A restoration?
In defence of the harmlessly mad, and of the not-very harmful, I argue that the world is terribly prejudiced against them. However, I join in the world’s sometime prejudice against the unambiguously evil, and will recommend it to public subscription. Since the evil tend to be easily confused with the innocently bababulah (a useful term in Thai that I am trying to transfer to English), there is controversy about what kind of madman, or madwoman, we should be trying to discourage. For surely, we should suppress some of them.
Even common-garden leftists, who tend themselves to be quite mad, generally do not classify Hitler as harmless, although they may have trouble naming another, unless he is the most recent Republican or Conservative candidate to win an election. Nevertheless, I hold that there are objective definitions of crimes, which the many harmful tend to commit (not just Hitler), and which, until recently, were given as grounds to arrest, try, and imprison them; or, in the old days, even to withdraw their right to get up in the morning. But now that “human rights” have been extended, towards fierce animals for instance, such as polar bears — who may be impossibly cute when there is not too much blood on their mouthes and faces — the situation is confused.
Now that I have become old myself (harmlessly?), I argue that the best thing we humans can hope for in this world is the restoration of some civilized habits. These might consist of a return to “not-very harmful” public life, and the participation of the relatively innocent in our ceremonial government; rather than their habitual indulgence in fiendish corruption and evil-doing. To this end, I would think the perfect, or complete, elimination of the “welfare state,” and any form of government assistance to any social group whatsoever, would be indicated. Friends, family, churches, and batty old ladies with surpluses of inherited money, could be restored to the eleemosynary functions. However, their philanthropy should be voluntary, not forced on them by taxation. (Note, that this would also solve our public debt crisis.)
We might make a list of other acts of incivility to be prosecuted, or government actions to be entirely eliminated, but shouldn’t become too ambitious. For that might lead us, paradoxically, back to what Saint John Henry Newman identified as the ur-crime, of liberalism.