PWJ: S4E74 – SPAT 4 – “A few Good Men”
Matt and Andrew discuss the final section of Screwtape Proposes A Toast.
S4E74: Screwtape Proposes A Toast (Part 4 – “A Few good Men”) (Download)
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Timestamps
00:11 – Entering “The Eagle & Child”…
00:15 – Welcome
05:36 – Song-of-the-week
07:40 – Quote-of-the-week
08:38 – Drink-of-the-week
10:28 – Patreon Toast
11:55 – Chapter Summary
12:31 – Discussion
42:25 – Andrew Proposes A Toast
YouTube Version
After Show Skype Session
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Show Notes
Introduction
Chit-Chat
- Matt gave a shout-out to Gomer from the Catching Foxes podcast. Unfortunately, Matt mentally merged Gomer with his co-host, Luke.
- Andrew spoke about his recent appearance on the Art & Faith Conversations podcast, as well as the Edith Stein Conference at Notre Dame.
Song-of-the-week
- The song was by Matt’s new favourite lady, Pink. Raise Your Glass was suggested by listener Carmine:
So raise your glass if you are wrong
Pink, Raise Your Glass
In all the right ways All my underdogs
We will never be never be, anything but loud
And nitty gritty dirty little freaks
Won’t you come on and come on and raise your glass
Just come on and come on and raise your glass
- Andrew mentioned that Dr. Michael Ward has just released a new book, After Humanity, on The Abolition of Man.
Quote-of-the-week
“I’m as good as you is a useful means for the destruction of democratic societies. But it has a far deeper value as an end in itself, as a state of mind which, necessarily excluding humility, charity, contentment, and all the pleasures of gratitude or admiration, turns a human being away from almost every road which might finally lead him to Heaven.”
C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Proposes A Toast
Drink-of-the-week
- The drink-of-the-week is Glenfiddich 15 Year Old Solera:
- Bright Gold, chocolate with a hint of peat on the nose; light, but smooth on the body; palate is silky, chocolate with some pears. Cream finish.
- Andrew as drinking Clynelish 14:
- Nose: Zesty, mandarin, tangerine. Smoky.
- Palate: Quite light, great clarity. Orange, soft acidity. Dry oak. Mixed fruits, vanilla, leather.
- Finish: Quite long, bitter sweetness developing, spicy oak.
Patreon Toast
Juan, on this final episode with the toast, we raise our glass to you that you may fight the temptation toward commonality and become one of the Few Good Men!
Patreon Toast for Juan Aguilar
Chapter Summary
In this week’s letter, Screwtape continues detailing their masterful plan toward the complete loss of individuality. He begins with the education system, a natural spot to make sure no one feels inferior, the “I’m as good as you are” idea.
When education is conquered, we lose good and strong individuals. This leads to the destruction of democracy from the inside out. Finally, the ultimate end is achieved, the destruction of the individual and the necessary material to get into Heaven.
Summary of the last part of Screwtape Proposes A Toast
Discussion Notes
The Education System
The basic principle of the new education is to be that dunces and idlers must not be made to feel inferior to intelligent and industrious pupils. That would be “undemocratic.” These differences between pupils — for they are obviously and nakedly individual differences — must be disguised… At schools, the children who are too stupid or lazy to learn languages and mathematics and elementary science can be set to doing things that children used to do in their spare time. Let, them, for example, make mud pies and call it modelling. But all the time there must be no faintest hint that they are inferior to the children who are at work. Whatever nonsense they are engaged in must have — I believe the English already use the phrase — “parity of esteem.” An even more drastic scheme is not possible. Children who are fit to proceed to a higher class may be artificially kept back, because the others would get a trauma — Beelzebub, what a useful word! — by being left behind.
C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Proposes A Toast
- Andrew and Matt spoke about their experience in education (Andrew used to be a teacher).
Incentives
- This change to the education system removes important incentives:
All incentives to learn and all penalties for not learning will be prevented; who are they to overtop their fellows? And anyway the teachers — “or should I say, nurses?” — will be far too busy reassuring the dunces and patting them on the back to waste any time on real teaching. We shall no longer have to plan and toil to spread imperturbable conceit and incurable ignorance among men. The little vermin themselves will do it for us.
C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Proposes A Toast
- After tripping up over “imperturbable”, Matt alluded to this scene from the movie, Dumb & Dumber:
No Great Men
- Matt explains the title of this episode, A Few Good Men, which is the name of a movie.
