This Day In History: Jonathan Swift died on this day in 1745. He is best known for writing Gulliver's Travels, but he should also be known for writing one of the first ever political satires, "A Modest Proposal." At the time, England was imposing oppressive trade restrictions on the Irish, so Swift proposed a novel idea in order to stave of famine in Ireland.
A Modest Proposal For preventing the Children of Poor People From being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and For making them Beneficial to the Publick, commonly referred to as A Modest Proposal, suggests that the impoverished Irish might ease their economic troubles by selling their children as food to rich gentlemen and ladies. This satirical hyperbole mocked heartless attitudes towards the poor, predominantly Irish Catholic (i.e., "Papists") as well as British policy toward the Irish in general.
Swift's essay is widely held to be one of the greatest examples of sustained irony in the history of the English language. Much of its shock value derives from the fact that the first portion of the essay describes the plight of starving beggars in Ireland, so that the reader is unprepared for the surprise of Swift's solution when he states: "A young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee, or a ragout."
Swift goes to great lengths to support his argument, including a list of possible preparation styles for the children, and calculations showing the financial benefits of his suggestion.
Swift's essay created a backlash within the community after its publication. The work was aimed at the aristocracy, and they responded in turn. Several members of society wrote to Swift regarding the work.
The 2012 horror film Butcher Boys, written by the original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre scribe Kim Henkel, is said to be an updating of Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal. Henkel imagined the descendants of folks who actually took Swift up on his proposal. The film opens with a quote from J. Swift.
Today in history: C.S. Lewis was born on this day in 1898.
David V. Urban writes:
Most of us are familiar with C. S. Lewis and his enduringly popular Chronicles of Narnia, his Space Trilogy, his various works of Christian apologetics such as Mere Christianity, and his natural law classic, The Abolition of Man. But only a small fraction of Lewis' readers are aware that Lewis, for all his personal distaste for politics, fits soundly within the classical liberal and libertarian tradition of limited government and individual freedom. Lewis' libertarian views spring from his distrust in human nature.
Thankfully, in the past decade, several scholars have produced works that highlight Lewis' libertarian views. Two of the most helpful discussions of Lewis' libertarianism are offered by David J. Theroux, C. S. Lewis on Mere Liberty and the Evils of Statism and Justin Buckley Dyer and Micah J. Watson's C. S. Lewis on Politics and the Natural Law. My own discussion draws significantly from both these sources. Distrust of Human Nature First, we must recognize that Lewis' libertarian views spring from his distrust in human nature, a distrust grounded firmly in Lewis' Christian belief system. This is specifically true regarding the doctrine of humanity's fall and enduring sinfulness. Lewis begins his Spectator essay Equalityby pronouncing, "I am a Democrat because I believe in the Fall of Man."He specifically contrasts his philosophical motivations for democracy (as opposed to monarchy) with "people like Rousseau, who believed in democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that everyone deserved a share in the government." Rather, Lewis argues, "The real reason for democracy is just the reverse. Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters." Lewis believed that since humanity was corrupted by sin, it was a grave mistake to consolidate too much power into one person.
Significantly, Lewis explicitly includes himself among the unworthy would-be rulers. He writes, "I don't deserve a share in governing a hen-house, much less a nation." Lewis also believed that fallen human nature could undermine democracy. In Screwtape Proposes a Toast, Lewis specifically cautions against democracy's tendency to foster envy and punish individual achievement. Lewis Compared to Madison and Bastiat Lewis believed that because humanity was corrupted by sin, it was a grave mistake to consolidate too much power into one person or a small group. In this sense, Lewis' concerns resemble those which motivated James Madison in Federalist 51 to argue for the separation of governments and powers. Because of "human nature," writes Madison, men are not "angels," and therefore "Ambition must be made to counteract ambition." Similarly, Lewis' understanding of how corrupted human nature necessarily corrupts government leaders resembles that of Frédéric Bastiat, who writes in The Law:
If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?
The Natural Law Tradition Lewis' firm belief in human moral imperfection was a central aspect of his overall adherence to the natural law tradition, which holds that human conduct should be based on a set of unchanging moral principles. Lewis' own writings display a belief in limited government and a distrust of government-enforced morality.
