Chesterton

I rediscovered an old intellectual love today, a person who I find unparalleled in cultural commentary in the 20th century. G.K. Chesterton's predictions had an uncanny habit of being accurate, and much of his pointed observations of the world around him have seemingly only become more relevant with time. He observes:

At the top of his fury, Thomas Aquinas understands, what so many defenders of orthodoxy will not understand. It is no good to tell an atheist that he is an atheist; or to charge a denier of immortality with the infamy of denying it; or to imagine that one can force an opponent to admit he is wrong, by proving that he is wrong on somebody else's principles, but not on his own. After the great example of St. Thomas, the principle stands, or ought always to have stood established; that we must either not argue with a man at all, or we must argue on his grounds and not ours.

This resonates with some of my thoughts and hopes for this blog, more ways to avoid the quicksand of narcissism that la Morenita rightfully fears. I hope to use this blog to more clearly lay out and develop my own principles. Second I hope to garner evidence to support these principles. These first two our for my own edification, but also to have clear thoughts worked out when at a bar I happen to begin discussing politics or religion or all the rest. (Along this line I intend to explore the idea-not much developed by our president-of compassionate conservatism, drawing on Jason Deparle's American Dream.) Third, I hope to develop arguments and pieces that do exactly what Chesterton here proscribes, using other people principles as the starting point. (Along these lines I intend to do some research and write about the hypocritical silence of feminists on selective abortion procedures in China and India.)

Far from narcissistic, I hope this all is done in a public spirit, in the attempt to engage my neighbors in the public square in an open, honest, and effective manner. In turn, I hope they engage me in that fashion.