It’s exciting and gratifying to see so many people on X talking about C. S. Lewis’s masterpiece That Hideous Strength. There’s a general sense that the Satanic dystopian England Lewis depicts in his novel is “where we are now” – a sense that is largely correct. But the understanding of why and how we got here / there remains to jell.
Which of course calls your Curmudgeon into the fray.
Time was, there was a movement called “Progressivism.” (Don’t laugh.) It was largely propelled by Christian religious sentiments that had been twisted into political activism – and for that perversion, twisted is exactly the right word. Another word for that movement, one that isn’t heard much today, is meliorism.
Meliorism is a largely emotional position: the meliorist “wants to make things better.” For whom? Why, for everyone! He loves a particular vision of progress: a vision in which all desires have been satisfied, and all fears have been dispelled.
Yes, Gentle Reader: meliorism implies a total detachment from reality. But the meliorist doesn’t allow that to trouble him. The vision is all!
If meliorists weren’t gullible, they might be tolerable. But they are gullible. They’re easily swayed by the promises of politicians. And politicians are willing to promise them anything. (No, they don’t give them Arpege. )
The politician, by definition, is one who seeks power over others. That and nothing else is what politics is about. What he promises you is not truly his objective. His objective is power. What brings him power, he will promote; what diminishes his power, he will oppose.
The politician, therefore, must not be assumed a sincere meliorist. But he relies on the support of meliorists to put and keep him in power.
Lewis’s nightmare vision of England in That Hideous Strength is premised on popular acceptance based on the unwillingness of ordinary Englishmen to object to melioristic initiatives. The N.I.C.E., a government program, is facially melioristic. In reality, it’s a grab for total power over everyone and everything on Earth.
Contemporary Britain has some features in common with Lewis’s tale, and some that depart from it. Lewis didn’t imagine a huge influx of culturally immiscible immigrants, for example. But the central commonality, which makes all the other horrors – fictional and real – possible, is meliorism as a premise and political exploitation of that premise to extend and deepen the power of the State.
Every State that lasts for a significant period must be founded on superior force. But to acquire that force, the masters of the State must persuade their subjects to allow it to them. The chief tools of persuasion are deceit and fear.
It doesn’t matter whether the initial set of politicians sincerely want to “help” some subset of the people, or to ameliorate some nagging condition that affects all. Once the State has accumulated unopposable power, men willing to do anything for power will displace the original, supposedly sincere ones. For the sincere ones would balk at methods their challengers willingly adopt – including lethal violence. So nominally decent and trustworthy politicians are steadily replaced by men who observe no moral limits.
Britain’s national government fell into the meliorist premise many decades ago. Each generation of power-wielders was succeeded by a harder-nosed, less scrupled set. But even as the quality of its politicians declined, the verbal emphasis on meliorism never waned; indeed, it seems to have increased. The power-wielders promise, hands on their hearts, that We’re here to help – to serve! If any of them really mean it, I’m unable to name them.
Americans should not look at Britain with scorn. The same progression is in effect here. Leaving aside the Great Maverick, President Donald Trump, I’m hard pressed to name a high-ranking politician whom I would trust.
In 1962, Joseph Clark, one of Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senators, was asked to define liberalism as he understood it. Senator Clark replied:
“A liberal,” he writes, “[is] one who believes in utilizing the full force of government for the advancement of social, political and economic justice at the municipal, state, national and international levels.”
That’s political meliorism straight up, with no chaser. Whether or not Clark was sincere about his aims, he was consistent. One of his enthusiasms was for the establishment of a world government to which national governments would be subordinate. He pursued that aim as a member and president of World Federalists U.S.A.
Clark was very popular. His successors in the United States Senate have varied in that regard, but they’ve all given copious lip service to meliorism. And they’ve worked diligently to expand and deepen the power of the federal government. Republicans, unable to oppose political meliorism effectively, have largely endorsed it. Which is why I joke that the GOP’s true platform is “We Can Do It Cheaper!”
Power over others always ends up in the hands of those who want it most. As Friedrich Hayek told us in The Road To Serfdom, over time the progression brings men to power who recognize no moral limits, regardless of the platitudes they mouth. Their sole aim is power: getting it, keeping it, and increasing it.
George Orwell told us what follows:
‘How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?’
Winston thought. ‘By making him suffer,’ he said.
‘Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see then what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world that will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress toward more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love and justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotion except fear, rage, and self-abasement. Everything else will be destroyed--everything!...If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face--forever.’
O’Brien was free to say that to Winston Smith because he had Winston totally in his power. But outside the Ministry of Love, the Party pretended that its governance was in the best interests of the people of Oceania. It had to lie and demand doublethink to do so, but the meliorist pretense was always there.
I could go on, but I think the point stands. He who wants power over you will always tell you he intends to use it in your interests. Sometimes he’ll be sincere… but his successors will be less so, and on it will go until the nation is under a Stalin. Clive Staples Lewis has shown us the face behind the meliorist mask in a work of compelling power. Yes, his heroes invoked supernatural aid to cleanse Britain of the N.I.C.E. and its works. Perhaps that makes That Hideous Strength too fanciful for some. But Lewis’s depiction of the N.I.C.E. and its Satanic evil remains one of speculative fiction’s highest achievements.
To the political meliorists who look upon the N.I.C.E. as a template for their own advancement in power, I offer no apologies.
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