So they did not let him teach in schools because he was Catholic or what? And they allowed the Atheist? Cause that doesn't really sound like 20th century England to me...Please elaborate on this, thanks
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I should clarify that I am speaking more about American public schools, although European school systems, including England, borrowed the Prussian model as well. The changes came into effect slowly over the 20th century, and it probably wasn't until the 70's or so that Chesterton became risky (my best guess).So they did not let him teach in schools because he was Catholic or what? And they allowed the Atheist? Cause that doesn't really sound like 20th century England to me...Please elaborate on this, thanks
Women in the Home
Home is the girl's prison and the woman's workhouse.
"If a man called Christmas Day a mere hypocritical excuse for drunkeness and gluttony, that would be false, but it would have a fact hidden in it somewhere. But when Bernard Shaw says that Christmas Day is only a conspiracy kept up by Poulterers and wine merchants from strictly business motives, then he says something which is not so much false as startling and arrestingly foolish. He might as well say that the two sexes were invented by jewellers who wanted to sell wedding rings." - George Bernard Shaw, Ch. 6
"The decay of society is praised by artists as the decay of a corpse is praised by worms." - Shaw, 1909
"No sceptical philosopher can ask any questions that may not equally be asked by a tired child on a hot afternoon." (George Bernard Shaw)
What's Wrong with the World
By Dale Ahlquist
Chesterton's book, What's Wrong with the World, was supposedly written in 1910. But there is good evidence that it was actually written today.
Our society is experiencing exactly the crisis that Chesterton warned us about almost a century ago. There is a greater disparity than ever between the rich and poor. Our families are falling apart, our schools are in utter chaos, our basic freedoms are under assault. It affects every one of us. As Chesterton says, "Not only are we all in the same boat, but we are all seasick."
But while we agree about the evil, we no longer agree about the good. The main thing that is wrong with the world is that we do not ask what is right. It is the loss of ideals that makes reform such a difficult task.
Some people say that idealism is impractical. But Chesterton says, "Idealism is only considering everything in its practical essence." In other words, idealism is common sense. It is what the common man knows is right, in spite of all the voices telling him it is impractical or unrealistic or out-dated. And when Chesterton says idealism, he means the Christian ideal. "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried." It would mean the ideal house and the happy family, the holy family of history. It would mean making laws that respect the family as the most important unit of society, and laws which are moral and respect religious principles. It would mean the widespread distribution of property and capital to provide for greater justice and liberty. It would mean not being afraid to teach the truth to our children. But we have left the truth behind us. And instead of turning around and going back and fixing things, we rush madly forward towards we know not what, and call ourselves, "progressive." Instead of the solid family and the church and the republic being held up as ideals, these things are now assailed by those who have never known them, or by those who have failed to fulfill them. "Men invent new ideals because they are afraid to attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm, because they are afraid to look back."
Although this book is a work of non-fiction, Chesterton introduces us to two characters: Hudge and Gudge. Well, three characters: he also introduces us to Jones. Hudge and Gudge are the enemies of Jones. Simply put, Hudge is Big Government and Gudge is Big Business. And Jones? Jones is the common man. "This man Jones has always desired ordinary things; he has married for love, he has chosen or built a small house that fits like a coat; he is ready to be great grandfather and a local [hero]." But something has gone wrong. Hudge and Gudge have conspired against Jones to take away his property, his independence, and his dignity.
The home is the only place of liberty. "Property is merely the art of democracy. It means that every man should have something that he can shape in his own image…To give nearly everybody ordinary houses would please nearly everybody." But in a society where most people cannot afford their own home, and they cannot properly support themselves but have to be someone else's wage slave, easily sacked, easily replaced and displaced, having to rely on the government to supplement their needs, in other words, when they are totally at the mercy of Hudge and Gudge, it means enormous pressure is put on the family, and it means the society will crumble from the bottom up. The society is especially in danger when the common man, left reeling by the loss of religion, of home, of family, is not even sure what he wants any more.
Man has always lost his way. He has been a tramp ever since Eden; but he always knew, or thought he knew, what he was looking for. Every man has a house somewhere in the elaborate cosmos; his house waits for him. . . But in the bleak and blinding hail of skepticism to which he has been now so long subjected , he has begun for the first time to be chilled, not merely in his hopes, but in his desires. For the first time in history he begins really to doubt the object of his wanderings on earth. He has always lost his way; but now he has lost his address.