As Dyer and Watson observe and as Lewis' English Literature of the Sixteenth Century demonstrates, one great natural law influence of Lewis was the Anglican clergyman Richard Hooker. But Dyer and Watson also stress Lewis' indebtedness to John Locke, whose classical liberalism stood in contrast to Thomas Hobbes' "statist solution" for resolving civil strife. Dyer and Watson wrote that "Locke's project was to limit government to the protection of individual natural rights." They note that "Locke explicitly tied" this belief to Hooker's natural law teachings even as they observe that Locke, unlike many in the classical natural law tradition, deemphasized "government's perfecting role." Against Theocracy and Technocracy Reflecting Locke's influence, Lewis' own writings display a belief in limited government and a distrust of government-enforced morality, a distrust again grounded in Lewis’ convictions regarding fallen humanity. In particular, Lewis was distrustful of theocracy and its abuses wrought by sanctimonious self-justifications. In his posthumously discovered "A Reply to Professor Haldane," Lewis writes:
I believe that no man or group of men is good enough to be trusted with uncontrolled power over others. And the higher the pretensions of such power, the more dangerous I think it to the rulers and to the subjects. Hence, theocracy is the worst of all governments . . . the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of power and fear for the voices of Heaven will torment us infinitely because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience and his better impulses appear to him as temptations.
But Lewis' fear of theocracy was exceeded by his fear of a moralistic scientific technocracy, a system Lewis believed a much greater threat to his day and age. In his 1959 letter to Chicago newspaperman Dan Tucker, Lewis writes:
I dread government in the name of science. That is how most tyrannies come in. In every age the men who want us under their thumb, if they have any sense, will put forward the particular pretension which the hopes and fears of that age render most potent. They "cash in." It has been magic, it has been Christianity. Now it will certainly be science.
In both these pieces, Lewis makes clear his concerns that a ruling elite will try to exert power over the populace as a whole by using the pretense of superior knowledge and moral, supernatural, and/or scientific authority.
Not surprisingly, Lewis also articulates such apprehensions in his writings published during World War II, a period that saw significant expansion of government power throughout Europe and America. In The Abolition of Man, Lewis highlights his concerns about the machinations of seemingly benevolent but ultimately totalitarian scientific bureaucracy that would seek to make obsolete church, family, and virtuous self-government. And in the final book of his Space Trilogy, That Hideous Strength, Lewis depicts a group of intellectual elites who attempt to use science to supplant the natural order. Lewis' larger concern was to decry state intrusion upon matters of personal morality. State-Enforced Morality Buckley and Watson also highlight how Lewis' beliefs regarding state enforcement of morality resemble the classical liberal convictions of John Stuart Mill and his harm principle, articulated in On Liberty, that "the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others." For Lewis, the harm principle manifests itself specifically regarding the controversial topics of divorce and homosexuality. For, despite Lewis' beliefs regarding both matters, he did not think the state should render either divorce or homosexual practice illegal. Rather, Lewis' larger concern was to decry state intrusion upon matters of personal morality. In a 1958 letter, Lewis writes:
No sin, simply as such should be made a crime. Who the deuce are our rulers to enforce their opinion of sin on us? . . . Government is at its best a necessary evil. Let's keep it in its place." In an earlier letter addressing homosexuality--which was not decriminalized in the UK until 1967--Lewis writes that criminalizing homosexual practice helps "nothing" and "only creates a blackmailer's paradise. Anyway, what business is it of the State's?
Addressing Great Britain's then-severe restrictions against divorce, Lewis in MereChristianity warns Christian voters and members of Parliament against trying "to force their views on the rest of the community by embodying them in the divorce laws." Quite simply, Lewis writes, people who are not Christians "cannot be expected to live Christian lives." Addressing marriage in the same paragraph, Lewis advocated for an explicit distinction between church and state. He writes:There ought to be two distinct kinds of marriage: one governed by the State with rules enforced on all citizens, the other governed by the Church with rules enforced by her on her own members. The distinction ought to be quite sharp so that a man knows which couples are married in a Christian sense and which are not. In light of Lewis' statements on these matters, certain scholars have speculated that Lewis would stand on the contemporary matter of same-sex marriage. Norman Horn suggests that Lewis would propose an approach to same-sex marriage that would emphasize freedom of association and would reflect the distinction between church and state that he made in Mere Christianity. With this distinction in mind, we may suggest that Lewis' objections regarding same-sex marriage would be more directed toward the practices of Christian churches than state legalization. At the same time, in light of Dyer and Watson's observation that, for Lewis, "The first purpose of limited government is to safeguard the sanctity of the Church," we may also surmise that Lewis would oppose any government mandate that would penalize churches or individual Christians that would refuse to participate in same-sex marriage ceremonies. For Lewis, any such mandate would be another manifestation of the state tyrannically enforcing morality and violating its appropriate limits.
