and so on. Lewis’s political efforts resulted in “enduring political standards for all time.”
Nowhere is this clearer, West states, than in Lewis’s writings on tyranny and morality. According to West, Lewis was particularly concerned with the tyranny that could result from the union of modern science and the modern state.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Indeed. Technocrats running amok is a HUGE reason why the Swamp is a problem.
Every profession is a conspiracy against the public.
Scientists and experts are highly specialized in their individual field(s) but no more all-knowing than the next person.
We have so many instances now, and they truly give science and scientists a bad name. Yes, I was trained as a scientist, you have a problem with that?
They've been using "global warming"/"climate change" for a while, but now they've gotten their hands on this COVID-19 panic, and they are using it to full effect.
Where are your papers, and your mask, comrade? You seem to have a fever. Place your hands behind your back...
They are in fact not interested in the scientific process at all, just the outcomes that suit their agenda.
As Ayn Rand so perfectly warned in Atlas Shrugged...
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex . . Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades. In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
. . . the free university . . . has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity . . . The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money . . . is gravely to be regarded.
Yet . . . we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite. Eisenhower’s Farewell Address
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