Misplaced loyalty

Trump appointed Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court but her decisions haven't always pleased him or his sycophants. Most of Kevin Williamson's "The Souls of Serfs and Subjects" is about distinguishing between the role of citizen and that of a subject. In the course of his argument C.S. Lewis is quoted more than once:

C.S. Lewis argued that every particular sinful disposition is related to “some good impulse of which it is the excess or perversion.” The appetite for justice becomes wrath, the desire to achieve material prosperity becomes avarice or envy, the normal sexual drive becomes an abnormal one, the impulse toward achievement or excellence becomes pride, the mother of sins. This was very close to the view of St. Augustine and of Aristotle before him. Wealth, health, love—all good when pursued in the right way toward the right ends in a well-ordered life, but all invitations to catastrophe to the disordered soul. Even friendship has its perils, in Lewis’ view: “Friendship (as the ancients saw) can be a school of virtue, but also (as they did not see) a school of vice. It is ambivalent. It makes good men better and bad men worse.” ....

Loyalty is a two-edged sword, because the virtue is necessarily conditional: Loyalty to whom or to what? To what degree? To the exclusion of which other virtues? St. Peter, after getting off to a rough start (three times!) was a loyalist to the end—but, then, so was Eva Braun. ....

Lewis was not what we would call a libertarian, but there was a streak of libertarianism in him:

To live his life in his own way, to call his house his castle, to enjoy the fruits of his own labour, to educate his children as his conscience directs, to save for their prosperity after his death — these are wishes deeply ingrained in civilised man. Their realization is almost as necessary to our virtues as to our happiness. From their total frustration disastrous results both moral and psychological might follow.

And here we are.

Lewis identified courage as the lynchpin of the virtues: “Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality.” ....

Kevin D. Williamson, "The Souls of Serfs and Subjects," The Dispatch, March 10, 2025.