My Dear Scutpale

How in Hell are we supposed to continue our eternal effort (and it is eternal, whatever the Enemy might say) at muddling the minds of humans if the Propaganda Department keeps giving the game away? I refer to this monstruosity. Did no one grasp that this was the kind of argument that should never have been thrown out to the human Internet, for all to see? Precisely who is minding the shop there?


Oh, of course I know it's an old argument, from one of the humans most famous thinkers, that cynic Plato (just how he managed to escape our clutches is a mystery even I am not privy to), part of a dialogue that has been used by atheists to cool the ardor of Christians since time immemorial. But that is precisely the point. The Euthyphro has to be used, with an unspoken bias and an exercise of glibness. It is perfect for a soul-dead adjunct professor of philosophy to use on an human youth who stopped learning anything useful about the Enemy when he or she was twelve years old (there are, of course, so many such humans nowadays). There the ephemerality of verbal speech, the sense of deference to authority, and the silent pressures we exert can have greatly desired effects.


But the written word is different. It remains, and therefore it's weaknesses can be discovered. It does not take a clever human to see that the "Euthyprho dilemna" is a false dichotomy. It's a classic heads-I-win-tails-you-lose trick. It purports to prove that either a) morality is seperate from the Enemy, and therefore superior to Him, or b) morality is decreed, by the enemy, and therefore arbitrary. The former is of course an absurdity, and the latter we have taught the humans to believe, without ever saying it baldly of course, as somehow "not good enough."


Surely, Scutpale, you know that the real deception lies in how we have taught the humans to think about what the Enemy calls morality. Specifically, we have taught them that Morality is a nature and being unto itself, not a descriptor of acts that either are or are not in line with a being's Enemy-designed nature. A lion stalking and hunting down and antelope is being true to its nature, following the commands that the Enemy has given it: feed and make more of yourself. Humans, alone among His material creatures, have the power to choose to go against their nature, to be immoral. Morality is therefore irrelevant outside of Creation; and since all Creation (Our Father Below, sadly, included) stems from the enemy, all morality must as well.


The fear of the arbitrary is a weapon we use well, since it stems from the Enemy-inspired love of the eternal. Because of our centuries of darkening, the humans cannot put the arbitrary and the eternal on the same plane. We cannot allow them to say to themselves "Given that the Universe itself is an arbitrary being, which did not have to exist, why am I surprised that Morality would be, too?" Such thoughts lead inevitably to dangerous wonderings about the Necessary Being, which that miscreant Aquinas put on the track to theism centuries ago. We must always supress them.


And honestly, Scutpale, did you not see that allowing the arguments for atheism to appear next to the arguments for the existence of the Enemy ought never be put in the same room together? Of course none of the latter prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the enemy exists; the humans cannot see Him. That isn't the point. Do you not see that the atheist ones are based not on reality but on attitude? Of course it's difficult for their silly, time-bound reason to understand Him. How could it not be? These problems we have used well, but not a one of them demonstrate as a logical consequence that He does not exist, merely that He is poorly understood. The other side shows from the arbitrary nature of existence itself that He does exist. Put the two together and what do you have?


I sometimes wonder if your department takes a bit too much joy in it's work, the crafting of argument. Remember my predecessors dictum: He can argue, too, and our purpose is not to enliven their minds.




Yours in austere sublimity,



Toadpipe

My Dear Wobgrist,

Please accept this small note of congratulations at your latest coup with your human. The Lowerarchy has been seeking for some time to undue the pernicious influence of this man, Andrew Sullivan. How monotonously he rings out clearly against moral surrender to theocrats and thugs! Too tedious to recount, really. But you have really made him string himself up. I applaud you.


So tell me, Wobgrist, how did you get him to endorse a gas tax? How did you get a man to endorse making more expensive a substance that his fellow countryment depend on, but he does not? How did you get him to argue that the solution to solving a fiscal crisis caused by greedy overspending is to increase the amount taken from those who produce?


