The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
They belief life is a war of all against all and nothing more.
Shakespeare’s King Lear shows the subversion of the most fundamental of all relationships, that of parent and child, by the corrupt and unbounded lust for power. It is a painful and horrifying play to read. We follow first how the old king preferred his older daughters’ insincere flattery to his youngest daughter’s selfless honesty. Valuing obedience over truth, he failed a parent’s most important duty: modeling for one’s children the moral courage necessary to have a decent life and a decent world.
As the play proceeds, Lear’s moral failing, common enough and seemingly limited in effect, turns out to have opened the gates of hell. The flattering daughters conspire against their aged father and their honest sister, turning Lear from his throne and executing the true daughter.
As darkness triumphs, Lear verges into insanity as all hope is quashed. The Earl of Gloucester, angered at the King’s daughters’ horrific betrayal of their father, seeks justice, but he is in turn betrayed by his own illegitimate son and is punished by having his eyes put out.
