My spiritual life really picked up some speed when I read The Man Who Was Thursday. It's gorgeously written, and the broad leap from the ridiculous into the sublime at the end of the book is utterly majestic. It's like nothing else I've ever read. Thanks for this great discussion about one of the greatest Christian apologists of the 20th century.
I am really looking forward to seeing Dale Ahlquist at Hartford College in Sydney on 1 November. This conversation was really great to listen to and so much that so aptly sums up touchpoints for current society.
JOHN: Your interviews are (usually) wonderful; and you have provided this old geezer with assurance since the ludicrous and bizarre days of 'covid' (here in the UK, 'The Johnson Years'), when Western humanity appeared to lose its collective mind. Wish I could contribute financially; but so many UA-camrs need help, that I have chosen 'IRREVEREND' as the Christian site, to which to contribute (even though they constantly insult Christians like me, who do not treat and read our scriptures as though they are the Koran!). It may be of interest to you both to know that I was 'Christened' by the Revd John Chesterton (nephew of GK!) in the font of St Mawgan Parish Church. Cornwall, in 1952. May God bless you in your work.
Really enjoyed this podcast and am always filled with joy when beauty, goodness and truth are mentioned in the light of schools. It is truly great that there are signs of the tide turning in education.
Thanks John. Chesterton schools! What haven't they got in America? And why not Chesrton schools here? But I disagree about government schools. I think they are wrong in principle. The parent is responsible for the education of the child - morally speaking - not the government. We need more private schools, and especially more Christian schools.
I teach at a Christian school and no one knew who G K Chesterton was. But I think that's not uncommon in America. Some people (office ladies) did know Father Brown. So I added a short reading from him to our nonfiction unit and integrated him into a couple other places (views on mythology, etc). I started reading his books back in high school in the 90s. They had a big impact on me and I made a lot of friends read Orthodoxy. Not sure how many got it. He definitely has a Schick. Sometimes he gets too Chestertonian and uses the same rhetorical tricks too many times (too many inversions, for example half the quotes just quoted in this interview). He's hard to assign to American high schoolers because his language is too far removed from theirs and you have to have an actual attention span to understand him. A lot of what he writes reads like a joke. You have to hold what he's saying in your mind across multiple sentences and wait for the punch line. Modern American media doesn't really give you the proper training.
Chesterton not only prophet but THE great (ironically given he was a journalist) philosopher of modern times, full stop. The academics made a mess, it took a lightning wit and outside observer to clean it up.
The notion that there is something called "Catholic Social Teaching" is questionable. It is a concept that loosely emerged from Pope Leo XIII's papal encyclical Rerum Novarum (of New Things,), written largely in response to the issues of industrialization in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many of which have been largely resolved, in part thanks to the encyclical and the efforts of many people of goodwill. Many Catholics think that CST has the charism of magisterial and infallible teaching - it does not, and it should not be used as a pius trump card against sound free market principles, which frequently happens. Prudential judgment should prevail. While Distributism has some admirable qualities that should be emphasized (small business, subsidiarity, and so forth,) the devil is in the details. It also advocates price controls, limits on capital formation and company size, union ownership, the use of guilds to restrict entry into professions and trades, serious infringements on property rights, and a level of government involvement to make it all work that looks conspicuously like a pius form of Socialism. As I have taught my own students, Socialism is Distributism writ large, and Distributism is Socialism writ small. I also have a problem consulting someone like Hillare Belloc on economics and government given his pension for admiring Benito Mussolini because he made the "trains run on time." I could go on, but let me finish by saying be sure you understand The Economic Way of Thinking (the late Paul Heynes, an econ professor and Episcopalian priest) before trying to implement some system of political economy under the ambiguous rubric of "Catholic Social Teaching." Yes, I teach economics and yes I am Catholic.
Chesterton in his novel "The Fying Inn" envisaged England subjugated by Islam, and betrayed by those at the top of society. But those at the bottom wanted to drink beer again, and overthrew the traitorous regime.
