Wisdom is timeless. The Russian novel “The Brothers Karamazov” and the English classic “The Screwtape Letters” can help us today understand why the most destructive policies and most corrupt politicians on the left are sincerely labeled “loving” and “good” by their partisans.
“The more I love humanity in general,” remarks a character in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel, “the less I love man in particular.” C.S. Lewis’s fictional demon Screwtape observes to his nephew that he could turn a man “at a moment’s notice from impassioned prayer for a wife’s or son’s ‘soul’ to beating or insulting the real wife or son without a qualm.” As I noted in my first article in this two-part series, Dostoevsky and Lewis were highlighting the false idea of “virtue,” which professes great nobility but is nothing more than a veneer for a truly diabolical ideology or grave sin. This false idea, indeed, is the Marxist/globalist/leftist notion of virtue and heroism, which professes love and compassion for “humanity” — or at least certain groups — while actually being incredibly destructive in practice.
