I was inspired by this post of Larry Lessig’s today – it conveys some delightful passion. I also particularly enjoyed this post – Lessig style makes even this self-described “rant” of his a most enjoyable (and educational) read.
In the second post, Lessig quotes Nicholas Gruen who quotes Adam Smith, which brought to my mind a C. S. Lewis quote that I’ve blogged here (yeah, there’s a lot of quoting going on). From Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments :
The man of system. . . is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. . . . He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might chuse to impress upon it. If those two principles coincide and act in the same direction, the game of human society will go on easily and harmoniously, and is very likely to be happy and successful. If they are opposite or different, the game will go on miserably, and the society must be at all times in the highest degree of disorder.
It’s a beautiful piece of writing (it reads wonderfully aloud) and is, I think, profoundly insightful and worthy of further consideration. C. S. Lewis’ perspective addresses the same problem, that of ‘well-intentioned’ control (or, rather coercsion), from moral rather than idealistic grounds.
Recently, I’ve come to appreciate some of the limitations of governance through overt coercion, so Lessig’s comments have been particularly timely for me. As to what he has to say about what is or isn’t socialism, I’m not so sure. There’s more for me to chew over.