I like this short essay by R. Andrew Newman on the role of freedom in C.S. Lewis’s Narnia. After many Narnian illustrations, Newman concludes with this comment: “In an essay that deserves to be better known, 'Is Progress Possible? Willing Slaves of the Welfare State,' Lewis argued that the state no longer exists 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."
"At least in Narnia, the state has its business and the subjects retain theirs."