Chesterton and Caution

Power is always dangerous. Power attracts the worst and corrupts the best.--Edward Abbey


Easy trip on the always worrisome Allegiant. Lovely morning but the afternoons are withering, even for me. 
I am in the Library sitting beside a clearly crazy guy who has been helped by the staff to get on to some interactive site where he is screaming with despair and delight.
At the Arts hotel; quite nice. 
Had a good dinner at Libby's with the Clarksons. The restaurant is much improved in design; I had good food. A fun night with some interesting views on Trump, whose fierce opposition I still have trouble understanding.
A lot of ex-Pirates performing in the Playoffs.
Mom continues to be busy, even down here.

Interesting little summary of European politics from Davies: Currently in both Europe and the U.S. there are two coherent positions and voting blocs that are coming together in response to the decline of the old center right and center left and the emergence of the new national collectivist right.

One is what we may call radical left/green, a position that combines interventionist economics with environmentalism and a specific kind of radical identity politics. This last aspect alienates this new left from much of the older left’s working class constituency. The other is what we may call cosmopolitan liberals, a group that combines support for a broadly free market economy with personal liberty and cultural individualism, but also supports a more egalitarian public policy than most individualists would like. Both of these groups are cosmopolitan in their outlook and skeptical about nationalism, but they have different ideas about how the supranational order should be organized.

We’ve finally convinced a generation of Americans to be Malthusians. According to Scott Rasmussen’s polling, nearly 30 percent of voters now claim to believe that it’s “at least somewhat likely” that the earth will become uninhabitable and humanity will be wiped out over the next 10-15 years. Half of voters under 35 believe it is likely we are on the edge of extinction.

                            Chesterton and Caution

There is a uniform caution among many who argue that we do not understand enough about biology to tamper with it. So, in our ignorance, gene manipulation or species extinction carries a potential risk to the species or the world. Yet ancient institutions and customs do not get the same careful protection. This is from Chesterton:

In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; 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. 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 paradox rests on the most elementary common sense. The gate or fence did not grow there. 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. 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. There are reformers who get over this difficulty by assuming that all their fathers were fools; but if that be so, we can only say that folly appears to be a hereditary disease. But the truth is that nobody has any business to destroy a social institution until he has really seen it as an historical institution. 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, that they have since become bad purposes, or that they are purposes which are no longer served. 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. (Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton, Ignatius Press, 1990, p. 157)