American Spectator's Book Review

In an issue (April 2009) through which you don't have to root far to find something interesting, Midge Decter's review of Herbert London's new book, America's Secular Challenge: The Rise of a New National Relegion, is just a trough of references to our man, G.K Chesterton. She begins: "G. K. Chesterton once observed that people who cease to believe in God will not then believe in nothing but will rather believe in anything." Note that she did not quote Chesterton. Rather, she continues: "Who can offer better confirmation of what might have been Chesterton’s most brilliant aperçu than those of us living in the United States of America in the 21st century?" Aperçu? Over to The Free Dictionary -- (a discerning perception; an insight.) Perhaps Ms. Decter was aware of The Quotmeister's authoritative pronouncements on this particular Chesterton "quotation." To wit: "The Quotemeister has become convinced that the source of the fugitive quotation is Emile Cammaerts, whose ambiguous typography misled Christopher Hollis and through him others (including, at last, all of the rest of us) into the mistaken conviction that a thought repeated over and over by Chesterton had a specific epigrammatic form that Chesterton never precisely gave it."

And now, to quote further from the book review:

Herbert London’s catalogue of Chestertonian “anythings,” while brief, is impressively comprehensive. There is to begin with a seemingly everspreading conviction that unlike scientific truths, limited as every honest scientist recognizes they must necessarily be, the free-floating individual’s moral convictions are to be arrived at by no more humbling or instructive means than looking into his own conscience. Small wonder, then, as London points out, that this process so often results in an understanding not of what is good but rather of what is most convenient for him. And writ large, such a mindset (if one may for convenience be allowed to call it that) results with almost perfect directness in the idea that ultimately it is something called "the government" that must rightly be one’s brother's keeper of first, last, and ultimate resort. Now, apart from a long and sometimes very costly process of learning that government cannot satisfactorily serve as mankind's (or, for that matter, one's own) keeper, London reminds us that the very idea can be transformed from a mere refusal of responsibility into truly positive ugliness. He cites for an example the early 20th-century enthusiasm for that so-called science known as eugenics, which set out to improve mankind by manipulating the genetic stock of the world’s inferior peoples, especially but not exclusively people of color. Eugenics fortunately went the way of faith in séances (except of course in Auschwitz). Nevertheless the idea that to make men healthy, wealthy, and wise is first and foremost the responsibility of government has if anything become more firmly entrenched. By now, indeed, the philosophical as well as psychological refusal of individual moral responsibility has become no less than the founding credo of the new national religion referred to in London’s subtitle.

And now I have to order the book from Amazon!

28th Annual Chesterton Conference Logo

Ted Schluenderfritz, Gilbert's Art Director, has recently completed the Logo for the 28th Annual Chesterton Conference, to be held August 6-8 in Seattle, WA.

Here it is, for your enjoyment.

Miss America Contestant and Tolerance

Seems the so-called 'Celebrity Blogger' Perez Hilton wants tolerance to be a one way street. Those of us who find homosexual behavior immoral must be tolerant of that behavior, but homosexuals will not be tolerant of those who don't agree with them. Father Dwight Longenecker's Blog, Standing on My Head, has an entry on Tolerance which I found enlightening.

Likewise Peter Kreeft has written a book, A Refutation of Moral Relativism, which I can recommend reading. Along with the book, you can read or listen to a lecture he presented which covered the major points in his book.

Here is an excerpt from his lecture:

Moral practice has always been difficult for fallen humanity, but at least there was always the lighthouse of moral principles, no matter how stormy the sea of moral practice got. But today, with the majority of our mind-molders, in formal education, or informal education—that is, media—the light is gone. Morality is a fog of feelings. That is why to them, as Chesterton said, "Morality is always dreadfully complicated to a man who has lost all his principles." Principles mean moral absolutes. Unchanging rocks beneath the changing waves of feelings and practices. Moral relativism is a philosophy that denies moral absolutes. That thought to me is the prime suspect—public enemy number one. The philosophy that has extinguished the light in the minds of our teachers, and then their students, and eventually, if not reversed, will extinguish our whole civilization. Therefore, I want not just to present a strong case against moral relativism, but to refute it, to unmask it, to strip it naked, to humiliate it, to shame it, to give it the wallop it deserves, as they say in Texas, America's good neighbor to the south.

