The Chronicles of Blarney—Ah!

A quote from C.S. Lewis has been making the rounds on Facebook and right-leaning websites of late. It purports to show Obamacare, and/or welfare policies in general, to be something last century's favorite Christian apologist would have disapproved of. My own comment, left yesterday on the Facebook page of The Independent Institute, follows the Lewis quote, below.

“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.”

- C. S. Lewis

Lewis continues, "To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason." Yet I think anyone with reason agrees disease is disease. I doubt Lewis was talking about the NHS (tyrannizing those British dupes for nearly 70 years). Even less likely he's thinking of subsidized private insurance (aka "Obamacare").