Electing What: Where has the Ideology Gone?
“Here comes the orator! With his flood of words, and his drop of reason.” —Benjamin Franklin
G.K. Chesterton is perhaps the greatest forgotten intellectual from the early twentieth century. This is odd since the Brit was both friends and sparring partners with some of the giants of the era—men like George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells. He has also been credited with writing the newspaper article that inspired Gandhi to transform Indian nationalism.
His relative disappearance is all the more puzzling, because he was such a prolific writer. In addition to the nearly 70 books published during his lifetime, he wrote numerous newspaper articles, poems, and essays. Since his death, even more books authored by him have appeared.
One of his earliest works was Heretics, which was written in 1905 as a critique of modern philosophies. A few years later he wrote Orthodoxy, in which he enumerated his philosophy.
Mr. Chesterton, the Father of the Paradox, started the introduction of Heretics with a paradox. He said that modern humans have exactly flipped the position of all humans before them. Today, humankind clamors to be called heretics rather than orthodox. It is better to rebel against the system than to have a system of your own.
Mr. Chesterton’s thoughts and writing style are eminently entertaining, so the best way to present his ideas is to quote him at length. As you read his lucid insights, think about modern American politics 103 years after the words were written and ask yourself if they still apply.
“But there is one thing that is infinitely more absurd and unpractical than burning a man for his philosophy. This is the habit of saying that his philosophy does not matter, and this is done universally in the twentieth century, in the decadence of the great revolutionary period. General theories are everywhere condemned; the doctrine of the Rights of Man is dismissed with the doctrine of the Fall of Man. Atheism itself is too theological for us to-day. Revolution itself is too much of a system; liberty itself is too much of a restraint.
“Examples are scarcely needed of this total levity on the subject of cosmic philosophy. Examples are scarcely needed to show that, whatever else we think of as affecting practical affairs, we do not think it matters whether a man is a pessimist or an optimist, a Cartesian or a Hegelian, a materialist or a spiritualist…we never speculate as to whether the conversational pessimist will strengthen or disorganize society; for we are convinced that theories do not matter. This was certainly not the idea of those who introduced our freedom. When old Liberals removed the gags from all the heresies, their idea was that religious and philosophical discoveries might thus be made. Their view was that cosmic truth was so important that every one ought to bear independent testimony. The modern idea is that cosmic truth is so unimportant that it cannot matter what any one says. The former freed inquiry as men loose a noble hound; the latter frees inquiry as men fling back into the sea a fish unfit for eating.
“But there are some people, nevertheless—and I am one of them—who think that the most practical and important thing about a man is still his view of the universe…We think the question is not whether the theory of the cosmos affects matters, but whether, in the long run, anything else affects them.
“Now, in our time, philosophy or religion, our theory, that is, about ultimate things, has been driven out, more or less simultaneously, from two fields which it used to occupy…General ideals used to dominate politics. They have been driven out by the cry of ‘efficiency,’ which may roughly be translated as ‘politics for politics’ sake.’
“When everything about a people is for the time growing weak and ineffective, it begins to talk about efficiency. So it is that when a man’s body is a wreck he begins, for the first time, to talk about health.
“Neither in the world of politics nor that of literature, then, has the rejection of general theories proved a success…A man who is perpetually thinking of whether this race or that race is strong, of whether this cause or that cause is promising, is the man who will never believe in anything long enough to make it succeed…There is nothing which is so weak for the working purposes as this enormous importance attached to immediate victory. There is nothing that fails like success.
“For these reasons, and many more, I for one have come to believe in going back to fundamentals.”
If nothing else, Mr. Chesterton’s insights are even more relevant today. American politicians no more have a “cosmic philosophy” or worldview than British ones of Mr. Chesterton’s day.
The reason for this is that the American people do not have a cosmic philosophy of their own. Most do not have a coherent, consciously-thought-out philosophy of humanity or morality. They do not have a systematic worldview. Without this foundational knowledge of reality, they do not have anything but “efficiency” and polling to guide their politics. Is it any wonder, then, that the political system is so sickly today?
After the 2004 elections, many conservative pundits exclaimed with glee that the Democratic Party would continue to lose elections, because they did not know who they were or what they stood for. They were right about the lack of direction in the Democratic Party, but they failed to realize that the same could be said for the Republican Party.
It does not have to be this way. If the American people developed a worldview of their own and voted accordingly, politicians would be forced to change their tactics. They would be forced to revert from their rhetorical polemics and to speak to us as intelligent beings. They would be forced to defend their positions as something worth adopting and not just as the opposite of whatever the other party says.
It is no wonder that this system of political discourse has left us powerless to solve the great issues of the day. It is no wonder the American public school system is in shambles or that Social Security is failing. It is no wonder we cannot get a decent plan to deal with the recent economic strife. It is no wonder that there are no creative answers to the political questions of our day. Without a doctrine, an ideology, a worldview, we will not get any.
Mr. Chesterton, in the first chapter of Heretics, described how progress couldn’t occur without a cosmic philosophy. He said, “Progress, properly understood, has, indeed, a most dignified and legitimate meaning. But as used in opposition to precise moral ideals, it is ludicrous. So far from it being the truth that the ideal of progress is to be set against that of ethical or religious finality, the reverse is the truth. Nobody has any business to use the word ‘progress’ unless he has a definite creed and a cast-iron code of morals. Nobody can be progressive without being doctrinal; I might almost say that nobody can be progressive without being infallible—at any rate, without believing in some infallibility. For progress by its very name indicates a direction; and the moment we are in the least doubtful about the direction, we become in the same degree doubtful about the progress. Never perhaps since the beginning of the world has there been an age that had less right to use the word ‘progress’ than we.”
He was right; except today it is even worse. In the decades after Mr. Chesterton’s death in 1836, intellectuals proclaimed that “ideology was dead.” The cries of the mid-twentieth century need to be answered, before our society itself dies. We cannot progress as a society without a guiding doctrine. Even better, as Hegel would say, is if two contradicting doctrines emerged, so that the reconciliation of these doctrines could lead to the progress of history. It is time that the American people forced both Parties to produce just such a cosmic philosophy, so this country can again see where it is going.
