"Pardoning the unpardonable."
"Loving the unlovable."
Chesterton's liberal inclination to forgive -- and not only to forgive but to forgive "the unforgivable" -- is in deadly conflict with The Thinking Housewife's condemnatory "conservatism."
Like most contemporary "conservatives" Laura is in headlong rush to God-damn the undeserving - especially "the undeserving poor," and even more specifically "the undeserving, dark-skinned poor."
Conservative Christians would rather risk eternal damnation than "pardon the unpardonable" because their identity -- that most precious of all goods -- depends on condemnation, not "truth setting them free."
"Do You Know What You're Doing To Me?"
Conservative Christians would rather risk eternal damnation than "pardon the unpardonable" because their identity -- that most precious of all goods -- depends on condemnation, not "truth setting them free."
"Love Your Enemies. Do Good To Those Who Hate You," Luke 6: 27-42
"Love Your Enemies. Do Good To Those Who Hate You," Luke 6: 27-42
Yeshua Excoriates Fellow Pharisees: "The Woe Passages"
"Do You Know What You're Doing To Me?"
Jesus of Nazareth
http://paxonbothhouses.
I too was drawn to Laura's Solange Hertz obituary.
Tragically, many "conservative" Christians end up using "good conservatives" to justify "bad conservatism."
Chesterton is a case in point.
Although he (like I) embodies views across the political spectrum, it is difficult to imagine Laura tolerating his liberalism -- in particular his championship of The French Revolution.
Were he not such a towering genius who spoke so convincingly of authentic conservatism's many benefits, she would discard him in a proverbial heartbeat.
Ignoring Chesterton's pervasive liberalism, Laura cannibalizes The Jolly Giant's work to find the passages she wants, blithely overlooking the rest of his work for which she would condemn anyone else to the innermost circle of Hell.
I speak with no hint of hyperbole.
If Chesterton were not Chesterton -- if he did not harbor a strong strain of traditionalism coupled with great fondness for "the family" (Gilbert himself had no children) -- Laura would take Gilbert from pillar to post, her sole aim to delight in his eternal damnation.
Predictably, she ignores Chesterton's "damnability" in order to parasitize those bits that square with her blinding fixations.
Predictably, she ignores Chesterton's "damnability" in order to parasitize those bits that square with her blinding fixations.
The Thinking Housewife: "We Can Be Pretty Sure That Many Good People Are Roasting In Hell"
Imagine how very, very "good" Laura (and her fearful fellows) must be if "many good people are roasting in Hell."
Where, prithee, was this concept of "many good people roasting in Hell" born but in Hell itself?
Where, prithee, was this concept of "many good people roasting in Hell" born but in Hell itself?
Chesterton: The Meaning Of Love
Chesterton: The Meaning Of Love
G.K. Chesterton: "The Anarchy of The Rich"
G.K. Chesterton and Warren Buffett's Class War
Chesterton Viewed The Rich As "Oppressive" "Scum" And Failures
G.K. Chesterton On Charity, Hope And Universal Salvation
G.K. Chesterton Quotations... And More
G.K. Chesterton: "The Anarchy of The Rich"
G.K. Chesterton and Warren Buffett's Class War
Chesterton Viewed The Rich As "Oppressive" "Scum" And Failures
G.K. Chesterton On Charity, Hope And Universal Salvation
G.K. Chesterton Quotations... And More
Pax On Both Houses: Compendium Of G.K. Chesterton Posts
Pax On Both Houses: Compendium Of G.K. Chesterton Posts
GK Chesterton's Universalism
The Rich Are The Real Anarchists And Sully The World With Their Scum
Chesterton Considered The Rich "Oppressive" "Scum" And "Failures"
Chesterton: Many Books Denouse Lust But What Of Those That Encourage Greed?
Chesterton Calls For A New Kind Of Priesthood
Chesterton: Distributism Posits Need To Distribute Private Property Until Everyone Has Enough
Chesterton: Distributism Posits Need To Distribute Private Property Until Everyone Has Enough
In The Thinking Housewife's recent post, "Admiring The Ruins At The Synod" (published within 24 hours of her Hertz' obituary) Laura quotes Chesterton in a context she deems favorable for conservatism but whose meaning I conceive as radically critical of conservatism: "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." (Gilbert Keith Chesterton, London Illustrated Review, April 24, 1924.)
