The modern skeptic

“But the new rebel is a skeptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be really a revolutionist. And the fact that he doubts everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it. . . . As a politician, he will cry out that war is a waste of life, and then, as a philosopher, that all life is waste of time. A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself. . . . The man of this school goes first to a political meeting, where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts; then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes on to a scientific meeting, where he proves that they practically are beasts. In short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite skeptic, is always engaged in undermining his own mines. In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality; in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men. Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything.” GK Chesterton

Originally posted by Fetchmyjunk
“But the new rebel is a skeptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be really a revolutionist. And the fact that he doubts everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the instituti ...[text shortened]... By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything.” GK Chesterton

All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are.

But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change. If you leave a white post alone it will soon be a black post. If you particularly want it to be white you must be always painting it again; that is, you must be always having a revolution. Briefly, if you want the old white post you must have a new white post.

Here's a modern take on Chesteron written in 2008:

Chesterton is an easy writer to love—a brilliant sentence-maker, a humorist, a journalist of endless appetite and invention. His aphorisms alone are worth the price of admission, better than any but Wilde’s. Even his standard-issue zingers are first-class—“Americans are the people who describe their use of alcohol and tobacco as vices”; “There is more simplicity in the man who eats caviar on impulse than in the man who eats grape-nuts on principle”; “ ‘My country, right or wrong,’ is a thing that no true patriot would think of saying. . . . It is like saying, ‘My mother, drunk or sober’ “—while the deeper ones are genuine Catholic koans, pregnant and profound: “Blasphemy depends on belief, and is fading with it. If anyone doubts this, let him sit down seriously and try to think blasphemous thoughts about Thor.” Or: “The function of the imagination is not to make strange things settled, so much as to make settled things strange.” Or: “A key has no logic to its shape. Its logic is: it turns the lock.”

But he is a difficult writer to defend. Those of us who are used to pressing his writing on friends have the hard job of protecting him from his detractors, who think he was a nasty anti-Semite and medievalizing reactionary, and the still harder one of protecting him from his admirers, who pretend that he was not.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/07/07/the-back-of-the-world

I am not the pheasant plucker; I'm the pheasant plucker's mate. I was only plucking pheasants because the pheasant plucker's late.

Here's another Chesterton quote - though there's probably too much truth in it for FMJ and others on this forum - assuming of course that the "Christian ideal" is keeping the words of Jesus:

"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried."

Do the non-Catholic Christians here accept GK's views on Catholicism and Protestantism?

"The difficulty of explaining “why I am a Catholic” is that there are ten thousand reasons all amounting to one reason: that Catholicism is true."

More at:

https://www.chesterton.org/why-i-am-a-catholic/

and

"Protestants are Catholics gone wrong; that is what is really meant by saying they are Christians."

https://lucashatt.wordpress.com/tag/gk-chesterton-on-protestantism/

Originally posted by ThinkOfOne
Here's another Chesterton quote - though there's probably too much truth in it for FMJ and others on this forum - assuming of course that the "Christian ideal" is keeping the words of Jesus:

"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried."

Originally posted by Fetchmyjunk
“But the new rebel is a skeptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be really a revolutionist. And the fact that he doubts everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the instituti ...[text shortened]... By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything.” GK Chesterton

Originally posted by JS357
Do the non-Catholic Christians here accept GK's views on Catholicism and Protestantism?

"The difficulty of explaining “why I am a Catholic” is that there are ten thousand reasons all amounting to one reason: that Catholicism is true."

More at:

https://www.chesterton.org/why-i-am-a-catholic/

and

"Protestants are Catholics gone wrong; that is what ...[text shortened]... ing they are Christians."

https://lucashatt.wordpress.com/tag/gk-chesterton-on-protestantism/

Originally posted by whodey
As he himself becomes the skeptic of men?

Can anyone say hypocrite?

We should all be skeptical of men. After all, the vast majority of human history shows man to be nothing more than a tyrant at heart and a slave master.

God made us free, man enslaves us.

Originally posted by Suzianne
Not having been exposed to much Chesterton, I cannot say what his views are.

I do, however, disagree with the quotes you present, because I am not a Catholic because I do not 'buy into' Catholicism.

Originally posted by Fetchmyjunk
When exactly have I opposed keeping the words of Jesus?

Originally posted by ThinkOfOne
Never said or even implied that you did.
Let's assume that by "Christian idea", Chesterton meant ""keeping the words of Jesus".

Here's the quote again:
"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried."

What Chesterton would be saying is that keeping the words of Jesus "has been found difficu ...[text shortened]... at I'm saying is that there is probably too much truth in that for you and others on this forum.