National Scorn vs Self Reflection
Meetup in Las Vegas and a quick C.S. Lewis read
Don’t you love the feeling of stumbling across a line in an old book that feels written for this moment—right now? Yesterday I cracked open God In The Dock, a collection of essays by C.S. Lewis, and opened it to a random page. This led me to The Dangers of National Repentance, a short essay by Lewis about the hatred of Britain by its youngest elites during World War II. These youth look on Britain’s past with shame, they cast blame on it for the war’s consequences, and question the case for patriotism. These young people also cast dispersions on the everyday people of the nation who enjoy the simple pleasures of Britain, instead of agonizing over its faults. Boy howdy, sound familiar?
When a man over forty tries to repent the sins of England and to love her enemies, he is attempting something costly; for he was brought up to certain patriotic sentiments which cannot be mortified without a struggle. But an educated man who is now in his twenties usually has no such sentiment to mortify. In art, in literature, in politics, he has been, ever since he can remember, one of an angry and restless minority; he has drunk in almost with his mother’s milk a distrust of English statesmen and a contempt for the manners, pleasures, and enthusiasms of his less-educated fellow countrymen.
Real quick announcement break
We are in Las Vegas this week for the FreedomFest convention, and delivering a panel presentation on Saturday about J.R.R. Tolkien and political power. On Friday night at 8 PM, we will have a subscriber meetup. Come meet us at the Cabinet of Curiosities,
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Here are some other lines from the short essay that hit hard.
when England made many of those decisions to which the present disorders could plausibly be traced. Are they, perhaps, repenting what they have in no sense done? If they are, it might be supposed that their error is very harmless: men fail so often to repent their real sins that the occasional repentance of an imaginary sin might appear almost desirable.
What Lewis is talking about here is a culture that dismisses the idea of piety and repentance (because that’s an old-fashioned…religious notion), in favor of pridefulness.
The first and fatal charm of national repentance is, therefore, the encouragement it gives us to turn from the bitter task of repenting our own sins to the congenial one of bewailing—but, first, of denouncing—the conduct of others. If it were clear to the young that this is what he is doing, no doubt he would remember the law of charity.
It’s that simple. Those who obsess over national sins are doing so to forgo self-reflection on their own failings. It is easier to speak in vague terms about the sins of their neighbors.
Be wary. That’s all for this week as we prepare for some travel.
Some exciting things are in the works for late July and August.