I'm not Jewish and have no Jewish friends or colleagues. Being as stupid as shit, it probably would make no difference to me if I was cut off from academic or artistic work produced by Jews. Also, I am a horrible human being. Under these circumstances should I endorse anti-Semitism just because it would be expedient for me to do so? The answer is no, if some other party can gain more by anti-Semitism gaining ground and that other party may soon want to fuck over me and my ilk but good.
The Brits and the French and the Catholics had some very able anti-Semitic ranters. Sadly, it was Hitler who benefitted from their ranting. My point is, don't pretend to hate some harmless bunch of people if some other dude actually does hate them and will kill them and thus gain reputationally over you. This is the only reason I am not an anti-Semite.
Even polities which were traditionally anti-Semitic should stop being so if the result is that an entity better at killing Jews gains power. In that case, after the Jews, it could be their turn.
Chesterton's fence is the notion that it is unsafe to abandon a customary practice- e.g. hating Jews- which appears useless or mischievous till you have ascertained what purpose it served and may still serve.
The context was Chesterton's attempt to promote Catholicism (which lost ground as Hitler showed he was more anti-Semitic than the Pope) against the Protestant faith and thus was self-defeating because England had had anti-Catholic laws and perhaps still had strong anti-Catholic prejudices and yet had risen and risen ever since it broke with Rome.
THE DRIFT FROM DOMESTICITY
IN the matter of reforming things,
i.e. enabling them to serve their purpose better
as distinct from deforming them,
so they cease to serve their purpose, though, arguably, the original purpose of Christianity was to fuck over Jews.
there is one plain and simple principle;
ensure the effort you expend is more than commensurately rewarded by improved performance. Otherwise, find something else to do.
a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road.
There had been fences against Catholics or Jews in the British parliament. Macaulay pointed out that it was irrational for Anglicans to deny themselves the best candidate to represent their interests just because of a religious prejudice. Good business practice is to buy where quality is best and the price is cheapest. Getting freaked out by foreskins or rosaries is silly. Anyway, there were always crazier, more anti-Catholic, or, if Catholic, anti-Jewish, sects. Why given them the opportunity to outflank you?
If a fence is more useful to your neighbor, who also happens to be your enemy, knock it down by all means.
The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.
This is foolish. Fences belong to some specific person or institution. They have 'control rights' over it, though this may be limited by law. If the reformer's suggestion is accepted by those with 'control rights' and no law forbids it, then the thing should be destroyed. True, at a later point, some utility to it may be discovered. At that point, those with control rights might replace it in some cost effective manner. But that sort of 'discovery' process continually occurs in all aspects of life.
It may not be wrong for some officious fellow to say 'go away and think some more' before you decide to do anything with what is your own but, the truth is, such scolding is likely to be irritating or could amount to a growing nuisance.
This paradox rests on the most elementary common sense.
There is no paradox. Chesterton is simply saying 'don't do stupid shit. Think before you act. There's a reason your house has a door. Don't decide to take it off its hinges so that robbers can enter any time they like.'
The gate or fence did not grow there.
Nor did buildings which are structurally unsound and which must be knocked down.
It was not set up by somnambulists who built it in their sleep. It is highly improbable that it was put there by escaped lunatics who were for some reason loose in the street. Some person had some reason for thinking it would be a good thing for somebody. And until we know what the reason was, we really cannot judge whether the reason was reasonable.
So we can't know what is reasonable until we know why our species, very long ago, decided that it was a good thing to reason about certain matters but not others. One thing we don't reason about is what people do with their own property. If the landowner finds a particular fence or gate serves no purpose of his own, he is welcome to dismantle it. He does not need to show that he understands medieval economic history or patterns of property ownership in the distant past.
It is extremely probable that we have overlooked some whole aspect of the question, if something set up by human beings like ourselves seems to be entirely meaningless and mysterious.
But those human beings aren't like ourselves or, at least, they aren't like the type of human beings we are seeking to emulate or imitate.
