by larry gilman » October 28th, 2009, 5:32 pm
The "libertarian" label is perhaps slightly better for Lewis than the contemporary American meanings of "liberal" or "conservative," but I think that the monomaniacal anti-governmentism of our libertarians would have sat ill with Lewis. I think he would have been fine with the helping functions of government, against the meddling functions (ah, but which is which? an anti-pollution law is meddling from the point of view of the polluter, helping from the point of view of those downwind). Doesn't he somewhere in the Letters express horror at the US policy of letting people sink without medical care if they can't afford it or don't have insurance? Or is this just a fevered hallucination of my reform-starved left-wing consciousness? (The Letters volumes are too thick -- I'm daunted from paging through them at the moment -- )
What Lewis "would have" done if he were alive today has at least 2 meanings. One is the time-travel fantasy, where one plucks CSL from 1947 or 1960 and quizzes him about today's issues. That Lewis, the time-travelling Lewis, would certainly oppose women and gays in the Episcopalian priesthood and abortion (he wrote against "priestesses in the church"). He would probably also support universal single-payer healthcare on the lines of the UK National Health system (est. 1948) that cared for him and Joy during their final illnesses. He would oppose any form of Save Marriage Amendment, judging by certain writings where he says that marriage should be a religious matter, not a legislated affair. We know that CSL was OK with evolution, though he didn't like natural selection very much. He declared in Reflections on the Psalms that he was definitely not a "fundamentalist" and, in particular, did not think the Bible an inerrant word-for-word dictation by the Almighty. Given his respect for mainstream science -- his comments in Miracles and elsewhere reveal someone who was accurately abreast, at least approximately, with developments in modern physics -- I think he would not be one of the climate-change denialism crowd. He would have been what hate-filled oafs like Rush Limbaugh now shriek down as an "environmentalist whacko" -- a tree-hugger, a nature-lover, a pollution-controller, an acreage-preserver, an anti-developer. He was, we know, a royalist -- but not, I think, an Empire man. I think he would be today a patriotic anti-interventionist of some sort, along Chestertonian lines maybe. I think that if opining on American issues he would favor strict immigration policy (right-leaning) but be horrified by the brutality and uncompassion of our anti-immigrationists (left-leaning). (The other day I saw Obama swearing up and down, in response to right-wing fire, that he had NOT said that his health bill would extend coverage to undocumented foreigners -- as much as to say, "I will so let the Mexican children on the wrong side of the invisible line rot!" Right-wing: "You lie! You will not let them rot!") He would have been against torture, special rendition, indefinite detention without trial, impunity for high officials.
Altogether quite a blend of allegiances. Not in one of our neat little boxes. All the more valuable for that. If read honestly, CSL remains a challenge to both his liberal and conservative readers. I disagree with him on certain matters, but he forces one to disagree from strong grounds, not lazily.
Then there is the Lewis that Lewis would have been by now if his lifespan could have been extended to 110 or more without dimming his intellect. Lewis was not a static thinker. He was unquestionably changing his attitudes up until he died -- not mindlessly twirling like a weathervane, but evolving. Those of us on the left are free to imagine that he would have become more like us, those on the right (or in some other direction), likewise. But such speculations are fruitless, exercises in wishful thinking only.