In this passage, notice that Chesterton considers conservatism and progressivism the two political poles.
The tertium quid, Liberalism -- at least as Liberalism manifests in Liberal Democracy -- was, throughout his life, Chesterton's political pole star. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_democracy
Just yesterday I endured a difficult conversation with a passionate progressive whose ideas were so rigid that she was incapable of giving credence to any position not found on her narrow band of the political spectrum. (Laura exhibits this same obsessive fixation, this same rigidity, but "on the right side of the aisle" rather than the left.)
At least progressives aim at "something like progress" even if they wildly overshoot the mark and need to be restrained.
Conservatives, on the other hand, do nothing but "prevent mistakes from being corrected."
As a Spanish teacher -- and I think most successful teachers will second this motion -- I tell my students that "good mistakes are your best friends."
Commit as many errors as you can! Commit them early and often.
Priggish right-wingers are terrified of even slight imperfection and cannot bring themselves to admit the obvious: Only by making "mistakes" do learners (in this case "language learners") produce enough "raw material" -- however incorrect it may be -- to insure that there is at least "something" to work with.
To the extent that students "stay in their heads" trying to formulate "perfect sentences" before saying anything at all, the quest for perfection hobbles learning.
"Is Perfectionism A Curse? Paul Ryan Tells The Truth"
"Thomas Aquinas On American Conservatives' Continual Commission Of Sin"
In effect, perfectionism is crippling and turns would-be learners into the pedagogical equivalents of "high cervical" quadraplegics.
We see this same mechanism with toddlers.
Only by "learning from falling" do babies quit crawling and finally walk.
We humans stand upright because our ancestors abandoned the "tradition" of moving about on all fours.
My reading of Laura's Chesterton passage (cited in "Ruins At The Synod") is that progressives provide the raw material -- often unformed and non-viable -- out of which liberals (and smart conservatives.... if there are any left) make necessary corrections.
Because contemporary conservatives are unimaginative, lazy and intransigent, they serve no good purpose because they aspire toward none, unless we consider "sola fide" and "the invisible hand of the unregulated marketplace" as real aspirations rather than the cop-outs they are.
Conservatives are urgent to return to "The Golden Age" which ultimately means going back to Mommy's womb and not stopping there but retreating "all the way back from The Flesh to The Word," putting themselves in direct opposition to the Divine Will as described in the Gospel of John: "In the beginning was the Word... and the Word was made Flesh."
Conservatives' "too pure principles" justify obstructionism for obstruction's sake and, as Chesterton said at the outset of Orthodoxy (in my view his best book): “All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change. If you leave a white post alone it will soon be a black post. If you particularly want it to be white you must be always painting it again; that is, you must be always having a revolution. Briefly, if you want the old white post you must have a new white post” (Orthodoxy, Ch. 1).
And so, paving the road to hell with impeccably "good intentions," conservatives insure that any system of governance wherein they hold sway will end up with a "black" eye. (I am reminded that "impeccable" means "without sin" which, for those who believe in Original Sin is an impossibility from the instant we're born. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=impeccable)
The conservative do-nothing inclination to let the white post turn black is "what happens" in the conservative wing of any Abrahamic religion, to wit: long periods of lazy decline punctuated by intermittent fits of anger which finally propel them to do the only thing they do well: they work "evil" and they do so "cheerfully."
"We Like War"
George Carlin Video
"The terrible thing about our time is precisely the ease with which theories can be put into practice. The more perfect, the more idealistic the theories, the more dreadful is their realization. We are at last beginning to rediscover what perhaps men knew better in very ancient times, in primitive times before utopias were thought of: that liberty is bound up with imperfection, and that limitations, imperfections, errors are not only unavoidable but also salutary. The best is not the ideal. Where what is theoretically best is imposed on everyone as the norm, then there is no longer any room even to be good. The best, imposed as a norm, becomes evil.”
"Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander,” by Trappist monk, Father Thomas Merton
More Merton Quotes
Devout Catholic, Blaise Pascal
The Rich Are The Real Anarchists And Sully The World With Their Scum
Chesterton: Distributism Posits Need To Distribute Private Property Until Everyone Has Enough
Chesterton: Distributism Posits Need To Distribute Private Property Until Everyone Has Enough
In The Thinking Housewife's recent post, "Admiring The Ruins At The Synod" (published within 24 hours of her Hertz' obituary) Laura quotes Chesterton in a context she deems favorable for conservatism but whose meaning I conceive as radically critical of conservatism: "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." (Gilbert Keith Chesterton, London Illustrated Review, April 24, 1924.)
In this passage, notice that Chesterton considers conservatism and progressivism the two political poles.
The tertium quid, Liberalism -- at least as Liberalism manifests in Liberal Democracy -- was, throughout his life, Chesterton's political pole star. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_democracy
Just yesterday I endured a difficult conversation with a passionate progressive whose ideas were so rigid that she was incapable of giving credence to any position not found on her narrow band of the political spectrum. (Laura exhibits this same obsessive fixation, this same rigidity, but "on the right side of the aisle" rather than the left.)
At least progressives aim at "something like progress" even if they wildly overshoot the mark and need to be restrained.
Conservatives, on the other hand, do nothing but "prevent mistakes from being corrected."
As a Spanish teacher -- and I think most successful teachers will second this motion -- I tell my students that "good mistakes are your best friends."
Commit as many errors as you can! Commit them early and often.
Commit as many errors as you can! Commit them early and often.
Priggish right-wingers are terrified of even slight imperfection and cannot bring themselves to admit the obvious: Only by making "mistakes" do learners (in this case "language learners") produce enough "raw material" -- however incorrect it may be -- to insure that there is at least "something" to work with.
To the extent that students "stay in their heads" trying to formulate "perfect sentences" before saying anything at all, the quest for perfection hobbles learning.
"Is Perfectionism A Curse? Paul Ryan Tells The Truth"
"Thomas Aquinas On American Conservatives' Continual Commission Of Sin"
In effect, perfectionism is crippling and turns would-be learners into the pedagogical equivalents of "high cervical" quadraplegics.
We see this same mechanism with toddlers.
Only by "learning from falling" do babies quit crawling and finally walk.
We humans stand upright because our ancestors abandoned the "tradition" of moving about on all fours.
We humans stand upright because our ancestors abandoned the "tradition" of moving about on all fours.
My reading of Laura's Chesterton passage (cited in "Ruins At The Synod") is that progressives provide the raw material -- often unformed and non-viable -- out of which liberals (and smart conservatives.... if there are any left) make necessary corrections.
Because contemporary conservatives are unimaginative, lazy and intransigent, they serve no good purpose because they aspire toward none, unless we consider "sola fide" and "the invisible hand of the unregulated marketplace" as real aspirations rather than the cop-outs they are.
Conservatives are urgent to return to "The Golden Age" which ultimately means going back to Mommy's womb and not stopping there but retreating "all the way back from The Flesh to The Word," putting themselves in direct opposition to the Divine Will as described in the Gospel of John: "In the beginning was the Word... and the Word was made Flesh."
Conservatives are urgent to return to "The Golden Age" which ultimately means going back to Mommy's womb and not stopping there but retreating "all the way back from The Flesh to The Word," putting themselves in direct opposition to the Divine Will as described in the Gospel of John: "In the beginning was the Word... and the Word was made Flesh."
Conservatives' "too pure principles" justify obstructionism for obstruction's sake and, as Chesterton said at the outset of Orthodoxy (in my view his best book): “All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change. If you leave a white post alone it will soon be a black post. If you particularly want it to be white you must be always painting it again; that is, you must be always having a revolution. Briefly, if you want the old white post you must have a new white post” (Orthodoxy, Ch. 1).