There are reformers who get over this difficulty by assuming that all their fathers were fools;
they were ignorant of almost all recent technological and scientific developments and discoveries.
but if that be so, we can only say that folly appears to be a hereditary disease.
Idiocy may be heritable. However, for people who suffer no mental impairment, hereditary or otherwise, it would be foolish to believe our ancestors were as scientifically or economically advanced as ourselves. They cut their coat according to a meagre amount of cloth. We are not obliged to do so.
But the truth is that nobody has any business to destroy a social institution until he has really seen it as an historical institution.
It is business-like to refuse to support, or to help fund the destruction of, bad social institutions no matter what hoary antiquity they may claim. If you don't make this your business, you may soon find yourself out of business.
If he knows how it arose, and what purposes it was supposed to serve, he may really be able to say that they were bad purposes, or that they have since become bad purposes, or that they are purposes which are no longer served.
People who are afraid of vampires may invest in crucifixes. But vampires don't really exist. Why not wear a crucifix as a symbol of your desire to live a Christian life instead?
But if he simply stares at the thing as a senseless monstrosity that has somehow sprung up in his path, it is he and not the traditionalist who is suffering from an illusion.
Because Vampires really do exist. Many of them work for the Post Office. Also, they are using the neighbor's cat to keep me under surveillance.
We might even say that he is seeing things in a nightmare.
For Chesterton, that nightmare was that England had abandoned Catholicism. Why not protest instead against the abolition of serfdom or medieval strip farming not to mention Cromwell's re-admission of the Jews?
This principle applies to a thousand things, to trifles as well as true institutions, to convention as well as to conviction. It was exactly the sort of person, like Joan of Arc, who did know why women wore skirts, who was most justified in not wearing one; it was exactly the sort of person, like St. Francis, who did sympathise with the feast and the fireside, who was most entitled to become a beggar on the open road.
Both liked calling attention to themselves. Joan was a patriot and helped rid France of the English. St. Francis founded a great monastic order. We may feel that they were masters of P.R to some good purpose.
Even Chesterton might have objected to people who refused to wear skirts and who sympathized with the feast and the fireside, if- like the late Queen Mother as I was informed by my old friend Giraffe Patel- they made it a practice to defecate on his front stoop.
And when, in the general emancipation of modern society, the Duchess says she does not see why she shouldn't play leapfrog, or the Dean declares that he sees no valid canonical reason why he should not stand on his head, we may say to these persons with patient benevolence: "Defer, therefore, the operation you contemplate until you have realised by ripe reflection what principle or prejudice you are violating. Then play leapfrog and stand on your head and the Lord be with you."
This is silly. A Duchess may gain a reputational benefit by being known to play leap-frog, as opposed to the more common practice of kissing frogs in the belief that they will turn into the Prince of Wales, while a Deacon who does Yoga may experience improved health and mental acuity.
Among the traditions that are being thus attacked, not intelligently but most unintelligently, is the fundamental human creation called the Household or the Home.
which isn't that different from the den of the animal or the nest of the bird.
That is a typical thing which men attack, not because they can see through it, but because they cannot see it at all.
The older type of multi-generational 'joint family' had disappeared in England some centuries previously. What could be seen was going to change quite drastically as, during the War, men had to go away to fight, while women had to go to work. The kids may have to be sent to stay with strangers in the countryside. But this did not destroy the family values of the British.
They beat at it blindly, in a fashion entirely haphazard and opportunist; and many of them would pull it down with out even pausing to ask why it was ever put up.
It is obvious why families exist. Kids need a lot of care. Our species displays 'neoteny'- i.e. a prolonged infancy and adolescence- because this gives us a cognitive advantage and thus raises inclusive fitness.
It is true that only a few of them would have avowed this object in so many words. That only proves how very blind and blundering they are. But they have fallen into a habit of mere drift and gradual detachment from family life;
more particularly if their spouse dies or runs away
something that is often merely accidental and devoid of any definite theory at all.
