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Notes -
GK Chesterton and MAGA
Chesterton personifies the paradoxes he loves to pursue in his writing. A member of the Fabian (socialist) party, he is remembered primarily as a bulwark of conservatism. Deeply immersed in early 20th century high British society and culture, he was Catholic rather than Church of England. Writing prose and poetry on the transcendence of family, he never had children.
A populist, he writes a warning to MAGA.
To be sure, Chesterton does not shy away from condemning progressive society. In one memorable anecdote he tells a relativist that in a functioning democracy, the relativist would be burned on a pyre. In his pithy essay "The Return of the Barbarian" (1934), Chesterton states "I do not mean that any of that sort of liberty or laxity or liberal-mindedness has ever had anything to do with civilization." Yet Chesterton writes the essay not as a warning against Liberalism, but to identify the rising Nationalist Socialism of Germany as the true enemy of civilization. Even though the civilization may be decadent, flabby, and decayed, civilization must still fight for civilization. For barbarism is an uncontrollable beast. It contains no introspection, no self-corrective. Chesterton ends the essay in his typical incisive style:
"There are many marks by which anybody of historical imagination can recognize the recurrence: the monstrous and monotonous omnipresence of one symbol, and that a symbol of which nobody knows the meaning; the relish of the tyrant for exaggerating even his own tyranny, and barking so loud that nobody can even suspect that his bark is worse than his bite; the impatient indifference to all the former friends of Germany, among those who are yet making Germany the only test—all these things have a savor of savage and hasty simplification, which may, in many individuals, correspond to an honest indignation or even idealism, but which, when taken altogether, give an uncomfortable impression of wild men who have merely grown weary of the complexity that we call civilization." [Emphasis added].
As a confirmed MAGAt myself, I feel a distinct discomfort reading this warning. There is a cold nihilism and gleeful cruelty in the MAGA intelligentsia. The rank-and-file MAGA populists cower from modern complexity, preferring the comfort of totalizing and simple narratives. If MAGA feels less barbaric than the Brown Shirts it may only be because our civilization doesn’t have the will or vitality to produce real barbarians.
Yet what is else is the solution when faced with Weimar problems? Chesterton lived in the relatively prudish Britain, and did not need to directly confront the debauchery of Weimar Germany. Easy for him to work within his civilization to promote his conceptualization of the common good. What would he have suggested when faced with the ubiquitous celebration of buggery or an importation of an alternative "civilization"?
But, of course, Chesterton (or rather, custom and common sense as channeled by Chesterton) does have the solution. In his essay "On the Instability of the State" he counters the prevailing notions of the Total State by satirizing the ephemerality of modern nations. In contrast, true societal stability is only found in the Family, the bedrock on which all civilization stands. And while the modern assault on the Family threatens to break civilization as assuredly as any barbarian uprising, it is still an institution that takes only two willing companions and the providence of God to initiate. And it is on this rock that the next great civilization will be built. "In the break-up of the modern world, the Family will stand out stark and strong as it did before the beginning of history."
The family was never the bedrock of Western Civilization. The Iliad and the Odyssey are for the most part concerned with Brotherhood; the Gospel is wholly concerned with Brotherhood; Roman society revolved around fraternal organizations; medieval society revolved around male guilds or monasteries; American culture revolved around fraternal civic organizations (see detoqueville); and freemasonry (highly influential precursor to modernity) was a brotherhood that emphasized equality between members. It is more correct to say that the bedrock of western civilization is the männerbund and not the family. It is true that men cared much for their family name, but they cared so much because it enabled rewards and status among male peers. All striving was done by men, with men, and for men, negotiated among men outside the family fold. I’m not really sure where this idea originates that the “family” is the bedrock of the West.
Even just at a basic level: Rome was established by two brothers raised outside any family. After one slays the other, he invites other men into the city, exiles and criminals. They proceed to steal women in order to have progeny for their city. Obviously this didn’t happen, but it is a symbolic account of how the Romans saw the foundation of their culture: men negotiating and fighting with other men is the essential thing, women and the family an annoying requirement to keep things moving. And if it is disagreeable that the Roman myth could inform us today, then read the gospel again. Almost immediately, Jesus departs from his parents (curtly rebuking his mom) to find other men with which to found His Kingdom. Some of the Apostles had wives, and they aren’t even mentioned in the writings, so we don’t even know their names. The crucial bit is how men interacted with other men, in the ecclesia or assemblies of men, which prefigured our modern brotherless church, where only men were allowed to speak, where women were taught to “learn quietly with all submissiveness […] not permitted to teach or to exercise authority over a man, rather is to remain quiet”.
Chesterton is funny. He would have done great on Reddit. I wish he were alive today so I could inform him that the Christians used the swastika symbol before they ever represented the cross. Not because I particularly care, but just to dunk on him.
When you are a medic on triage, your task already determined, what use is it to cry over destiny? Does civilization begin with weeping? Stephen Miller understands civilization and what it has consisted of since the dawn of time. I’m sure he is familiar with Agincourt and Toledo.
And Chesterton’s beloved civilization was at its best when it bathed in a totalizing and simple narrative. Chesterton forgets this. The narrative was “God and King”, and both were simple. There is nothing simpler and more totalizing than the original gospel message, either of Jesus or Paul.
The only thing more amusing than your ahistorical just-so stories is your confidence that you'd totally p0wn GK Chesterton.
What a truly miserable attitude.
However, as I have pointed out many times, while Rome and Greece and other ancient societies were certainly patriarchal, there is ample evidence (in poems, other writings, and contemporary histories) that feelings of love and affection for wives and children (including daughters!) were not some alien innovation introduced by modernity.
You cite the Iliad and the Odyssey as being all about the bros, nothing but bros, ignoring that the entire reason for the war was the abduction of Helen. You will probably say that was just men fighting over a bauble and the dishonor of having a bauble stolen from them, but Homer, and later poets such as Euripedes and Herodotos, speak of much more complex motivations. Menalaus loved his wife, and whether she betrayed him with Paris or was forcibly abducted depends somewhat on the narrative, but her own thoughts on the matter are expressed as well.
And in the Odyssey, Odysseus's primary motivation is trying to get home to his wife and son! And Penelope is a figure of nobility and faithfulness who is worthy of his devotion.
Try reading what you cite.
As I wrote,
Maybe 5-10% of the lines are about family life. The majority of the content is about brothers-in-arms doing things. The foundational works of Greek culture are simply not about family. If they treasured family life over “brotherhood” (using the term very broadly) then it would have comprised a majority of their bedrock literature. Most of the time they are very far from their families. This is on purpose, it tells you their values. I’m sure you’ve read the works, of course, so you know this.
It's an epic about a war. War and brotherhood was a central feature in that story. It does not support your argument that the ancients did not place a high importance on family.
It's not just the battles and the gods and the monsters that are important. It's *why" they did all those things. The climax of a story may be the only place a hero's motivation is mentioned. That doesn't mean it's not important.
Your reasoning and your theories are very shallow.
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Under what rubric are you claiming that the Odyssey is “bedrock literature” but Antigone — which is not only centrally about family obligations, but also primarily about a woman — isn’t? If anything, shouldn’t Antigone be a more example of what constitutes “Greek civilization”, as it was written when Greece was at a considerably higher level of technological and artistic development than it had been when the Odyssey was composed?
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