And so, paving the road to hell with impeccably "good intentions," conservatives insure that any system of governance wherein they hold sway will end up with a "black" eye. (I am reminded that "impeccable" means "without sin" which, for those who believe in Original Sin is an impossibility from the instant we're born. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=impeccable)
"We Like War"
George Carlin Video
George Carlin Video
"The terrible thing about our time is precisely the ease with which theories can be put into practice. The more perfect, the more idealistic the theories, the more dreadful is their realization. We are at last beginning to rediscover what perhaps men knew better in very ancient times, in primitive times before utopias were thought of: that liberty is bound up with imperfection, and that limitations, imperfections, errors are not only unavoidable but also salutary. The best is not the ideal. Where what is theoretically best is imposed on everyone as the norm, then there is no longer any room even to be good. The best, imposed as a norm, becomes evil.”
"Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander,” by Trappist monk, Father Thomas Merton
More Merton Quotes
Devout Catholic, Blaise Pascal
"Charity is the power of defending that which we know to be indefensible. Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate. It is true that there is a state of hope which belongs to bright prospects and the morning; but that is not the virtue of hope. The virtue of hope exists only in earthquake and eclipse. It is true that there is a thing crudely called charity, which means charity to the deserving poor; but charity to the deserving is not charity at all, but justice. It is the undeserving who require it, and the ideal either does not exist at all, or exists wholly for them."
Heretics, ch. 12 (1905)
In his greatest book, Orthodoxy, Chesterton says:
"To hope for all souls is imperative, and it is quite tenable that their salvation is inevitable."
"Charity is the power of defending that which we know to be indefensible. Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate. It is true that there is a state of hope which belongs to bright prospects and the morning; but that is not the virtue of hope. The virtue of hope exists only in earthquake and eclipse. It is true that there is a thing crudely called charity, which means charity to the deserving poor; but charity to the deserving is not charity at all, but justice. It is the undeserving who require it, and the ideal either does not exist at all, or exists wholly for them."
Heretics, ch. 12 (1905)
Heretics, ch. 12 (1905)
In his greatest book, Orthodoxy, Chesterton says:
"To hope for all souls is imperative, and it is quite tenable that their salvation is inevitable."
Pax On Both Houses: Compendium Of G.K. Chesterton Posts
http://paxonbothhouses.
G.K. Chesterton Quotations... And More
G.K. Chesterton Quotations... And More
Pax On Both Houses: Compendium Of G.K. Chesterton Posts
In "The French Revolution and The Irish" Chesterton openly admires Robespierre, Danton and Marat whose violence laid the ground work for the greatest Liberal state on Earth.
"The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly;
the rich have always objected to being governed at all."
"You’ve got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy came it would come from the poor. Why should it? The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists; they have more interest than anyone else in there being some decent government. The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn’t; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all. Aristocrats were always anarchists.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936)
The Man Who Was Thursday (1908)
In an essay about public health containing a proposal to eliminate lice among poor people, Chesterton said: "The poor are pressed down from above into stinking and suffocating underworlds of squalor."
Chesterton Viewed The Rich As "Oppressive" "Scum" And "Failures"
A good joke is the last thing you'll find at The Thinking Housewife.
Sophomoric snickering maybe, but never a belly laugh.
In "The French Revolution and The Irish" Chesterton openly admires Robespierre, Danton and Marat whose violence laid the ground work for the greatest Liberal state on Earth.
the rich have always objected to being governed at all."
"You’ve got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy came it would come from the poor. Why should it? The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists; they have more interest than anyone else in there being some decent government. The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn’t; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all. Aristocrats were always anarchists.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936)
The Man Who Was Thursday (1908)
In an essay about public health containing a proposal to eliminate lice among poor people, Chesterton said: "The poor are pressed down from above into stinking and suffocating underworlds of squalor."
Chesterton Viewed The Rich As "Oppressive" "Scum" And "Failures"
A good joke is the last thing you'll find at The Thinking Housewife.
Sophomoric snickering maybe, but never a belly laugh.
Pax tecum,
Alan
PS You might enjoy this long WAPO article about Solange Hertz. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/22/AR2009052203630.html
On Tue, Oct 13, 2015 at 1:32 PM, Fred Owens <froghospital911@gmail.com> wrote:
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