G. K. Chesterton’s 1908 book, Orthodoxy, is profoundly relevant to our day. The arguments that he explodes are still around, waiting for people to read this book and have the nonsense they think is rational thought made into smithereens.
Here is a quote that seems appropriate for the current political scene:
It is true that a man (a silly man) might make change itself his object or ideal. But as an ideal, change itself becomes unchangeable. If the change-worshipper wishes to estimate his own progress, he must be sternly loyal to the ideal of change; he must not begin to flirt gaily with the ideal of monotony. Progress itself cannot progress. It is worth remark, in passing, that when Tennyson, in a wild and rather weak manner, welcomed the idea of infinite alteration in society, he instinctively took a metaphor which suggests an imprisoned tedium. He wrote—“Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.” He thought of change itself as an unchangeable groove; and so it is. Change is about the narrowest and hardest groove that a man can get into.
–G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, ch. 3, “The Suicide of Thought”
The audio version from ChristianAudio.com is here.
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