Of course, this would not follow unless all education became state education. But it will. That is part of the same movement. Penal taxes, designed for that purpose, are liquidating the Middle Class, the class who were prepared to save and spend and make sacrifices in order to have their children privately educated. The removal of this class, besides linking up with the abolition of education, is, fortunately, an inevitable effect of the spirit that says I’m as good as you. This was, after all, the social group which gave to the humans the overwhelming majority of their scientists, physicians, philosophers, theologians, poets, artists, composers, architects, jurists, and administrators. If ever there were a bunch of stalks that needed their tops knocked off, it was surely they. As an English politician remarked not long ago, “A democracy does not want great men.”
C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Proposes A Toast
- Of course, Screwtape would like real democracy to disappear:
We, in Hell, would welcome the disappearance of democracy in the strict sense of that word, the political arrangement so called. Like all forms of government, it often works to our advantage, but on the whole less often than other forms. And what we must realize is that “democracy” in the diabolical sense (I’m as good as you, Being Like Folks, Togetherness) is the fittest instrument we could possibly have for extirpating political democracies from the face of the earth.
C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Proposes A Toast
- However, this pseudo “democracy” can remove greatness
For “democracy” or the “democratic spirit” (diabolical sense) leads to a nation without great men, a nation mainly of subliterates, full of the cocksureness which flattery breeds on ignorance, and quick to snarl or whimper at the first sign of criticism. And that is what Hell wishes every democratic people to be.
C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Proposes A Toast
- Matt quoted from A Few Good Men:
“Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who’s gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinburg? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago, and you curse the marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That Santiago’s death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don’t want the truth because deep down in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand a post. Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think you are entitled to.”
Jack Nicholson, A few good men
- This kind of diabolic democracies necessary means that they fall behind:
The democracies were surprised lately when they found that Russia had got ahead of them in science. What a delicious specimen of human blindness!
C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Proposes A Toast
The End Goal
- Screwtape outlines their end goal:
The overthrow of free peoples and the multiplication of slave states are for us a means (besides, of course, being fun); but the real end is the destruction of individuals. For only individuals can be saved or damned, can become sons of the Enemy or food for us. The ultimate value, for us, of any revolution, war, or famine lies in the individual anguish, treachery, hatred, rage, and despair which it may produce. I’m as good as you is a useful means for the destruction of democratic societies. But it has a far deeper value as an end in itself, as a state of mind which, necessarily excluding humility, charity, contentment, and all the pleasures of gratitude or admiration, turns a human being away from almost every road which might finally lead him to Heaven.
C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Proposes A Toast
Wine Tasting with Screwtape
- Screwtape describes the wine with which they are about to toast:
Fill your glasses. What is this I see? What is this delicious bouquet I inhale? Can it be? Mr. Principal, I unsay all my hard words about the dinner. I see, and smell, that even under wartime conditions the College cellar still has a few dozen of sound old vintage Pharasee. Well, well, well. This is like old times. Hold it beneath your noses for a moment, gentledevils. Hold it up to the light. Look at those fiery streaks that writhe and tangle in its dark heart, as if they were contending. And so they are. You know how this wine is blended? Different types of Pharisee have been harvested, trodden, and fermented together to produce its subtle flavour. Types that were most antagonistic to one another on Earth. Some were all rules and relics and rosaries; others were all drab clothes, long faces, and petty traditional abstinences from wine or cards or the theatre. Both had in common their self-righteousness and an almost infinite distance between their actual outlook and anything the Enemy really is or commands. The wickedness of other religions was the really live doctrine in the religion of each; slander was its gospel and denigration its litany. How they hated each other up where the sun shone! How much more they hate each other now that they are forever conjoined but not reconciled. Their astonishment, their resentment, at the combination, the festering of their eternally impenitent spite, passing into our spiritual digestion, will work like fire. Dark fire. All said and done, my friends, it will be an ill day for us if what most humans mean by “Religion” ever vanishes from the Earth. It can still send us the truly delicious sins. Nowhere do we tempt so successfully as on the very steps of the altar.
C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Proposes A Toast
The Toast
- Screwtape wraps up his address and toasts those present…
Your Imminence, your Disgraces, my Thorns, Shadies, and Gentledevils: I give you the toast of — Principal Slubgob and the College!
C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Proposes A Toast