Enjoy those little quotes from GK and Alquist's responses to them. Especially the one about Satan's fall from heaven because of gravity...so English, a multi-layered use of language..😏
Chesterton coined the term "Chrislam" a hybrid of Islam and Christianity, in his book "The Flying Inn" of 1914. How did he know that pope Francis, 110 years later would be promoting Chrislam?
The solution to mankind's problems is to combine Locke and Smith. (a) Limited constitutional government (whole brief: to preserve Life, Liberty and Property - the core value of the nation) and (b) Open Market systems that are aware of the threat of corporatism, trade associations, guilds and unions: as loci of economic power who will strive for monopolistic control. Where being 'a worker' is a temporary phase until they assemble the tools, knowledge, skills, attitudes, customers, products to contribute within a larger organisation (e.g. factory) or remain independent. The biggest human step forward will come when by using Science to learn how to raise children to become adults as close to their genomic potential as the design allows.
Agreed, however what if those ideas come from the root solution to mankind's problems. To follow the way, the truth, and the life, and to remember, 'Blessed is he who hears the word of God and keeps it.'
@@LachlanA.Farquhar Formal religious belief has had long enough to prove its value to this species *at the organisational level.* Statistically it persists in being divisive, less likely to be moral or exhibit compassion. As a personal belief it would be mostly harmless and more likely to show those qualities. The distributed systems mentioned above are required to restrict any pathway to centralised power, influence or wealth which has had a similar tendency to make a mess of affairs. Personally, I can't dismiss the possibility of a God, but have come to the conclusion that none have visited this planet and left a legacy. Working it out for ourselves may be the test to see whether contact will be made. Hence the final remarks.
@@peterclark6290 Thank you for your clear and rational response, mate. I admire your point about the need to individually come to your own findings. I wonder if in coming to your conclusion that a creator being has yet to visit this earth, if you had come across C.S. Lewis' trilemma proposal? Cheers and peace be with you, Lachlan
@@LachlanA.Farquhar I hadn't as far as I remember. Not that I pursued the apologists for insights. My Atheism started around age 8-9. A globe in my beloved grandfather's study, seeing a Coelacanth in a museum were the main triggers. The problem with the Jesus narrative is that although it accepts the Old Testament as written, not a single theme crosses the membrane between the two texts. It is as if the Father had rethought his approach. Mostly because it was just plain wrong. Slaying and smiting isn't helpful. The road to goodness was being good to your very bones. Which in turn emphatically contradicts the omniscience claim, a prerequisite for being regarded as a God you would think. Keeping the OT in the Bible was not religion's cleverest moment. I now seek Science's insights. Such as Haidt's work on common instincts in all human babies: the mind-conforming internal drug regime (endorphins, dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin,...) that point to a particular design. That of a predisposition towards teamwork, courage, resilience, gentleness accompanied at all times by our shared love of beauty. For that to have happened when the only 'help' was natural selection it is difficult to find a causative path. However it has happened. Maybe it was driven by that search for beauty, skill, competency, creativity. Then again it may have had a little extra-terrestrial guidance. A real God will have/would have had those answers with the arguments as to when, how, why, etc. When any civilisation sees maximising the genomic potential of every new life as its greatest gift to itself, its raison d'être, we may succeed in that test mentioned before. If it isn't a test at least we will see the end of under-performers, substance abusers and the ever-present criminal class. Violence will be restricted to the sports field as youngsters test out their progress and development in a controlled environment. It has little other functionality in a fully human world. Cheers mate.
General John Kelly…Trumps chief of staff and secretary of Homeland Security…said this about Trump: “ The depths of his dishonesty is just astounding to me. He is the most flawed person I have ever met in my life.” Can ANYONE explain how a person like this could possibly become the nominee for the GOP for president????
