What this blog is about
The source of our very first quote of the day is one of my favorite Chesterton books, “What’s Wrong with the World.” The book is devoted to a single idea: too much political debate is about “how” and too little is about “what”. Too much about what policy we should pursue and too little about the end toward which we are pursuing it.
This is a wicked old world and no doubt those who say we will never get all we want from politics are right. But why start the game by giving up on the goal? It makes a lot more sense to start the game by stating the goal and then seeing (since we are talking Democracy) whether anyone shows up?
It was not until I was almost 50 years old that I was able to see clearly that what I want is not any of the policies and strategies and clever end-runs and slow retreats and pluralist compromises with the Left (in which the Left was never the least bit interested) I spent a couple of decades advocating as a professional conservative.
The first question of politics should always be: "What do we want?"
What I want is to live with my family in a Christian community, which implies a larger Christian society and culture, which implies in turn a Christian nation, specifically a Christian Democracy.
But following Chesterton’s advice, the first task is not to figure out how to get there but to paint a picture of what it might be like.
So that’s one thing, the main thing, this blog is about.
On the other hand, the “vision” thing doesn’t mean this place is restricted to high theory. I had some doubts actually about the title, A Christian Democracy, because I was afraid it might be too pompous and pious to sustain raucous debate. But the less pompous variants were already taken.
In any event Christian charity does not oblige us to tedium, and the number of saints with sharp tongues in their heads is not small. And they do say that sainthood is a universal calling…
This is a wicked old world and no doubt those who say we will never get all we want from politics are right. But why start the game by giving up on the goal? It makes a lot more sense to start the game by stating the goal and then seeing (since we are talking Democracy) whether anyone shows up?
It was not until I was almost 50 years old that I was able to see clearly that what I want is not any of the policies and strategies and clever end-runs and slow retreats and pluralist compromises with the Left (in which the Left was never the least bit interested) I spent a couple of decades advocating as a professional conservative.
The first question of politics should always be: "What do we want?"
What I want is to live with my family in a Christian community, which implies a larger Christian society and culture, which implies in turn a Christian nation, specifically a Christian Democracy.
But following Chesterton’s advice, the first task is not to figure out how to get there but to paint a picture of what it might be like.
So that’s one thing, the main thing, this blog is about.
On the other hand, the “vision” thing doesn’t mean this place is restricted to high theory. I had some doubts actually about the title, A Christian Democracy, because I was afraid it might be too pompous and pious to sustain raucous debate. But the less pompous variants were already taken.
In any event Christian charity does not oblige us to tedium, and the number of saints with sharp tongues in their heads is not small. And they do say that sainthood is a universal calling…
posted by Richard Vigilante at 11:51 AM
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