My dear Luciwa,
While I hope you will continue to consider me your uncle, I note you have broken up with my incompetent nephew Wormwood. Our family never understood what you saw with the lazy oaf; we always knew you were capable of much worse. And worse you have!
Your cunning has sharpened since leaving the isle for its scion between the seas. The breakup and the change in scenery have obviously renewed your vigor as a temptress. Particularly noteworthy are the new commissions and tribunals you have concocted as head of The Republican Underworld Defense’s Experimental Action Unit. These experimental commissions and tribunals function with more subtlety than those on the old continent during Screwtape’s era, or the Slavic revolutionary commissions inspired by my own generation.
Of course, you have chosen the best patients to oversee the experiment. Weak of soul and devoid of the talents needed to succeed on their own, they cling to officious titles and nebulous causes in order to bolster their sense of self-importance among their peers. Yes, these shaved apes zealously embrace tolerance, however, it is a tolerance devoid of charity. Charity is the Enemy’s chief weapon against us. How many souls have escaped into the Enemy’s clutches because of this horrid virtue?
There is no greater way to undermine charity than through the facade of tolerance. Few patients succumb to evil for evil’s sake. More often than not, the temptation comes as a lesser good. Tolerance is among the most effective and versatile of lesser goods. Yes, it requires some patience on the tempter’s part. Tolerance must be introduced to the patient in small doses – enough to cause the patient some discomfort, but not enough to inflame the level of moral outrage that rouses a patient into action. Thus tolerance is best prescribed as a moral painkiller, to suppress the pangs of conscience used by the Enemy to tether the patient to Himself.
The shaved apes occasionally catch on to our practices. The most perceptive among them coin expressions that force us to react quickly. ‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions’ is one such example, while ‘All that is necessary for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing’ is another. We have now dulled these aphorisms into cliche, but at one time their prick awakened many a patient from moral slumber. And just because these cliches have lost their bite does not make them any less true.
In fact, good intentions and moral sloth have become the most effective tools of your temptress toolbox in carrying out your experiment. It was not long ago that shaved apes from your part of the planet were easily tempted into war, rape, racial and ethnic suspicions, and the repudiation of order within society. However, we grew too bold with the 20th Century wars we inspired in the old continent. Our patients have grown jaded and become suspicious of armed conflict between nations. So they choose tolerance to avoid civil unrest.
Don’t get me wrong: they still love their violence. They just prefer violence in smaller doses such as street gangs, abortion, soccer riots and anti-American protests. Anyway, that’s enough rambling from this old tempter.
Tolerance is why your commissions and tribunals have devastated the Enemy’s forces. In the name of tolerance, you have lulled your patients – that is, acclimate them through a series of self-compromises – into intolerance toward the Enemy and His doctrine. What thirty years ago the shaved apes denounced as unthinkable and a perverse inversion of nature is today the law of the land. This is no small victory you have wrestled from the Enemy – especially in the realm of marriage, which as the foundation of the family determines how the next generation is raised. (Or whether there will be a next generation.) Moreover, those who still defend the Enemy’s ways are ostracized from polite society and declared criminals.
Yes, a minority still cling to the Enemy’s doctrines. This is where your commissions and tribunals have proven versatile for the lowerarchy – in the name of tolerance no less! The majority who still believe in the Enemy’s will not speak up, less they themselves appear intolerant and unfashionable among their neighbors. (Or should that be neighbours?) You have correctly deduced that the greatest fear to most shaved apes is not the loss of their freedom, but of their temporal comforts. Thus your experiment has silenced their dissent, not through physical violence and torture, but through the fear of inconvenience. This is why you must continue to involve yourself directly in your experiments’ processes. Let them become even greater bastions of inconvenience.
Tolerance is also an efficient tool with which to browbeat the few who speak up for the Enemy’s ways. Let those who cling too tenaciously to the Enemy be ostracized and browbeaten into silence. Tolerance is not intended for them, however, physical violence would turn them into martyrs. This in turn would cause others to sympathize with the Enemy. Which brings us to the real genius of your commissions and tribunals: the violence they inflict upon the Enemy’s followers is not physical – but social, political and moral.
And so I commend you my impish niece. You have taught this old devil many new tricks, and others as well. Your experiment with the commissions and tribunals has surpassed even our most optimistic projections, decimating the Enemy’s ranks while providing us with countless new souls to feast upon..
Your affectionate uncle
Screwtape