Your comment had zero to do with this episode, but I will answer your question anyway. I am a Canadian so regrettably will not be able to cast a vote for Trump next month but I have followed his political career with interest. Trump never got proper credit for being the first US president to start using the US chained CPI for escalation, making it the escalator for elements of the tax code as part of his tax reform. The US became only the second country in the world, after Sweden, to have a household-based consumer price measure that virtually eliminated upper-level substitution bias. His administration was studying broader use of the chained CPI when he left office and this will likely be part of the work of his second administration. As Canadian financial analyst David Rosenberg wrote: “[A]ll Mr. Trump intends to do from an economic perspective is to extend the policies of his 2016-2020 tenure, which delivered 2.8 percent annualized real GDP growth from the time he got elected to the time the pandemic unravelled the economy in early 2020.” Happy Thanksgiving Day to you if you are a Canadian. If you are not, you should seriously consider immigrating to our beautiful country as Trump Derangement Syndrome seems to be much more prevalent here than it is in America itself. You would fit right in.
@@andrewbaldwin4454 Never ceases to amaze me...the degee to which obviously intelligent people will just look the other way at the nearly ENDLESS list of Trump's transgressions. This is the guy who said (and I quote)..."Grab women by the p*ssy."
@@andrewbaldwin4454 This is the guy who has lied...and lied...and lied...and lied...and lied...and lied...and lied...and lied. Did Trump win in 2020? Obviously not. Not doubt you will find SOME way to square that circle.
@@andrewbaldwin4454 This is the guy who literally stole government classified documents...is a convicted felon...and if he loses next month will face dozens of additional felony charges.
My spiritual life really picked up some speed when I read The Man Who Was Thursday. It's gorgeously written, and the broad leap from the ridiculous into the sublime at the end of the book is utterly majestic. It's like nothing else I've ever read. Thanks for this great discussion about one of the greatest Christian apologists of the 20th century.
Yes!! It’s mad and strange and beautiful and moving and so insightful into the foibles of humanity
Another Great One John, at your best again.
Always good to see Mr. Ahlquist. His "Troubadours" discussions are engaging. Thanks/Cheers.
I am really looking forward to seeing Dale Ahlquist at Hartford College in Sydney on 1 November.
This conversation was really great to listen to and so much that so aptly sums up touchpoints for current society.
yes indeed.
JOHN: Your interviews are (usually) wonderful; and you have provided this old geezer with assurance since the ludicrous and bizarre days of 'covid' (here in the UK, 'The Johnson Years'), when Western humanity appeared to lose its collective mind. Wish I could contribute financially; but so many UA-camrs need help, that I have chosen 'IRREVEREND' as the Christian site, to which to contribute (even though they constantly insult Christians like me, who do not treat and read our scriptures as though they are the Koran!). It may be of interest to you both to know that I was 'Christened' by the Revd John Chesterton (nephew of GK!) in the font of St Mawgan Parish Church. Cornwall, in 1952. May God bless you in your work.
Really enjoyed this podcast and am always filled with joy when beauty, goodness and truth are mentioned in the light of schools.
It is truly great that there are signs of the tide turning in education.
John, I only know you through these podcasts and as your time in politics, but I want to affirm that I see in you the characteristics of Chesterton.
Ahlquist and Anderson are good to listen to 👏👍✅
Huge fan of Chesterton, and therefore, Ahlquist.
Very much looking forward to seeing Mr. Ahlquist in Brisbane next month.
Wonderful interview. Thank you.
Thank you so much, John, for another wonderful interview on a delightful subject. God bless!
Great guest 🌟
I really need to get into Chesterton, he sounds awesome
Excellent! ❤️💙
Thanks John. Chesterton schools! What haven't they got in America? And why not Chesrton schools here? But I disagree about government schools. I think they are wrong in principle. The parent is responsible for the education of the child - morally speaking - not the government. We need more private schools, and especially more Christian schools.
I teach at a Christian school and no one knew who G K Chesterton was. But I think that's not uncommon in America. Some people (office ladies) did know Father Brown. So I added a short reading from him to our nonfiction unit and integrated him into a couple other places (views on mythology, etc). I started reading his books back in high school in the 90s. They had a big impact on me and I made a lot of friends read Orthodoxy. Not sure how many got it. He definitely has a Schick. Sometimes he gets too Chestertonian and uses the same rhetorical tricks too many times (too many inversions, for example half the quotes just quoted in this interview).
