The Demonization of Authority

My dear Wumpick,

So. The patient is questioning her attitude towards authority, and you are not sure what to do with it? I can almost hear your tremulous stutters as you pour out your concern. Never fear, Wumpick. Change is always dangerous for us—we prefer the slow, steady, stable road to the depths of Our Father Below. But changes present opportunities for us as well as for the Enemy, and with a little finesse you can make good use of this one.

The first thing is to get your facts straight. You must remember that authority, like so many other things, is neither here nor there for us demons: it is what the human beings make of it. This great rule, dubbed by its discoverer Screwtape the “Principle of Relativity,” is simply a practical extension of one of the first doctrines promulgated by Our Father Below, that all things are subjective, meaning subject to him (or else they soon will be).

You, it appears, have forgotten this fact, being misled by the human beings’ endless debates on the topic of authority, and how much of it is good for them, especially in the political arena. Monarchy, democracy, republic, anarchy—can you not see, Wumpick, it is none of our business? The point is to get the patient to make it her business. See if you cannot drive her into some extreme on the matter. Extremes are always to be desired.

Past ages had a tendency to valorize authority. The current age by and large decries it. Only in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries would anyone dare, as the anarcho-libertarians have done, to commend the absence of all authority! (Of course, even while the Left and the Right are in various ways demonizing “authority,” there is plenty of good old authoritarianism going around, in the Church and in government and the universities. But don’t allow them to notice that.)

One of the most useful things about this demonization of authority is that we can get people to blame all sorts of sins on it. Where past ages might have recognized lust or greed or pride at work, this age looks rather at the station of the lusty, greedy, and proud man and concludes that everything would be solved if only there were enough oversight to prevent “that kind of person” from doing any harm. Of course, the real answer would be to make sure that no child grows up to be “that kind of person” in the first place. But by having Authority to blame rather than the vices really at fault, we evade ever having to face such a surplus of virtuous people.

Read the rest at the Register.