Theories tend to be shit.
But though it is accidental it is none the less anarchical. And it is all the more anarchical for not being anarchist.
In other words, it isn't anarchical at all.
It seems to be largely founded on individual irritation; an irritation which varies with the individual.
Why did individual women get irritated if they were paid much less than men? Didn't they understand that even bachelors have to support their non-existent spouses and little kiddies whereas women just need a bit of 'pin-money' to keep themselves pretty?
We are merely told that in this or that case a particular temperament was tormented by a particular environment; but nobody even explained how the evil arose, let alone whether the evil is really escaped.
Why did Annie Beasant convince the Byrant & May match-girls to go on strike? They should have been happy to die of phosphorous poisoning while earning a starvation wage.
Much of this business began with the influence of Ibsen, a very powerful dramatist and an exceedingly feeble philosopher. I suppose that Nora of THE DOLL'S HOUSE was intended to be an inconsequent person;
Nonsense! She represents the 'New Woman' whose courage and enterprise would raise up her country by firmly rejecting feudal customs and mores. If Norwegian women could be independent, so could Norway.
but certainly her most inconsequent action was her last. She complained that she was not yet fit to look after children, and then proceeded to get as far as possible from the children, that she might study them more closely.
What Ibsen meant was obvious to his audience. Norwegian children must be raised to be independent. Otherwise, the country would remain an appendage of Sweden under the control of a paternalistic official class.
Turning to Chesterton & Belloc's anti-Semitism, can any of us, at this late hour, remain on the fence about this? Surely, both were good men who had been infected by a paranoid hate-ideology of a wholly un-Christian type?
The answer, I think, is that both Belloc and Chesterton were patriots. They were aware that the Tzar's scapegoating of Jews and the subsequent pogroms and vast waves of emigration (which the Brits restricted by the Aliens Act of 1905) would cause many British Liberals to recoil in horror from a Russian alliance. Yet, Belloc- who had served in the French Army- well knew that France needed a Russian alliance. Chesterton, as a young journalist had been alarmed and appalled by the poor performance of the British Army in the Boer War. As a leading light of London's Fleet Street, he would have heard that Kitchener had little faith in the British Indian Army. He thought 60,000 Russian soldiers on the Afghan border would pose a very serious challenge to the Raj. In other words, Britain too needed to keep the Russians sweet. If the price was an utterly deranged type of anti-Semitism, so be it. After all, British Jews were just as patriotic as Anglicans or Catholics. They too saw the need for the Russian alliance. Thus, though the thing might be immoral, un-Christian, and utterly mad, there was a pragmatic reason to support it. After the Bolshevik revolution, it obviously made sense to say 'all the Communists are Jews. What's more they are in cahoots with the Jews on Wall Street who financed Japan in the 1905 War. A lot of these supposedly Feminist 'women' are actually Jewish men who have cunningly covered up their long beards and side curls. I had a friend who married a Suffragette. On the honeymoon night he discovered his supposed 'bride' had a large, circumcised, dick. What the 'bride' did with that dick does not bear relating. Incidentally, Oscar Wilde, who converted on his deathbed to Catholicism, told his confessor that he only took up sodomy after Ada Leverson got him to stroke her pussy- except it wasn't a cat at all! It was a Jewish dick! On the other hand, Dreyfus didn't have a dick. He was actually a German woman named Mata Hari whom the Freemasons were able to get into a senior position in the Army. At an earlier point, he'd had an affair with the Kaiser and thus became the mother of Trotsky who, I need hardly say was Rabbi Hitler's Lesbian lover. '
Still, the fact that 'the Socialism of Fools'- i.e. anti-Semitism- was useful at one time is no reason to stick with that odious program. The real reason we should all hate Jews is because some 'Zionist' Jews are allowing pesky Palestinians to occupy Gazza's football strip. That's a diabolical liberty, mate!
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