He's hard to assign to American high schoolers because his language is too far removed from theirs and you have to have an actual attention span to understand him. A lot of what he writes reads like a joke. You have to hold what he's saying in your mind across multiple sentences and wait for the punch line. Modern American media doesn't really give you the proper training.
Chesterton not only prophet but THE great (ironically given he was a journalist) philosopher of modern times, full stop. The academics made a mess, it took a lightning wit and outside observer to clean it up.
The notion that there is something called "Catholic Social Teaching" is questionable. It is a concept that loosely emerged from Pope Leo XIII's papal encyclical Rerum Novarum (of New Things,), written largely in response to the issues of industrialization in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many of which have been largely resolved, in part thanks to the encyclical and the efforts of many people of goodwill. Many Catholics think that CST has the charism of magisterial and infallible teaching - it does not, and it should not be used as a pius trump card against sound free market principles, which frequently happens. Prudential judgment should prevail. While Distributism has some admirable qualities that should be emphasized (small business, subsidiarity, and so forth,) the devil is in the details. It also advocates price controls, limits on capital formation and company size, union ownership, the use of guilds to restrict entry into professions and trades, serious infringements on property rights, and a level of government involvement to make it all work that looks conspicuously like a pius form of Socialism. As I have taught my own students, Socialism is Distributism writ large, and Distributism is Socialism writ small. I also have a problem consulting someone like Hillare Belloc on economics and government given his pension for admiring Benito Mussolini because he made the "trains run on time." I could go on, but let me finish by saying be sure you understand The Economic Way of Thinking (the late Paul Heynes, an econ professor and Episcopalian priest) before trying to implement some system of political economy under the ambiguous rubric of "Catholic Social Teaching." Yes, I teach economics and yes I am Catholic.
Chesterton in his novel "The Fying Inn" envisaged England subjugated by Islam, and betrayed by those at the top of society. But those at the bottom wanted to drink beer again, and overthrew the traitorous regime.
Enjoy those little quotes from GK and Alquist's responses to them. Especially the one about Satan's fall from heaven because of gravity...so English, a multi-layered use of language..😏
Chesterton coined the term "Chrislam" a hybrid of Islam and Christianity, in his book "The Flying Inn" of 1914. How did he know that pope Francis, 110 years later would be promoting Chrislam?
“We don’t talk about evils, we talk about which evils are excusable” or otherwise said by the lazy ‘we choose the lesser of evils’
Im in america because he didnt like my great grandmother being a ballerina.
The solution to mankind's problems is to combine Locke and Smith. (a) Limited constitutional government (whole brief: to preserve Life, Liberty and Property - the core value of the nation) and (b) Open Market systems that are aware of the threat of corporatism, trade associations, guilds and unions: as loci of economic power who will strive for monopolistic control. Where being 'a worker' is a temporary phase until they assemble the tools, knowledge, skills, attitudes, customers, products to contribute within a larger organisation (e.g. factory) or remain independent. The biggest human step forward will come when by using Science to learn how to raise children to become adults as close to their genomic potential as the design allows.
Agreed, however what if those ideas come from the root solution to mankind's problems. To follow the way, the truth, and the life, and to remember, 'Blessed is he who hears the word of God and keeps it.'
@@LachlanA.Farquhar Formal religious belief has had long enough to prove its value to this species *at the organisational level.* Statistically it persists in being divisive, less likely to be moral or exhibit compassion. As a personal belief it would be mostly harmless and more likely to show those qualities.
The distributed systems mentioned above are required to restrict any pathway to centralised power, influence or wealth which has had a similar tendency to make a mess of affairs.
Personally, I can't dismiss the possibility of a God, but have come to the conclusion that none have visited this planet and left a legacy. Working it out for ourselves may be the test to see whether contact will be made. Hence the final remarks.
