Who Dares Attack My Chesterton? (Long)

CE.com ^ | June 4th, 2012 | Zac Alstin

[Salvation]

Take this as a reminder to go and read some more.

[Salvation]

Who Dares Attack My Chesterton? (Long)
Chesterton on the ties binding fathers, mothers, and children
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND CONVERSION BY G. K. CHESTERTON, CHAPTER III: THE REAL OBSTACLES
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND CONVERSION BY G. K. CHESTERTON, Chap. II, THE OBVIOUS BLUNDERS
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND CONVERSION BY G. K. CHESTERTON, CHAP. I: INTRODUCTORY: A NEW RELIGION
Chesterton on Christmas
Table of Contents for "In Defense Of Sanity: The Best Essays of G.K. Chesterton"
Chesterton and Saint Francis

[Why I Am Catholic}: A [Chesterton] Poem and a Prayer for Michaelmas
G. K. Chesterton: "Who is this guy and why haven’t I heard of him?"
How the Great Wind Came to Beacon House, Chap 1 of Manalive by G. K. Chesterton
Film and Audio Recordings of G. K. Chesterton
Chesterton on "The Human Family and the Holy Family"
Why I Am A Catholic by G. K. Chesterton
"The God In The Cave" | From The Everlasting Man (G. K. Chesterton) Part 1
Alternatives to Assigned Readings
Aquinas vs. Luther: A Brief Excerpt from Chesterton
Social Reform versus Birth Control

[Salvation]

Ping!

[Salvation]

Views on Chesterton Ping!

[Joe 6-pack]

Three of my favorite British writers, Chesterton, Kipling and M.R. James all passed away in 1936; Chesterton and James within a few days of one another.

Their lives and writing all took very different courses, but (for me) it's a lot of fun to speculate what it would have been like to be in the same room with all three :-)

[grey_whiskers]

Bookmarked.

[Salvation]

My favorite Chesterton quote"

Chesterton on birth control/population control:

In 1925 Chesterton wrote an introduction to Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol in which he said that “The answer to anyone who talks about the surplus population is to ask him, whether he is part of the surplus population; or if not, how he knows he is not.”

[Joe 6-pack]

I really couldn't give you a favorite Chesterton quote...there are entirely too many of them.

One of my favorite poems is The Donkey. As well as reinforcing the value of every life, it makes for a great Lenten/Palm Sunday meditation.

[Pelham]

bump

[Salvation]

that’s good to know. Hope it is true.

[Jo Nuvark]

G. K. CHESTERTON PING LIST 6-6-12
PLEASE CONTACT ME BY FREEPMAIL IF YOU
WISH TO BE ADDED OR REMOVED FROM THIS LIST.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[x]

Hitchens' article on Chesterton was unfair and unfortunate -- not the note one wants to go out on.

But ... "Who Dares Attack My Chesterton?"

C'mon, the title itself indicates Zac isn't to be taken seriously.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Thanks

[hosepipe]

The thinking man thinks up thoughts..
They need not be true or fine or crafted well..

But they must be true to him...
Set in stone until carved and curved..

What is consciousness where thoughts arise?..
As toys and baubles and bling?..

[stfassisi]

Here is thee very accurate quotes from Chesterton...

“Calvin viewed Scripture as a legal document in need of proper interpretation. This legalistic approach further infects his theology: just as the Bible is a legal codebook, God is a transcendent Judge, with Whom and regarding Whom Love has no meaning.”

and...

“Such is the society I think they will build unless we can knock it down as fast as they build it. Everything in it, tolerable or intolerable, will have but one use; and that use what our ancestors used to call usance or usury. Its art may be good or bad, but it will be an advertisement for usurers; its literature may be good or bad, but it will appeal to the patronage of usurers; its scientific selection will select according to the needs of usurers; its religion will be just charitable enough to pardon usurers; its penal system will be just cruel enough to crush the critics of usurers; the truth of it will be Slavery; the title of it may quite possibly be Socialism.”

And .....

I should not say to Mr. Rockefeller “I am a rebel.” I should say “I am a respectable man and you are not.” -GK Chesterton

[KC Burke]

Isn’t the title taken from his Belloc quote he cites near the end? I guess I am easier to dazzle, I found the article appropriate.

Hitchens, going after anything religous, picks out a noted Christian apologist, who most closely resembles his own legacy I thought was fair accessment.

Guide me as to the other deficiencies as you see them.

[Romulus]

The title is a literary allusion to “Lines to a Don” by Hilaire Belloc.

[x]

My objection was more to the title and the tone -- that whole, "we band of fans against the rest of the world." There's no need to be defensive or bitter or vindictive: it's almost certain that Chesterton's work will outlast Hitchens's. So why not demonstrate this in a less partisan or sectarian spirit?

There is also this to object to:

But there is no need to apologise for Chesterton. Hitchens got it completely wrong. Nazism was not, for someone of Chesterton’s era, a “distinct moral challenge”. It was an extension of an earlier ‘moral challenge’: Prussia.

Really? There may have been continuities between Frederick the Great's Prussia or Wilhelm II's Germany and Hitler's Third Reich, but not seeing just how distinct and horrible Hitler's regime was is a form of blindness in my book.

I'm not saying Chesterton was entirely wrong about Prussia, but it's also not obvious that Hitchens "got it completely wrong." Certainly, people who'd heard and heard and heard attacks on Prussia to the point where they discounted everything they heard weren't going to have their eyes opened to what was going on in Germany by more such talk. Readers may have thought, "Well, we could live with Prussia in spite of all that, so maybe we can live with Hitler."

Chesterton died in 1936, when Hitler was just getting started. I don't think he had anything to apologize for in what he wrote about Germany, but slashing attacks met with broadbrush defenses don't do him justice. A more critical, less fan-boy defense would have been more fitting.