Thursday: The Day That Was G.K.’s « A Voice in the Wilderness

4Feb/102

Thursday: The Day That Was G.K.’s

Every Thursday (except last Thursday) we bring you an excerpt from the selected works of one Gilbert Keith Chesterton. G.K. is my favorite writer, and I hope you learn to love him too.

From Heretics, Chapter Four, "Mr. Bernard Shaw":

The truth is, that it is quite an error to suppose that the absence of definite convictions gives the mind freedom and agility. A man who believes something is ready and witty, because he has all his weapons about him, he can apply his test in an instant.

The man engaged in a conflict with Mr. Bernard Shaw may fancy he has ten faces; similarly a man engaged against a brilliant duellist may fancy that the sword of his foe has turned to ten swords in his hand. But this is not really because the man is playing with ten swords, it is because he is aiming very straight with one.

Moreover, a man with a definite belief always appears bizarre, because he does not change with the world; he has climbed into a fixed star and the earth whizzes below him like a zoetrope. Millions of mild black-coated men call themselves sane and sensible because they always catch the fashionable insanity, because they are hurried into madness after madness by the maelstrom of the world.

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Carney
February 5th, 2010 - 10:36

GKC was writing Heretics in 1905, and listen to how pertinent and true his writing is even in the 21st century: “Millions of mild black-coated men call themselves sane and sensible because they always catch the fashionable insanity, because they are hurried into madness after madness by the maelstrom of the world…”

This is actually something that Chesterton writes about fairly often: fads (aka progressivism, aka liberalism). He writes in A Short History of England that, “tradition is truer than fashion”.

I am definitely not saying that conservatism is tradition while liberalism is fashion, but then again, perhaps I am.

RJ, you just wrote your Economics Part 1 for your series of Mere Conservatism essays, and I believe that you clearly show the foundation and roots of conservatism when you quote Bastiat. What is at the foundation of our political tradition? Life, liberty, and property, with God as the sovereign ruler in our lives and the government there to protect us, not to prevent us from smoking in bars or to fund abortions in foreign countries. Government is there almost as a necessary evil, as a result of humanity’s mistake, and as the next best thing we humans can come up with.

Conservatism is steeped in tradition, but it seems that liberalism changes from one decade to the next, or at least its leaders and pundits do.

Conservatives have their timeless beliefs; we are, in a sense, on a “fixed star”. To us, IDEAS are important, not figures, not feelings, and certainly not a president we exalt as a god. Ideas are timeless and will stand the test of fashionable insanity.
A Random Stranger
February 5th, 2010 - 11:01

I like your blog. It took me a while to come over and read it, but it’s good. Thanks for letting me know about it.

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The basic ideas, ideals, and values that generally define and characterize the central tenets of what today might be termed "modern conservative thought."

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