Progress means movement in a desired direction, and we do not all desire the same thing for our species....Now I care far more how humanity lives than how long. Progress, for me, means increasing goodness and happiness of individual lives....

As a result, classical political theory, with its Stoical, Christian and juristic key-conceptions (natural law, the value of the individual, the rights of man), has died. The modern State exists not to protect our rights but to do us good or make us good -- anyway to do something to us or to make us something. Hence the new name "leaders" for those who were once "rulers". We are less their subjects than their wards, pupils, or domestic animals. There is nothing left of which we can say to them, "Mind your own business." Our whole lives are their business....

In every age the men who want us under their thumb, if they have any sense, will put forward the particular pretnesion which hopes and fears of that age render most potent....

Are these not the ideal opportunity for enslavement? This is how it has entered before: a desperate need (real or apparent) in the one party, a power (real or apparent) to relieeve it in the other. In the ancient world individuals have sold themselves as slaves, in order to eat.

C.S. Lewis. "Willing Slaves of the Welfare State." in COMPELLING REASON: ESSAYS ON ETHICS AND THEOLOGY.