@@peterclark6290 Thank you for your clear and rational response, mate.
I admire your point about the need to individually come to your own findings. I wonder if in coming to your conclusion that a creator being has yet to visit this earth, if you had come across C.S. Lewis' trilemma proposal? Cheers and peace be with you,
Lachlan
@@LachlanA.Farquhar I hadn't as far as I remember. Not that I pursued the apologists for insights. My Atheism started around age 8-9. A globe in my beloved grandfather's study, seeing a Coelacanth in a museum were the main triggers.
The problem with the Jesus narrative is that although it accepts the Old Testament as written, not a single theme crosses the membrane between the two texts. It is as if the Father had rethought his approach. Mostly because it was just plain wrong. Slaying and smiting isn't helpful. The road to goodness was being good to your very bones. Which in turn emphatically contradicts the omniscience claim, a prerequisite for being regarded as a God you would think. Keeping the OT in the Bible was not religion's cleverest moment.
I now seek Science's insights. Such as Haidt's work on common instincts in all human babies: the mind-conforming internal drug regime (endorphins, dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin,...) that point to a particular design. That of a predisposition towards teamwork, courage, resilience, gentleness accompanied at all times by our shared love of beauty. For that to have happened when the only 'help' was natural selection it is difficult to find a causative path. However it has happened. Maybe it was driven by that search for beauty, skill, competency, creativity. Then again it may have had a little extra-terrestrial guidance. A real God will have/would have had those answers with the arguments as to when, how, why, etc.
When any civilisation sees maximising the genomic potential of every new life as its greatest gift to itself, its raison d'être, we may succeed in that test mentioned before. If it isn't a test at least we will see the end of under-performers, substance abusers and the ever-present criminal class. Violence will be restricted to the sports field as youngsters test out their progress and development in a controlled environment. It has little other functionality in a fully human world.
Cheers mate.
Lewis Karen Walker David Jackson Dorothy
General John Kelly…Trumps chief of staff and secretary of Homeland Security…said this about Trump: “ The depths of his dishonesty is just astounding to me. He is the most flawed person I have ever met in my life.” Can ANYONE explain how a person like this could possibly become the nominee for the GOP for president????
Your comment had zero to do with this episode, but I will answer your question anyway. I am a Canadian so regrettably will not be able to cast a vote for Trump next month but I have followed his political career with interest. Trump never got proper credit for being the first US president to start using the US chained CPI for escalation, making it the escalator for elements of the tax code as part of his tax reform. The US became only the second country in the world, after Sweden, to have a household-based consumer price measure that virtually eliminated upper-level substitution bias. His administration was studying broader use of the chained CPI when he left office and this will likely be part of the work of his second administration.
As Canadian financial analyst David Rosenberg wrote: “[A]ll Mr. Trump intends to do from an economic perspective is to extend the policies of his 2016-2020 tenure, which delivered 2.8 percent annualized real GDP growth from the time he got elected to the time the pandemic unravelled the economy in early 2020.”
Happy Thanksgiving Day to you if you are a Canadian. If you are not, you should seriously consider immigrating to our beautiful country as Trump Derangement Syndrome seems to be much more prevalent here than it is in America itself. You would fit right in.
@@andrewbaldwin4454 Never ceases to amaze me...the degee to which obviously intelligent people will just look the other way at the nearly ENDLESS list of Trump's transgressions. This is the guy who said (and I quote)..."Grab women by the p*ssy."
@@andrewbaldwin4454 This is the guy who sat and drank coke for over three hours while a mob ransacked the capital.
@@andrewbaldwin4454 This is the guy who has lied...and lied...and lied...and lied...and lied...and lied...and lied...and lied. Did Trump win in 2020? Obviously not. Not doubt you will find SOME way to square that circle.
@@andrewbaldwin4454 This is the guy who literally stole government classified documents...is a convicted felon...and if he loses next month will face dozens of additional felony charges.