Matter/Anti-Matter

Bill Maher quotes Chesterton at the end of a rant that Chesterton would have taken to pieces word by word. In fact, Chesterton does take it to pieces in an essay he wrote (in response to another anti-democratic elitist named H.L. Mencken, whose sandals Maher is not worthy to untie). It is a called “Is Humanism a Religion?” and is precisely in response to the growing mood of contempt the elite are expressing for the whole untidy process of self-governance. Mencken had written (in a way entirely approved by our Anointed Master over at HuffPo that

“They (he means certain liberal or ex-liberal thinkers) have come to realize that the morons whom they sweated to save do not want to be saved, and are not worth saving.” That is the New Spirit, if there is any New Spirit. “I will make unconquerable cities, with their arms about each other’s necks,” cried Walt Whitman, “by the love of comrades, by the lifelong love of comrades.” I like to think of the face of Mr. Mencken of Baltimore, if some casual comrade from Pittsburgh tried to make him unconquerable by putting an arm around his neck. But the idea is dead for much less ferocious people than Mr. Mencken. It is dead in a man like Aldous Huxley, who complained recently of the “gratuitous” romancing of the old republican view of human nature. It is dead in the most humane and humorous of our recent critics. It is dead in so many wise and good men to-day, that I cannot help wondering whether, under modern conditions of his favourite “science,” it would not be dead in Whitman himself.

It is not dead in me.

He goes on to explain why in a way which deftly analyzes how we have gotten ourselves into our post-modern predicament.

Maher is a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand, forecasting what must sooner or later come when our elite accrue enough power to bring the fiction of democracy we are already living out into the open and say clearly, “Why should I believe in ‘equality’?” Once you get rid of the Christian tradition, the proposition “All men are created equal” has to disappear sooner or later. There is not one shred of empirical evidence for it. When it does disappear, it will be men like Bill Maher who will be left in charge of manufacturing our culture and guiding our politics. A post-Christian world is going to be very ugly and merciless on the weak.

Does this negate the Chesterton quote at the end? No. Chesterton rightly criticizes mindless jingoism. But the fact that a mob can indulge in mindless jingoism does not render Bill Maher unfallen and quite as capable of laboring for evil as the rest of us. Indeed, precisely the dynamic that nobody at HuffPo acknowledges is that the Town Hell crowds are expressions of a desperate sense of weakness in the face of Leviathan. Maher is squarely on the side of Leviathan against the weak. He’s a libertarian, so-called. But he’s perfectly aware of who writes his paycheck. He’s brave, right up to the point where that critical social bond is threatened. An elitist twerp like Maher has no right to quote (because he has no understanding of) G.K. Chesterton. Maher is the mortal enemy of both democracy and tradition, two principles to which Chesterton was devoted, because they were really one principle: the dignity of man made in the image of the God Maher despises.

This is the first principle of democracy: that the essential things in men are the things they hold in common, not the things they hold separately. And the second principle is merely this: that the political instinct or desire is one of these things which they hold in common. Falling in love is more poetical than dropping into poetry. The democratic contention is that government (helping to rule the tribe) is a thing like falling in love, and not a thing like dropping into poetry. It is not something analogous to playing the church organ, painting on vellum, discovering the North Pole (that insidious habit), looping the loop, being Astronomer Royal, and so on. For these things we do not wish a man to do at all unless he does them well. It is, on the contrary, a thing analogous to writing one’s own love-letters or blowing one’s own nose. These things we want a man to do for himself, even if he does them badly. I am not here arguing the truth of any of these conceptions; I know that some moderns are asking to have their wives chosen by scientists, and they may soon be asking, for all I know, to have their noses blown by nurses. I merely say that mankind does recognize these universal human functions, and that democracy classes government among them. In short, the democratic faith is this: that the most terribly important things must be left to ordinary men themselves–the mating of the sexes, the rearing of the young, the laws of the state. This is democracy; and in this I have always believed.

But there is one thing that I have never from my youth up been able to understand. I have never been able to understand where people got the idea that democracy was in some way opposed to tradition. It is obvious that tradition is only democracy extended through time. It is trusting to a consensus of common human voices rather than to some isolated or arbitrary record. The man who quotes some German historian against the tradition of the Catholic Church, for instance, is strictly appealing to aristocracy. He is appealing to the superiority of one expert against the awful authority of a mob. It is quite easy to see why a legend is treated, and ought to be treated, more respectfully than a book of history. The legend is generally made by the majority of people in the village, who are sane. The book is generally written by the one man in the village who is mad. Those who urge against tradition that men in the past were ignorant may go and urge it at the Carlton Club, along with the statement that voters in the slums are ignorant. It will not do for us. If we attach great importance to the opinion of ordinary men in great unanimity when we are dealing with daily matters, there is no reason why we should disregard it when we are dealing with history or fable. Tradition may be defined as an extension of the franchise. Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our father. I, at any rate, cannot separate the two ideas of democracy and tradition; it seems evident to me that they are the same idea. We will have the dead at our councils. The ancient Greeks voted by stones; these shall vote by tombstones. It is all quite regular and official, for most tombstones, like most ballot papers, are marked with a cross. – G.K. Chesterton