One of the most famous lines in all of Chesterton's writings is found in this book: "If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly." For some reason, people puzzle on this. Or else use it to defend their own slovenly ways. But it is a ringing defense of the amateur, the person who does a wide variety of things out of love rather than one specialized thing out of mere professionalism. The person who best understands the "uproarious amateurishness of the universe" is the woman, the mother who has to be the first to explain the entire universe to a child. When the mother is pulled out of the home and made a specialist, working for Hudge and Gudge, the child is left to be raised by "experts." Thus, both the mother and the child become narrower. And so does the whole society as the family of course is ripped apart. And so is every integral element of society torn apart from everything else. The world, says Chesterton, "is one wild divorce court." Religion is banned from the classroom. So are the parents. So is common sense. Each subject is taught in a vacuum. Each profession is increasingly narrow. People more know more and more about less and less. What's wrong with the world? Take a good look around.
The key to Chesterton's politics is that he refused to take part in the debate between Hudge and Gudge, but rather judged them both by the test of Jones. What, he asked had Gudge, the industrial-capitalist, done to strengthen the family of Jones? What had Hudge, the socialist-idealist, done to strengthen the family of Jones?
Gudge rules by a coarse and cruel system of sacking and sweating and bi-sexual toil, which is totally inconsistent with the family and is bound to destroy it. And Hudge calls a women’s work freedom to live her own life, and says the family is something we shall soon gloriously outgrow.
I should clarify that I am speaking more about American public schools, although European school systems, including England, borrowed the Prussian model as well. The changes came into effect slowly over the 20th century, and it probably wasn't until the 70's or so that Chesterton became risky (my best guess).
Chesterton speaks openly about Christianity. He insists that faith is important and that it matters what you believe. This is in ideological opposition to the controlling philosophy of public education. He represents a direct attack on pluralism, religious relativism and political correctness from a rational standpoint. A teacher trying to teach him (as in actually explore his works, as opposed to merely mentioning him in a footnote) would get warnings and ultimately risk losing their job on the basis that the teacher is 'teaching religion'.
Yes, atheist writers are decidedly allowed. I'd say the general rationale is that they are 'not religious'. Writers are rarely officially banned, and teachers are rarely closely monitored, but all it takes is a student complaint, which they'll make for any reason at all - out of simple spite sometimes - to draw an investigation.
When he drops one doctrine after another in a refined scepticism, when he
declines to tie himself to a system, when he says that he has outgrown
definitions, when he says that he disbelieves in finality, when, in his own
imagination, he sits as God, holding no form of creed but contemplating all, then
he is by that very process sinking slowly backwards into the vagueness of the
vagrant animals and the unconsciousness of the grass. Trees have no dogmas.
Turnips are singularly broad-minded.
In The New Jerusalem, Chesterton made it clear that he believed that there was a
"Jewish Problem" in Europe, in the sense that he believed that Jewish culture
(not Jewish ethnicity/Semitism) separated itself from the nationalities of Europe.
He suggested the formation of a Jewish homeland as a solution, and was later
invited to Palestine by Jewish Zionists who saw him as an ally in their cause. In
1934, after the Nazi Party took power in Germany he wrote that:
In our early days Hilaire Belloc and myself were accused of being
uncompromising Anti-Semites. Today, although I still think there is a Jewish
problem, I am appalled by the Hitlerite atrocities. They have absolutely no
reason or logic behind them. It is quite obviously the expedient of a man who
has been driven to seeking a scapegoat, and has found with relief the most
famous scapegoat in European history, the Jewish people.
The Wiener Library (London's archive on anti-semitism and Holocaust history)
has defended Chesterton against the charge of anti-Semitism: "he was not an
enemy, and when the real testing time came along he showed what side he was
on."
And then, to see that this course of confusion was thrust, via the whole educational system upon Christianity by atheists. They had our children by the throat.
rusmeister said:If anyone knows of anything he actually wrote pertaining to EO, I would be very interested. He wrote dozens of books, hundreds of essays and poems, and I've only scratched the surface.
I definitely agree that today's scholarship is equally biased, and one must try to filter as much as one can. We simply have the privilege of being able to see obvious bias in retrospect, like the clear bias against Byzantium in the works of Western historians until very recently. John Julius Norwich's History of Byzantium has a pretty good discussion on the evolution of Western scholarship on Byzantium. Chesterton never got to read Norwich's book, of course, which is much more favorable (though not uncritical) of the Christian East. I agree that we have just as many problems in today's books, and I think that will be even more apparent to future readers. The case of Asian religions, though, I think is especially apparent, simply because at the time Chesterton was writing, very few Buddhist documents (relative to now) were even translated into English. How could he then be objective?
As for anything else of substance Chesterton has written on Eastern Christianity, I don't know of it. I think he basically wrote off the Christian East as an abstract, despotic dead end ("a dried up Platonism") and didn't spend much time thinking about it.