Demographics & Depression

I'd like to suggest you read the article Demographics & Depression in the newest edition of First Things. It really is a different take on our current economic situation. As much as I might like to hold people like Barney Frank and Chris Dodd at least partially responsible for our economic debacle, this article says we have a much bigger problem than the one those two contributed to.

Platitudes Undone

What would we do without Ignatius Press? We'd certainly not have as many of Chesterton's books and essays available as we currently do. I'm not sure how I stumbled upon it, but recently I discovered "Platitudes Undone". According to Amazon.com, "This little book is a facsimile of a personal copy of a privately published edition of Holbrook Jackson's Platitudes in the Making (1911), given to G.K. Chesterton by the author, and containing Chesterton's handwritten notes in the margins and between lines."

What fun to read. One platitude, among the many, that made me smile, given all the Relativists I know, is: "No opinion matters finally: except your own." and Chesterton's note: "said the man who thought he was rabbit." Perhaps this can serve as a discussion starter at the next meeting of the Chillicothe Chesterton Society. We'll see.

Objective Newsweek?

I knew there was a reason I stopped reading Newsweek! As I recently sat in a dentist's office, I searched for something to read (I had left my new copy of National Review in my car). I found the current issue of Newsweek. I read editor Jon Meacham's cover story, “The End of Christian America.” The more I read the article, the more upset I got. Then I wondered if I had simply moved further Right, or perhaps Newsweek had moved further Left? Maybe a little, or lot, of both! This morning, as I was trying to find an on-line version of "Demographics & Depression," by David Goldman (the article appears in the May issue of First Things), I came across Ryan Anderson's article in the First Things Blog, "The Decline of Christian America, or Objective Reporting?" Mr. Anderson takes Newsweek to task in his opening remark:

Here we are, getting ready for our big week, reflecting on our Savior’s death for humankind and celebrating the triumph and miracle of his resurrection, and then we get the news from Newsweek that we as a movement are now dead.

Mr. Anderson then goes on to challenge and refute many of Meacham's "facts." I'll have to redouble my efforts to remember my own reading material on future visits to dentists and doctors.

Next Meeting, April 15, 7:00 P.M. at Schlegel's

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936)

“Who is this guy and why haven’t I heard of him?”

According to the American Chesterton Society web site: "Chesterton was equally at ease with literary and social criticism, history, politics, economics, philosophy, and theology. His style is unmistakable, always marked by humility, consistency, paradox, wit, and wonder. His writing remains as timely and as timeless today as when it first appeared."

Come learn a bit more about Chesterton at the next meeting of the Chillicothe Chesterton Society. It will be held on April 15th, at 7:00 P.M. In Schlegel’s Coffee House located at 80 N. Paint St. Chillicothe, OH. For more information call Bob Cook at 740-703-5651.

Come What May, A New Pro-Life and Family DVD

From the Christian Cinema.com web site:

The judges are stacked against them...but the greatest debate will happen before they ever enter the courtroom. Patrick Henry College and the Advent Film Group team up in a new film presenting arguments that one day could be used to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that found a right to abortion in the U.S. constitution. In the movie Caleb, a Christian student attending Patrick Henry, is caught in a moral tug-of-war as he challenges Roe v. Wade at the National Moot Court Championship. At the same time his mother, a feminist attorney, argues the case at the U.S. Supreme Court, but on the opposing side. This film is appropraite for the whole family and will be a conversation starter around issues that need to be discussed and dealt within the context of families. Choose what's right.

From the ACS web site: Only one writer wrote a book against Eugenics. G.K. Chesterton. Eugenics and Other Evils may be his most prophetic book.

The thing that really is trying to tyrannize through government is Science. The thing that really does use the secular arm is Science. And the creed that really is levying tithes and capturing schools, the creed that really is enforced by fine and imprisonment, the creed that really is proclaimed not in sermons but in statutes, and spread not by pilgrims but by policemen - that creed is the great but disputed system of thought which began with Evolution and has ended in Eugenics. Materialism is really our established Church; for the Government will really help it to persecute its heretics.