By DONALD DeMARCO
“My symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state” — C.S. Lewis in The Screwtape Letters.
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Screwtape: I am proposing a new method for promoting hatred.
Wormwood: There is already a great deal of hatred in the world. Shouldn’t we set our targets on something that is not so common?
S: But my proposal is ingenious. I will promote hatred by getting people to think they are opposing it.
W: That would be ingenious, but how would it work?
S: We’ll encourage bureaucrats to pass a law declaring that hate is a crime. “Hate” will be so broadly defined that the slightest offense will be interpreted as a crime.
W: Like simply being “offended,” which happens to people virtually all the time, in bars, on the ball field, in school, and even in homes between husband and wife?
S: Exactly, my good nephew. And the penalties will be harsh: loss of employment, heavy fines, and even incarceration.
W: But that sounds like punishment, not hatred.
S: Ah, my neophyte in nastiness, the new law against hate crime will encourage people to spew their hatred in a very satisfactory way. It will not eliminate hatred, but proliferate it.
W: I think I am beginning to get the picture. Usually when people hate each other, they wish each other harm, but seldom carry it out. Most of the time, they just avoid each other.
S: Yes, and that’s why my plan is so ingenious. People can hate at will. If a person even mentions the natural law, for example, that will be considered offensive enough to take the case to a Human Rights Tribunal.
W: Ha-ha! That’s hilarious. As if people have the right to pass through life without ever being offended! I’m getting to like your proposal, dear uncle.
S: The tribunal will consist of bureaucrats who are intolerant of any kind of offensiveness, even non-offensive offensiveness such as saying “Merry Christmas” to a non-Christian, or citing certain passages from the Bible. Then he can satisfy his hatred by getting the tribunal to fine the accused heavily and compensate the injured party lavishly.
W: Wonderful, Your Malevolent Majesty! We will replace “Crime Does Not Pay,” with “Hatred Does Pay.”
S: Not only that, but a marvelous chain-reaction will ensue. The offended will hate the accused, the accused will hate the offended party and also the tribunal and all the bureaucrats involved in organizing a Hate Crime Bill that guarantees the intensification and proliferation of hatred. People may even come to hate their country for engineering this tomfoolery.
W: My dear Captain of Cruelty, I love this plan. It will spread hatred throughout the entire country.
S: And at the same time, bureaucrats and politicians will remain so naive as to think that they are eliminating hatred from society.
W: Your plan is perfect. It needs nothing more.
S: But there is more. The bureaucrats will arrange that only certain people can be victims of a hate crime, preferably non-Christians. If a journalist expresses the wish that a Catholic prelate suffer a long and agonizing death, that is not considered hate. Opposing abortion on the other hand, will be considered misogyny, or hatred of women. Thus, hate crimes will be adjudicated in the context of discrimination.
W: Oh, thou Taskmaster of Treachery, you have put hatred, discrimination, and injustice into the same basket!
S: And don’t forget sacrilege, since we are, at the same time, fighting the Enemy.
W: Where do you intend to initiate your plan? In what country are people so naive as to fall for it?
S: I have a country in mind where people hold being nice to each other as the highest virtue.
W: I know that being nice can be counterproductive. Elsewhere, my Maharajah of Mayhem, you established NICE as the National Institute of Coordinated Experiments.
S: And that created widespread calamity.
W: That was really “nice.”
S: When people think that being nice to each other is the loftiest virtue, they come to regard not-being-nice as the greatest vice. Therefore, raising not-being-nice to the level of a serious crime appeals to them.
W: So we can exploit their own foolishness by making their “niceness” actually lead them to hate each other with increasing ferocity.
S: Well said, my nefarious nephew. Beautiful, isn’t it? And all the while they believe that they are in the vanguard of civility.
W: What country do you have in mind, uncle?
S: I think we will begin with Canada. That is where being nice to each other has become so entrenched that anything that challenges this ridiculous ideal must be met with undiluted severity. Heaven forbid that they ever institute love as the highest of virtues.
W: And so, let us drink a toast, dear Master of Mischief, and enjoy observing their cult of niceness transmogrify into a frenzy of hatred.
S: It will be a spectacle to behold.
W: Will the United States be next on our list?
S: I’m afraid not, my dear apple-polishing apprentice. Americans do not like being nice, but being nasty to each other. We’ll have to think of a different strategy.
W: Maybe punish them if they are nice to each other?
S: That may work. I will have to give it more thought. The “goody-two-shoes” stigma might just work.
W: And to that I say, Amen.
S: Don’t say that!
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(Donald DeMarco is a senior fellow of Human Life International. He is professor emeritus at St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Ontario, and an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College and Seminary in Cromwell, Conn. Some of his recent writings may be found at Human Life International’s Truth & Charity Forum.)
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