Help me out, here

[Dill]

(12-11-2021, 10:01 PM)michaelsean Wrote: I’m sure most here are aware of this quote, but I like it so I’ll throw it out there again

“My contention is that good men (not bad men) consistently acting upon that position [imposing “the good”] 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 barons cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some points be satiated; but those who torment us for their 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 likely 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 the 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.” CS Lewis

Lewis is a good writer, and this is good example of traditional British conservative thought. Updated Burke.

But I'd like to see Lewis' examples of a "tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims" which might "be the most oppressive" or act "as cruelly and unjustly as the greatest tyrants."  Like we're invited to analogize these do-gooders to Hitler. I'm guessing there aren't really any national examples; what he has in mind are social policy regimes in post-war Britain, constructed by sociologists and the socialist politicians who listened to them. 

Because Lewis is by no means against coercive laws which force individuals to behave in the interests of society, whether some individuals may think their interests are different or no. And he definitely thinks some people, many in fact, know what the interests of society are and what those laws should be, and that they should enforce them.

Rather, he has a problem with secular social scientists redefining crime as "disease" and punishment as "cure" and working up all manner of policies dedicated to our "safety." That's the wrong people doing it. 

I find it difficult to imagine even a modern, technologically advanced liberal democracy which could function without recognizing and even anticipating that there will be a clash between what individuals think their interests are and what the state thinks they are, or should be. 

No state can function, protect and serve, without some notion of the common good and attendant assumptions about what policies would be in people's "best interest." No conservative, liberal or socialist political theory could operate without positing such.