Something to Worry About

So it isn't just me that perceives a slow slide into servitude:

How Democracies Become Tyrannies:

The American Thinker asks, "Can a free people willingly choose servitude?"

The prophet Chesterton replies that it is usually a free people who choose tyranny, something we see from the Roman Republic to Weimar. Against Wells' notion that primitive man was a tyrant who ruled by force and fear and that democracy is a late development in our onward and upward march of Progress, he writes in The Everlasting Man:

Read the whole thing.

(Via Catholic and Enjoying It!.)

Lepanto

How could I forget that today is that great day?

Lepanto:

Today is the anniversary of the Battle of Lepanto. In this battle, allied Christian nations destroyed a vastly larger Turkish fleet. This battle inspired G.K. Chesterton to write one of his best poems. Here is the rousing first stanza:

White founts falling in the Courts of the sun,

And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;

There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared,

It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard;

It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips;

For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships.

They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy,

They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea,

And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss,

And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross.

The cold queen of England is looking in the glass;

The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass;

From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun,

And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.

(Via First Things.)

Chesterton

I've introduced an acquaintance recently to GKC. He was reading H.G. Wells' The Outline of History and I remarked that Chesterton had written something in response to it, though I couldn't remember exactly what. So I lent him my old copy of Alarms and Discursions just to introduce him to GKC.

In the meantime, I discovered that The Everlasting Man is Chesterton's masterpiece in response to H.G. Wells. I'm pretty sure I have a paperback copy somewhere here. I'll lend that to him when I find it. Just so we're clear, Chesterton is my philosophical hero: wise beyond anything that formal learning could give you.

All of which is a preamble to this fine article by the noted Thomist:

Ralph McInerny on the Chesterbelloc Thing:



He's right, of course, that the principal target of the New Atheists is, inexorably, the Catholic Faith. The curious logic of the New Atheists always tends to draw them back to that. 19 Muslim guys fly planes into the Pentagon, the WTC and a field in Pennsylvania? The reply of the New Atheists boils down to 'This is the fault of religion. And by 'religion' we mean Christianity and especially Catholic Christianity.' Commies murdered millions? That's really 'religion' says Christopher Hitchens. And by 'religion' he means Christianity and especially Catholic Christianity. Religious people are intolerant says Google, so we will not allow mockery of Jews or Muslims on our site. But we will host daily Eucharistic desecrations and not allow Catholics to air their prolife views. Bill Maher makes fun of fundies who believe in talking snakes and somehow manages to bring it all back to Rome, even though there's a remarkable dearth of believers in talking snakes there.

McInerny's right:

The now pandemic attacks on Catholicism in films, on television, in the media would have found Chesterton and Belloc buckling on their armor and going into battle with the rapiers of their wit.

What we need are more Chestertons and Bellocs. However, it is up to God to manufacture them since genius is tough to simply will. Prayer to that end seems appropriate."

(Via Catholic and Enjoying It!.)