David V. Urban is Professor of English at Calvin College. His earlier article on Shakespeare's problematic Henry V appears in Liberty Matters. He is a member of the FEE Faculty Network.
This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.
This Day in History: French judge, and writer Étienne de La Boétie was born on this day in 1530. In his very short life La Boétie has given the world one of the earliest and most sound critiques of governmental power: Discourse of Voluntary Servitude (Discours de la Servitude Volontaire).
In this writing he wonders, "how it happens that so many men, so many villages, so many cities, so many nations, sometimes suffer under a single tyrant who has no other power than the power they give him; who is able to harm them only to the extent to which they have the willingness to bear with him; who could do them absolutely no injury unless they preferred to put up with him rather than contradict him. Surely a striking situation!"
200 years later David Hume wondered the same: "Nothing appears more surprising to those who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers."
James Mackinnon wrote about Étienne de La Boétie in A History of Modern Liberty, Volume 2 (1906) where he summarized Étienne de La Boétie's thoughts.
"How a million of men can submit to the absolute régime of a king, especially a bad king, is what La Boëtie, like most reasonable beings, cannot understand. That men out of gratitude for some benefit should place one of themselves in a position in which he might do them untold harm, shows a lamentable want of foresight. To remain in subjection and suffer every species of wrong is worse than cowardice. If a man were to announce this voluntary servitude as hearsay, and not as a fact patent to all, nobody would believe him. The people is the author of its own slavery, for to recover its liberty it has merely to will its freedom. Liberty, it would seem, is not a blessing desired by man, for, though he has but to desire in order to attain it, he prefers to remain in an effeminate slavery. Be resolute to serve no longer, and you will be free. If this seems paradoxical, it is because, cries La Boëtie, the love of liberty, the most natural of sentiments, has been so long stifled by bondage that it has ceased to seem natural. Nevertheless, man is born in subjection only to his parents and to reason. Nature has given the same form to all, in order that all may realise their brotherhood. If there is any advantage in individual ability, it ought only the more to foster fraternal affection between man and man by enabling the strong to minister to the necessities of the weak. Nature has ordained society, companionship, for man, not the oppression of the weak by the strong. Liberty is therefore natural. Long live liberty! The kingship in any form—whether obtained by election, succession, or conquest-appears to La Boëtie, who has in his view the absolute sway of a Henry II., equally hostile to liberty. The king who has been elected strives to affirm his power at the expense of liberty; the king by succession regards the people as his natural slaves; the conqueror as his prey.
A man born unaccustomed to modern subjection would certainly instinctively prefer to obey his reason rather than any other man. Men become slaves only by constraint and deception, never by natural impulse. At first they usually deceive themselves in this matter, to discover speedily that they have been and are being duped. So apt are they to mistake for nature what they owe only to their birth, to mistake custom, which teaches servitude, for nature, which teaches freedom. Nature, unfortunately, loses her power the less she is cultivated. As a plant may be transformed by engrafting some foreign twig on its stem, so human nature may be entirely distorted by custom. Custom, then, is the first cause of this voluntary servitude, in which men seem to live so naturally. Happily, there are exceptions even to the power of custom.
Such exceptions are the men 'who, possessed of strong intelligence and insight, are not content, like the great mass, to regard what is before their eyes, but look beyond and behind them, studying the past in order to measure the present and gauge the future.' To such, slavery is not natural and its taste never sweet, however artfully it may be gilded. Education and freedom of thought are the enemies of tyrants. It is the interest of the tyrant to enervate the people rather than enlighten them, and it is the tendency of the subjects of a tyrant to lose all the masculine virtues of natural freedom. Long live the king, cry the people, in return for the spectacles, free dinners, and largesses of the tyrant. They bless Tiberius and Nero for their liberality, and forget that they are being bribed with their own substance, and will be called on to-morrow to surrender their property in order to satisfy the avarice, their children to gratify the passions, of these magnanimous emperors. Credulity grows with effeminacy, and the tyranny of kings is invested with the miraculous by the ignorance of the mass. The people themselves help to give currency to the lies they believe, for the profit of the monarch. Moreover, the tyrant finds ready adjuncts in the passions, the avarice, the egotism of many of his subjects, who find their advantage in his service and their own slavery."
"La Boetie knew what he was talking about. Have we, the human race, learned nothing about the nature of human government in the last four-hundred and fifty years? Have we not repeated the mistakes of our ancestors over and over and over? Our science and our technology have thrust our species into an entirely new social environment, unprecedented in human history, and still we beg the state for bread and circuses while the state crushes us with its rules and taxes. Do we really need the state?"~Robert Klassen
