There should be a place in the public’s mind for G.K, Chesterton. The great Victorian writer understood better than most that absurdity and discernment are intellectual bulwarks against tyranny. He wrote: “Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.” Let’s be clear: poets are mysteriously silent about many things.
I was yesterday joking with a friend, a poet, who was lamenting a tendency in contemporary verse—how does one put it? The kind of poem where the poet tells us someone has been murdered right before his or her or they eyes and then goes on to tell us what’s for breakfast.
The personal is political until it isn’t. In other words: claiming a political life isn’t the same as living one.
Chesterton: “The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people.”
What a relief he often is.
“The word “good” has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.”
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A disabled poet I know thinks the entire able bodied civilization despises the cripples. She’s right of course. We rely on social programs, trouble the architects, bother administrators charged with the enforcement of normalcy. There just ain’t no way around it, the lame and the halt are trouble.
Chesterton; “Dear Sir: Regarding your article ‘What’s Wrong with the World?’ I am. Yours truly,”
I’m for the democratic ideal of wrongness. This is where true equality resides.
Perhaps my favorite Chesterton quote is this one:
“The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition. Thus we have two great types — the advanced person who rushes us into ruin, and the retrospective person who admires the ruins. He admires them especially by moonlight, not to say moonshine. Each new blunder of the progressive or prig becomes instantly a legend of immemorial antiquity for the snob. This is called the balance, or mutual check, in our Constitution.”
One is reminded of the late poet James Tate who wrote:
“Curses on those who do or do not take dope.”
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Chesterton was a fierce opponent of eugenics. He famously said:
“There exists today a scheme of action, a school of thought, as collective and unmistakable as any of those by whose grouping alone we can make any outline of history. It is as firm a fact as the Oxford Movement, or the Puritans of the Long Parliament; or the Jansenists; or the Jesuits. It is a thing that can be pointed out; it is a thing that can be discussed; and it is a thing that can still be destroyed. It is called for convenience “Eugenics”; and that it ought to be destroyed I propose to prove in the pages that follow. I know that it means very different things to different people; but that is only because evil always takes advantage of ambiguity. I know it is praised with high professions of idealism and benevolence; with silver-tongued rhetoric about purer motherhood and a happier posterity. But that is only because evil is always flattered, as the Furies were called “The Gracious Ones.””
Excerpt From: “Eugenics and Other Evils.” Apple Books.
Who takes advantage of ambiguity in our time?
Planet of the Blind 