wcsoto

By all the working and orthodox standards of sanity, capitalism is insane. I should not say to Mr. Rockefeller ‘I am a rebel.’ I should say 'I am a respectable man and you are not.’

G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936), Utopia of Usurers and Other Essays

http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/2134.txt

The word _modern_ is today almost a eulogy. Once things _old_ were preferred. Everything old had lasted longer. Chronologically they came nearer to eternity. Old people were nearer to the grave and therefore nearer to God. Today the accent is on Youth.

Dios nos preserve de la pureza, en todos los campos.
De la madre del terrorismo político, del sectarismo religioso, de la inclemencia ética, de la esterilidad estética, de la bobería filosófica.

(May God preserve us from purity, in all fields.
From the mother of political terrorism, of religious sectarianism, of ethical severity, of aesthetic sterility, of philosophical stupidity.)

Salvo en los primeros momentos de entusiasmo revolucionario, la mayoría de la población, en todo país y en toda época, pertenece a un centro-derecha.

(Except for the first moments of revolutionary enthusiasm, the majority of the population, in every country and in every epoch, belongs to a center-right.)

Brave men are vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the middle. But these modern cowards are all crustaceans; their hardness is all on the cover and their softness is inside.

G. K. Chesterton

http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/Tremendous_Trifles.html

The disappearance of the radical left is a sign that in principle it has reached its attainable goals. While no one admits it, what we see around us is the victory of the Revolution.

James Kalb

http://antitechnocrat.net:8000/node/25

The cry “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity or Death!” was much in vogue during the Revolution. Liberty ended by covering France with prisons, equality by multiplying titles and decorations, and fraternity by dividing us. Death alone prevailed.

(via vikingmanx)

Communism had little appeal for the working classes, who were its supposed beneficiaries. Its most passionate devotees were educated people, often from privileged backgrounds, who showed little real sympathy for the poor.

James Hitchcock

http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=17-04-021-f

Prohibition has the quality of all the sins that destroy the soul. The evil of the thing lay deep, because it was not a narrowing of the moral sense; it was a violent dislocation and uprooting of the moral sense. Only by perverting the conscience of a man, only by making his mind crooked, can you induce him to believe that drinking beer is some thing like assassination or betrayal. And by the time that you have succeeded, you have ruined his moral sense.

THE SAINT AND THE DRAGON

— The primary things in the universe, before all letters and all language, are a note of exclamation and a note of interrogation. The very shapes of them are startlingly symbolic; the first straight and simple, the second crooked and looking like a sneer. The note of admiration is Man, erect and wondering, worshipping the wonderful sky. The note of interrogation is the only thinking thing that was with him in Eden from the first. The note of interrogation is the Serpent, curved and at once cowering and insinuating. The first appreciates; the second depreciates. The two have been allegorized and repeated in every bewildering blazon of mythology and heraldry. St George was the note of admiration; he was Adam in armour. The dragon was the note of interrogation gorgeously engraved, like a capital in a Gothic missal. They have come together in many ages with the sound of steel, the straight swords of simplicity and the curved scimitars of scepticism; nor has there been any other battle since the beginning of the world.

If you want to treat a tiger reasonably, you must go back to the garden of Eden. For the obstinate reminder continued to recur: only the supernatural has taken a sane view of Nature. The essence of all pantheism, evolutionism, and modern cosmic religion is really in this proposition: that Nature is our mother. Unfortunately, if you regard Nature as a mother, you discover that she is a step-mother. The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire, but not to imitate. This gives to the typically Christian pleasure in this earth a strange touch of lightness that is almost frivolity. Nature was a solemn mother to the worshippers of Isis and Cybele. Nature was a solemn mother to Wordsworth or to Emerson. But Nature is not solemn to Francis of Assisi or to George Herbert. To St. Francis, Nature is a sister, and even a younger sister: a little, dancing sister, to be laughed at as well as loved.

G. K. Chesterton — Orthodoxy, Chapter VII

http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/ortho14.txt

You can’t impose decency, honesty, good behavior, or responsibility. They are in the culture, or they are not. If they are, you don’t need laws, police, and supervison. If they are not, laws won’t much help.

Fred Reed

http://www.fredoneverything.net/KGReunion.shtml