How the Devil Corrupted the Progressives

I just finished listening to John Cleese's brilliant rendition of C.S. Lewis' classic "The Screwtape Letters". What a lot of folks don't realize, if they haven't read the book lately, is what a prophetic work it is.  In the last chapter, "Screwtape Proposes a Toast" Lewis explains quite succinctly how the devils went about turning the progressive movement, which had laudible goals and actually did some good at first, into the worst sort of communism and fascism.

Lewis, through Screwtape's speech, gives us a preview of where the progressive movement would be taken under the machinations of Satan. He is frighteningly accurate.  I highly recommend that you read or reread the book.  Even better, find a copy of the Cleese performance of the book. Cleese captures the sneering tone, the arrogance and self-deception of Satan's followers perfectly. He does a blistering condemnation of the education systems in both England and America and described what would be the consequences of what were then the current "cutting edge" practices in education. He particularly condemned the practice then just coming into vogue of creating an everybody succeeds, nobody fails, nobody stands out system of education.

He tells the story of the dictator who took a colleague to a cornfield to teach him how to control his own people.  He went out into the field and clipped the tops off every stalk of corn that stood higher than the rest. The great thing he told his colleague is that after they become accustomed to the practice, they will lop the heads off any tall ones themselves and call it "democracy". 

A perfect description of the insipid, everybody the same socialism that is being foisted on us by our own leaders today. We are seeing the outcome Lewis warned us of when he wrote the piece way back in the early 60's. His clear picture of the real "conspiracy" in this world is not a mere theory, but a living breathing fact and if you're not afraid of the devil now, you will be once you've realized what he's done to us right out in the open, right out in front of our faces with all of us so afraid of not being like everyone else that most of us actually helped bring about this bloody disaster of a society.

Ever tease a nerdy kid that makes good grades?  Every belittle someone's big dreams?  Ever pick on someone simply because everyone else did.  Ever back down from doing what you knew to be right because you didn't want to make a spectacle of yourself? Do you jump on every fad that comes down the pike and call it individualism when all that was really going on was that you wanted to be like everyone else? Did you vote for someone because it was cool and everybody else was voting for him? 

I could go on, but you get the idea.  To have resisted the devil's work would have required a life of constantly not fitting in, of being always out of sync with the rest of the world. It would require courage and a willingness to take the consequences.  It would require living the kind of life that people find odd and naieve, silly and prudish.

And who would want you to do that (besides, Jesus I mean).

I'm just sayin'

Tom King - Flint, TX