Quote:

the G-man said:
<span style="font-family:verdana;">I've always heard of </span><a style="font-family: verdana;" href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=confederateya-20&path=tg/detail/-/0060652934/qid=1111678583/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14?v=glance&s=books&n=507846">The Screwtape Letters</a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> from C.S. Lewis and so far have never gotten the proverbial "</span><a style="font-family: verdana;" href="http://www.quantumenterprises.co.uk/roundtuit/">round tuit</a><span style="font-family:verdana;">." Amazon's editorial review describes the book as:</span>
<blockquote style="font-style: italic; font-family: verdana;">"... the instructional correspondence between a senior demon, Screwtape, and his wannabe diabolical nephew Wormwood. As mentor, Screwtape coaches Wormwood in the finer points, tempting his "patient" away from God.

"Each letter is a masterpiece of reverse theology, giving the reader an inside look at the thinking and means of temptation. Tempters, according to Lewis, have two motives: the first is fear of punishment, the second a hunger to consume or dominate other beings." </blockquote><span style="font-family:verdana;">Meghan Cox Gurdon has an excellent adaptation of this story in </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:verdana;" >National Review Online</span><span style="font-family:verdana;"> called </span><a style="font-family: verdana;" href="http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/gurdon200503220755.asp">Screwtape Revisited</a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> that reminds us that the powerful aren't always right.</span><br /:<P><blockquote>"I have heard," Mildew begins, and blushes. "The fact is, Uncle, I have heard things that seem impossible. Is it really true that you have found a way to get them to eat — "<P>

" — their young?" Screwtape interrupts with a hungry smile.
"Yes. Yes! I have found the key, the key, my boy, to unlocking the worst in the human heart. Oh, massacres are entertaining enough, and reasonably productive. Rapine and thieving and savagery and the usual nonsense go a good distance to wrecking men's souls, but not in sufficient numbers. Not for us to win for good — that is, ha-ha, for ill. We must forever be stoking grievances, feeding pride, and constantly thrusting and parrying with the Enemy and his agents. No, the beautifully corrupting key that I have found is vanity."<P>"Appetites, yes, but eating their young, Uncle? I feel sure that I read somewhere that humans are naturally revolted by cannibalism. "<P>
Screwtape fixes his nephew with a shriveling glare. "We are not inducing them to broil the little tykes, dear boy, this is no fricassee of first-graders." He sighs heavily, a sufferer of fools, but then brightens, clearly distracted by a pleasing thought. "That's an idea, though. Must get Singer to write something up for me on that...excellent. Now, where — "
<P>
"Not broiling them." <P>"Yes. My achievement, the reason for this — " Screwtape gestures largely about the handsome apartment — "is that I have managed, by appealing to man's love of self, his vanity, to convince millions that it is not cannibalism, but progress, to turn tiny human infants into medicine. The strong picking the weak apart, cell by cell, to be consumed by the strong? Brilliant!"
<P>
"Vanity is a rusty key that was left lying about, and it was I alone who saw what it could unlock at this point in human history."
<P>
"It is true," Screwtape continues with a shrug, "that much of the groundwork was already laid. We had already convinced people of the rightness of destroying inconvenient life. Now they talk quite coolly of "blastocysts," and "clumps of cells" and "surplus embryos." My genius was to recognize that they needed just a little push to be convinced, with their mania for recycling, that by harvesting something that would otherwise be chucked out, they are doing a positive good! Think of it: They believe they occupy "the moral high ground." Oh, the profits for us — "</blockquote>




CS Lewis was a genius and much like Orwell a prophet...