Chesterton’s Fence [quotage]

Rory Sutherland from the Spectator takes a theological essay and makes it political. I think it is better to consider it as a theological essay with some nasty implications, some of which will I will elaborate on.

Chesterton’s fence is in some ways a very simple defence of conservatism: it warns us that the more confidently you declare a fence to be redundant, then the more ignorant you are of the reasons why the fence was built in the first place.

It may also help explain why we may be right to be suspicious of experts. Sometimes, being more wedded to reductionist abstractions, intellectuals are all too eager to reinvent things in pursuit of conceptual neatness, and so can rip out -Chestertonian fences all too hastily. Ideas such as electoral reform, a single -European currency, or the removal of the monarchy, for instance, are all intellectual enthusiasms rarely shared by ordinary folk. All three ideas seem to make perfect sense until you think long and hard about what the hidden virtues of the previous irrational arrangement may be. The great thing about disproportional representation, for instance, is that it allows you thoroughly to purge bad governments — which is probably the most important attribute of democracy.

We could add to this list of expert failures of judgment the promotion of low-fat diets, the support for free movement of labour and the promotion of diesel cars.

Chesterton was a Catholic, and he was talking about the reformed: those who removed pope, bishops, tradition and magisterium. The Reformed would say that they found the reason for the pope and magisterium, and they were blocking the path of salvation. An argument I’d support: but the topic is now obsolete.

What Aquinas and Calvin and the Sainted Orthodox signers of the Creeds would agree on is now being attacked, from the existence of God (Chesterton dealt with those fools) to the existence of two sexes, to marriage, to the raising of families, to the privacy of one thoughts and the freedom to speak, to truth, beauty, honour and duty.

Particularly truth, beauty, honour and duty.

I would rather deal with a bigoted Papist. For we can still agree on much, and for us the validity of the Pope has meaning, and words matter: neither of us are relativistic. Both of us mistrust feelz.

And in these cases the technicians have produced arguments, at times nonsensical (Foucault let nonsense into the room reserved for wisdom) that justify such things.

But there are old names for such: Sophists, Casuists, Lawyers, Scribes, Pharisees, Prigs… scum. Their contempt of the great mass of humanity with their everyday desires and needs is apparent. They only care for the approved forms of special. The will cripple the ordinary and betray the innocent to make the path for the corrupt straight and smooth.

I mistrust such. And should you.

If we should not be the elite, let us particularly not be one of their intellectuals; the useful technical idiots.