Why CS Lewis Hated Democracy
And his Defense of Human Excellence
It’s no secret that most classical thinkers hated democracy.
From Aristotle, to Cicero, and even St. Thomas Aquinas, the classical tradition of political philosophy has been hostile to democracy as an ideal means toward the human good.
Most famously, Plato himself argued that a true democracy is one step detached from tyranny, and no thinker better demonstrated how this was the case than CS Lewis.
In a short letter, CS Lewis took Plato’s argument of “democracy as a funnel to tyranny,” and explains what a true democracy actually is, why it’s bad for the nation, and why it can even lead your soul to ruin.
Today, we’ll deep dive into this famous article.
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A Toast in Hell
C.S. Lewis warns against democracy in Screwtape Proposes a Toast, which today functions as the epilogue to The Screwtape Letters. The book is written as a series of letters from a senior demon, Screwtape, advising a younger demon on how to deceive and damn a human soul.
The “toast” takes place in Hell at a dinner table, where Screwtape reflects on current events, particularly the state of Western civilization.
First, he laments how today’s sinners are “boring.” Where the past had truly evil villains like Hitler, Judas, and the Pharisees, today’s villains are lukewarm and bland. The new sinners are guilty petty crimes of omission, like mild corruption, half-hearted lust, or sloth.
Comically, just as Scripture warns against being lukewarm, so too does Hell itself despise lukewarm sinners!
Yet while Screwtape laments the mediocrity of modern sin, he has one great cause for celebration.
Hell, he boasts, is receiving souls in historic numbers, and it is all thanks to one word:
Democracy.
Radical Equality
So what, exactly, is wrong with democracy?
First, we must define it carefully. Lewis is not attacking representative government as such. He never rails against voting booths or elections themselves. What Lewis, and Plato before him, mean by democracy is the democratic spirit:
the pursuit of radical and excessive equality that goes far beyond the Christian claim that all souls are equal in dignity.
The pure democratic spirit resembles something closer to hatred:
“Hidden in the heart of this modern striving for Liberty is also a deep hatred of personal freedom…
Democracy is the word with which you must lead them by the nose.”
More striking still, Screwtape explains that democracy must never be clearly defined:
“Mankind should never be allowed to give this word [Democracy] a clear and definable meaning…
You are to use the word purely as an incantation for its spelling power.”
Democracy, then, becomes a spell meant to invoke blind veneration. The demonic deception reaches its climax here:
“Of course, democracy is connected with the political ideal that all men should be treated equally…
From this political ideal, you deceive them to a factual belief that all men are equal.”
This is the great lie. Democracy teaches not merely the equal dignity of souls, but the false belief that all men are equal in talent, intelligence, and virtue. From this single falsehood follows a hatred of excellence itself.
A democracy of total equality cannot tolerate the reality that some men are wiser, stronger, more virtuous, or more capable than others. Excellence itself becomes an offense... And this spirit, Lewis warns, will send nations to absolute ruin.
The Death of Education
Screwtape offers a chilling account of how democracy destroys education.
The following passages form the heart of his argument:
“The basic principle of the new education is to be that dunces and idlers must not be made to feel inferior to intelligent and industrious pupils…
At universities, examinations must be framed so that nearly all students get good marks…
Children who are fit to proceed to a higher class may be artificially kept back…
A boy who would be capable of tackling Aeschylus or Dante sits listening to his coeval’s attempts to spell out A Cat Sat on the Mat…
In a word, we may reasonably hope for the virtual abolition of education…
And of course this would not follow unless all education became state education.”
The lie that all men are equally talented destroys education from the ground up. Rather than cultivating virtue or elevating excellence, education is flattened in the name of “democracy.”
This is precisely why Plato called democracy the predecessor to tyranny. A tyrannical soul is one incapable of distinguishing good from evil, and better from worse. Democracy primes the soul for tyranny through its confusion and flattening of all virtue.
And yet, tyranny is not even the final outcome.
Screwtape and the hordes of Hell have a far more sinister plan for the souls of men — an evil that makes mass suffering, political collapse, and even civilizational destruction appear almost trivial by comparison.
This is an evil that has pursued every soul since the day man first walked the earth… And if you are not attentive, it is the same temptation that will quietly vie for the heart of your own soul as well.
