Pick Your Poison

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

C.S. Lewis’ famous quote:

 “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.”

 Seems appropriate for this election: Trump versus Hillary. 

 Joe Doakes

Although Sanders probably most perfectly fits the definition of “moral busybody”, as opposed to “self-aggrandizing megalomaniac” or “political robber-baroness”.

17 thoughts on “Pick Your Poison

  1. DMA, sTrumpet is more of an amoral busybody. Besides, nobody, not even him I bet,. knows what he will be busying about.

  2. There is a quote that says, paraphrased, “The greatest danger to our Democracy comes not from wild eyed fanatics from without, but from well intentioned, but ignorant leaders from within.”

    I have tried to find it several times because it is so insightful, but I can’t. I think it was a SCOTUS justice.

  3. I see Sanders is anxious to debate Trump. As entertaining a time-waster as that might be, I don’t see it happening. My question: do we believe there will even be debates if it is Trump vs. Hillary?

  4. Swiftee, great quote. Very, very insightful, true and appropo to current events. Need to find an original.

  5. I think that Lewis was off-base, here. Lewis did make errors. His review of Orwell’s Ninetween Eighty-Four gets the reason why Orwell brought in the Julia character all wrong (he thought it was to introduce a pop-culture ‘love’ angle).
    Lewis assumes good faith on the part of the tyrant who exercises control over us for our own good. The only place we ever observe this is in family relationship, where we assume a commonality of interests. The parent loves the child and so on.
    The tyranny of the fascists was not exercised for the good of any individual, but for the good of the race or nation, and that was transcended the good of the individual. The tyranny of the Marxists was not done for the good of the workers, but to satisfy the demands of history.

  6. Excellent point, Bento. So, Mitch, do you seriously think the “tyranny” of someone like Trudeau was worse than that of Mao, Hitler or Stalin? Did they profess to be doing their evil “for the good of those” whom they oppressed/killed? No, not really, Mao a little, but only a little. When they starved 10 million people the communist Chinese didn’t try to say, “we’re starving you for your own good.”

    This is just fodder for your own disdain for social welfare support programs. Of those who would engage in demagogic oratory promising that what he/she would do is, “for our own good” I probably would struggle to have enough time to find the find all of the statements made by Trump. (these are paraphrases but they are honest) “We should close down the borders to keep out the rapists.” “We don’t know where Barack Obama was borne, it’s a big deal”, “We should prevent all Muslims from entering the country until our leaders figure out what’s going on” (As if we don’t know what happened in San Bernadino). “We should bomb the hell out of ISIS”, “Japan and South Korea should have nuclear weapons.” “Torture works, I’d do a helluva lot more than water boarding” All of these are EXTREME positions which Trump justifies by saying we NEED it, it’s for our own good. Those stances violate the constitution, violate (illegally) treaties we’ve signed, violate basic standards of conduct, make certain people those to be hated, which is EXACTLY the kind of thing people like Hitler did. As one of your commenters said, I think Trump doesn’t know what he’s going to say (or do) from one moment to the next. He’s a clown, and worse he’s an unhinged clown who doesn’t have any respect for the law or decent, lawful, or moral conduct. He creates division and is so obviously the cult of personality that is how we get folks like Mussolini. And Mitch, THAT is the worst kind of tyrant. I don’t like Hillary Clinton, I’ll hold my nose and vote for her, but there’s 0 chance in 100 that I’d ever want someone like Trump as President.

    In the end, he’s unstable/unpredictable and so clearly a fraud about his “love” of the middle class. His proposal is to reduce wages as the way to bring about increasing US manufacturing. So, the solution to low wages where the top is pocketing all of the money supposedly to offer up better paying jobs (which never appear), well the way to cure those low wages, is to reduce wages.

  7. Pen,

    If you’re reading this: Tell DG that she should really start reading the threads she writes in after she writes in them.

    Thanks!

    So, Mitch, do you seriously think the “tyranny” of someone like Trudeau was worse than that of Mao, Hitler or Stalin?

    Um…no?

    And you are aware that Joe Doakes wrote this – right?

  8. Did they profess to be doing their evil “for the good of those” whom they oppressed/killed? No, not really, Mao a little, but only a little.

    Did you never read Mein Kampf? Or watch Triumph of the Will? He believed it, and professed exactly that, repeatedly.