Never mind. I know exactly how you did it, and much does it please my emptiness. You have nicely played on his urbanity, from which two delights follow: 1) blindness to the rapaciousness of Caeser, at least so far as go the efforts of Caeser that he approves of (I mean, to believe that such would be a "wartime gas tax," which would disappear when the war did! Really, Wobgrist, you tickle me!), 2) disdain for non-urbanites. He'd deny this, of course, but one can see it clearly in this little passage:

Others say it penalizes those in remote and rural areas. So what? Very few taxes are perfect, and our electoral system — with its over-representation of big agricultural states in the Senate — already pampers the rural. I'd gladly exchange a gas-tax hike for abolition of agricultural subsidies. Any takers in Iowa?)

In other words, the bloody farmers can just pay up. How dare the people who grow our food and have nothing to do with the mismanagement of publis resources (as if this fool is unaware the most "subsidies" go to big players, not small farmers. A perfect blindness for you to exploit) expect an exemption from the cost of "repairing" it. Meanwhile, the professional writer and opinion-holder, belonging to the class that has argued for and defended every silly, expensive institution the American humans have established over the last 100 years, pays nothing. And of course he takes refuge in the arrogance of the "lone voice" when most folk disagree with him!


All this, Wobgrist, from a man who claims to advocate federalism (the humans' term for subsidiarity, and one far less clear, which is why we support it)! I and the Lowearchy are always pleased when we weaken the humans love of their humbler brethren and expand their passion for grand institutions, for trusting in Caeser's providence. For one thing, it is entirely contrary to what the enemy commands of them, and for another, divinizing Caeser is always in our interests. It weakens fortitude, and strenghtens pride, and the food created is of a most succulent kind.


We must, of course, expand on this. Have you considered suggesting to your human other things that he does not use that should be taxed? How about diapers? They're made from petrochemicals you know. After all, don't the filthy breeders owe it to those that make no children?




Your proud sponsor,



Toadpipe

My Dear Yakbuzz,

How very pleased I am to have read this morning's report, and discovered the actions of your client, Mr. Ashcroft. Quite frankly, we've heard very little success from your efforts, but I was able to convince the Lowerarchy that you were an experienced tempter and should be trusted with the assignment. It delights my hunger to no end to hear that he has begun cracking down on pornography.


You may think your achievement is minimal. It is not. You have poked and prodded this ascetic's faithfulness to the Enemy's laws to point where he now thinks that his law enforcement office ought to be concerned with, of all things, regulating lust. Now laws against lust are, on the face of it, very bad for our efforts. They provide limits to lustful behavior of humans, behavior which has been one of our greatest triumphs of this past century. But you have found the perfect chink in the armor. To make it the task of the federal government of the American humans to police the private morals of 260 million citizens is precisely what the Enemy would call "disordered." It is contrary to the niggling, pathetically dull concept of subsidiarity, of which the American humans positively reek, or used to.


We in the Lowerarchy of course know that the highest authority ought to do everything within it's power to do. Such was the very principle that led Our Father Below to take on the Enemy in the first place. Tyranny is the only true government, everything else wears a simpering mask. Anything which makes this case explicit is to be encouraged. Otherwise, the Americans might remember that their system depends on them regulating their own behavior, and that leads to thoughts which are Anaethema to we demons.


Moreover, it will give the proponents of lust a chance to stand before society and once more suggest that everything they do is "normal" and "natural" and "what people want." What fun we have had with those terms, what utter articles of faith they have become among the ignorant! It makes me wiggle with glee at the thought of seeing Flumbottom pull the strings of that delicious morsel, Larry Flynt, and make him dance his shameless little barbarian dance. Oh, the blabbering of fools who really think that their lives and bodies are their own! I drool with anticipation.


I must, however, force myself to be sanguine. You still have not managed to really undo this man's faith, to weaken his resolve or make it bloom into real Spiritual Pride. This is a start, but nowhere near enough. Perhaps you could induce him to blame a certain group of people for the lustfulness of Americans? Blacks? Hispanics? Catholics? See which ones trigger the least positive response and get back to me.



Your proud sponsor,



Toadpipe