Happy July 4th Go freedom F*** tyranny and oppression

"Tough Love: Abuse of a type particularly gratifying to the abuser, in that it combines the pleasures of sadism with those of self-righteousness. Commonly employed and widely admired in 12-step groups and treatment."
— Charles Bufe


"The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it."
— H. L. Mencken



John Stuart Mill, "On Liberty", 1859:


The only purpose for which power can be rightly exercised over any member of the community , against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant... Each person is the proper guardian of his own health.

In 1869, John Stuart Mill published his essay on "The Subjugation of Women":



But was there ever any domination which did not appear natural to those who possessed it? ... the generality of the male sex cannot yet tolerate the idea of living with an equal... In the present day, power holds a smoother language, and whomsoever it oppresses, always pretends to do so for their own good...







The eminent theologian C. S. Lewis wrote:



Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may 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.
Their very kindness stings with intolerable insult...

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 with those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals. But to be punished, however severely, because we have deserved it, because we 'ought to have known better', is to be treated as a human person made in God's image...

And when they are wicked the Humanitarian theory of punishment will put in their hands a finer instrument of tyranny than wickedness ever had before...

The new Nero will approach us with the silky manners of a doctor, and though all will be in fact as compulsory as the tunica molesta or Smithfield or Tyburn, all will go on within the unemotional therapeutic sphere where words like 'right' and 'wrong' or 'freedom' and 'slavery' are never heard...

Even if the treatment is painful, even if it is life-long, even if it is fatal, that will be only a regrettable accident; the intention was purely therapeutic...

But because they are 'treatment, not punishment, they can be criticized only by fellow-experts and on technical grounds, never by men as men and on grounds of justice...

But we ought long ago to have learned our lesson. We should be too old now to be deceived by those humane pretensions which have served to usher in every cruelty of the revolutionary period in which we live. These are the 'precious balms' which will 'break our heads'.
C. S. Lewis, "The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment"






My enemies I can handle, but Lord save me from those who would do unto me for my own good.
— Agent Orange as a young hippie, 1968

-- Thu Jul 04, 2013 7:20 pm --