    Not sure about Stalin, at least from his own lips, but then by the time he took over Lenin had pretty much taken the government’s gloves off (and Lenin was an extraordinarily, pathologically unsentimental dictator himself).

    So the direct answer to your question is “well, some of them…”

  9. When they starved 10 million people the communist Chinese didn’t try to say, “we’re starving you for your own good.”

    Well, I guess that invalidates the entire premise.

    Pardon the mild sarcasm.

    Although, Pen, you do realize many American leftists in the sixties did excuse Mao for his crimes against humanity (the ones they acknowledged) as being for the Chinese peoples’ good – right?

  10. This is just fodder for your own disdain for social welfare support programs.

    I can’t speak to Joe’s motivations – but no, it’s “fodder” (I’d say “evidence”) for my disdain for tyranny, whether mild or harsh.

  11. Of those who would engage in demagogic oratory promising that what he/she would do is, “for our own good” I probably would struggle to have enough time to find the find all of the statements made by Trump. (these are paraphrases but they are honest) “We should close down the borders to keep out the rapists.” “We don’t know where Barack Obama was borne, it’s a big deal”, “We should prevent all Muslims from entering the country until our leaders figure out what’s going on” (As if we don’t know what happened in San Bernadino). “We should bomb the hell out of ISIS”, “Japan and South Korea should have nuclear weapons.” “Torture works, I’d do a helluva lot more than water boarding” All of these are EXTREME positions which Trump justifies by saying we NEED it, it’s for our own good.

    After all these years, and hundreds (?) of comments, I have to say – I don’t disagree.

  12. And Mitch, THAT is the worst kind of tyrant.

    While I understand hyperbole (!), my vote for “worst tyrant” goes to the ones that gas, shoot, starve and otherwise murder people by the millions.

    Know-nothing populism is usually a bad thing, but I’m gonna draw a line between Trump and Stalin.

    I don’t like Hillary Clinton, I’ll hold my nose and vote for her, but there’s 0 chance in 100 that I’d ever want someone like Trump as President.

    I’m not thrilled with either of them. It’s going to be an interesting summer.

  13. “All of these are EXTREME positions which Trump justifies by saying we NEED it, it’s for our own good.”
    By definition, if a majority, or a large minority, hold certain political positions, they cannot be ‘extreme.’
    Unless you believe a position can be both ‘extreme’ and ‘mainstream.’

  14. Peevish and DG are both left-wing EXTREMISTS who call the narrow band of orthodoxy surrounding their EXTREME views “the center” and all else is beyond the pale. It is difficult for them to participate in a reasoned dialog.

  15. Lewis was a Modern who saw things in Medieval terms. Orwell was a Modern who saw things in Modern terms. Orwell is much better on state power and its misuse. There is a gulf between the author of Down and Out in Paris and London and Nineteen Eighty-Four. The author of Down and Out in Paris and London saw the answer for society’s ills in socialism. The author of Nineteen Eighty-Four saw the end point of socialism in brutal totalitarianism. The difference between the two authors is best expressed in his short essay “Catastrophic Gradualism” (1946) (http://wikilivres.ca/wiki/Catastrophic_Gradualism). It’s thesis is that the future is unknowable, so engaging in wickedness in order to produce a good result is nonsense. It is the closest thing to a conservative argument I have ever read from Orwell, because it leaves only traditional morality as a guide to behavior. You don’t drop atomic bombs on Japan to bring about a future without war, you drop atomic bombs on Japan because Japan must be defeated, and atomic bombs are the most morally acceptable way to defeat Japan. Only sentimentality needs to be justified, not history (communism) and not nature (fascism).

  16. When they starved 10 million people the communist Chinese didn’t try to say, “we’re starving you for your own good.”

    Go figure that Pen doesn’t remember his Marxist ideology. When the Soviets started ten milllion kulaks, and then when Stalin killed twenty million or so more in the gulags, and when Mao got fifty million people (not ten million, ahem) killed in the Cultural Revolution and other abominations, the justification was that it was a perfectly appropriate war on the entrepreneurial classes, the bourgeoisie. So yes, the most brutal mass murders in history were in fact justified with a “this is for your own good.” That’s the argument made in the rice paddies as they “re-educated” the white collar and entrepreneurial classes.

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