Seeing America by Foxfier
Follow the admirable advice of Mr. H. G. Wells, who said, ‘It is not much good thinking of a thing unless you think it out.’
About a century ago, GK Chesterton came to visit America.
As it happens, being a fellow who wrote for papers, he wrote about it. I often suggest the preface-essay, What Is America?, describing it as his love-letter to our lovely country. Quotes are from this Gutenberg online copy.
It is a little depressing to see that many people– Americans themselves– don’t manage to reach his level of understanding of what America is.
First, he guided folks into his setup:
Let me begin my American impressions with two impressions I had before I went to America. One was an incident and the other an idea; and when taken together they illustrate the attitude I mean. The first principle is that nobody should be ashamed of thinking a thing funny because it is foreign; the second is that he should be ashamed of thinking it wrong because it is funny. The reaction of his senses and superficial habits of mind against something new, and to him abnormal, is a perfectly healthy reaction. But the mind which imagines that mere unfamiliarity can possibly prove anything about inferiority is a very inadequate mind. It is inadequate even in criticising things that may really be inferior to the things involved here.
This shouldn’t be a shock to anybody, Chesterton is rather well known as the patron saint of paradox, using laughter to ease the pain of stretching one’s mind.
In this case, he takes aim at the fascinating world of… filling out a form.
Be still, my racing heart. How thrilling and insightful can you get, with entry paperwork?
Well….
The officials I interviewed were very American, especially in being very polite; for whatever may have been the mood or meaning of Martin Chuzzlewit, I have always found Americans by far the politest people in the world. They put in my hands a form to be filled up, to all appearance like other forms I had filled up in other passport offices. But in reality it was very different from any form I had ever filled up in my life. At least it was a little like a freer form of the game called ‘Confessions’ which my friends and I invented in our youth; an examination paper containing questions like, ‘If you saw a rhinoceros in the front garden, what would you do?’ One of my friends, I remember, wrote, ‘Take the pledge.’ But that is another story, and might bring Mr. Pussyfoot Johnson on the scene before his time.
One of the questions on the paper was, ‘Are you an anarchist?’ To which a detached philosopher would naturally feel inclined to answer, ‘What the devil has that to do with you? Are you an atheist?’ along with some playful efforts to cross-examine the official about what constitutes an ἁρχη [Greek: archê]. Then there was the question, ‘Are you in favour of subverting the government of the United States by force?’ Against this I should write, ‘I prefer to answer that question at the end of my tour and not the beginning.’ The inquisitor, in his more than morbid curiosity, had then written down, ‘Are you a polygamist?’ The answer to this is, ‘No such luck’ or ‘Not such a fool,’ according to our experience of the other sex. But perhaps a better answer would be that given to W. T. Stead when he circulated the rhetorical question, ‘Shall I slay my brother Boer?’—the answer that ran, ‘Never interfere in family matters.’ But among many things that amused me almost to the point of treating the form thus disrespectfully, the most amusing was the thought of the ruthless outlaw who should feel compelled to treat it respectfully. I like to think of the foreign desperado, seeking to slip into America with official papers under official protection, and sitting down to write with a beautiful gravity, ‘I am an anarchist. I hate you all and wish to destroy you.’ Or, ‘I intend to subvert by force the government of the United States as soon as possible, sticking the long sheath-knife in my left trouser-pocket into Mr. Harding at the earliest opportunity.’ Or again, ‘Yes, I am a polygamist all right, and my forty-seven wives are accompanying me on the voyage disguised as secretaries.’ There seems to be a certain simplicity of mind about these answers; and it is reassuring to know that anarchists and polygamists are so pure and good that the police have only to ask them questions and they are certain to tell no lies.
And that leads to something I wish more folks would embrace:
Now that is a model of the sort of foreign practice, founded on foreign problems, at which a man’s first impulse is naturally to laugh. Nor have I any intention of apologising for my laughter. A man is perfectly entitled to laugh at a thing because he happens to find it incomprehensible. What he has no right to do is to laugh at it as incomprehensible, and then criticise it as if he comprehended it. The very fact of its unfamiliarity and mystery ought to set him thinking about the deeper causes that make people so different from himself, and that without merely assuming that they must be inferior to himself.
America is weird.
We are not a nation of land.
We are a nation of an idea— a creed, which we spelled out rather nicely.
To, again, quote:
America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence; perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature.
And he is right, there, and in continuing:
It enunciates that all men are equal in their claim to justice, that governments exist to give them that justice, and that their authority is for that reason just. It certainly does condemn anarchism, and it does also by inference condemn atheism, since it clearly names the Creator as the ultimate authority from whom these equal rights are derived. Nobody expects a modern political system to proceed logically in the application of such dogmas, and in the matter of God and Government it is naturally God whose claim is taken more lightly. The point is that there is a creed, if not about divine, at least about human things.
Claims of America being a “blood and soil” nation “like any other” have been popping up, with a range of scrambles to create evidence for this idea– it runs into issues when it hits America’s history, from before we were founded.
We are an idea. We have a nation, and it has land; but a thing does not become American by being done here. One becomes American by being an American— following our creed.
To point at Chesterton’s meditation on this, explaining it to his countrymen:
Take that innocent question, ‘Are you an anarchist?’ which is intrinsically quite as impudent as ‘Are you an optimist?’ or ‘Are you a philanthropist?’ I am not discussing here whether these things are right, but whether most of us are in a position to know them rightly. Now it is quite true that most Englishmen do not find it necessary to go about all day asking each other whether they are anarchists. It is quite true that the phrase occurs on no British forms that I have seen. But this is not only because most of the Englishmen are not anarchists. It is even more because even the anarchists are Englishmen. For instance, it would be easy to make fun of the American formula by noting that the cap would fit all sorts of bald academic heads. It might well be maintained that Herbert Spencer was an anarchist. It is practically certain that Auberon Herbert was an anarchist. But Herbert Spencer was an extraordinarily typical Englishman of the Nonconformist middle class. And Auberon Herbert was an extraordinarily typical English aristocrat of the old and genuine aristocracy. Every one knew in his heart that the squire would not throw a bomb at the Queen, and the Nonconformist would not throw a bomb at anybody. Every one knew that there was something subconscious in a man like Auberon Herbert, which would have come out only in throwing bombs at the enemies of England; as it did come out in his son and namesake, the generous and unforgotten, who fell flinging bombs from the sky far beyond the German line. Every one knows that normally, in the last resort, the English gentleman is patriotic. Every one knows that the English Nonconformist is national even when he denies that he is patriotic. Nothing is more notable indeed than the fact that nobody is more stamped with the mark of his own nation than the man who says that there ought to be no nations. Somebody called Cobden the International Man; but no man could be more English than Cobden. Everybody recognises Tolstoy as the iconoclast of all patriotism; but nobody could be more Russian than Tolstoy. In the old countries where there are these national types, the types may be allowed to hold any theories. Even if they hold certain theories, they are unlikely to do certain things. So the conscientious objector, in the English sense, may be and is one of the peculiar by-products of England. But the conscientious objector will probably have a conscientious objection to throwing bombs.
And, Chesterton being English, and not entirely insane, must follow with this:
Now I am very far from intending to imply that these American tests are good tests, or that there is no danger of tyranny becoming the temptation of America. I shall have something to say later on about that temptation or tendency. Nor do I say that they apply consistently this conception of a nation with the soul of a church, protected by religious and not racial selection. If they did apply that principle consistently, they would have to exclude pessimists and rich cynics who deny the democratic ideal; an excellent thing but a rather improbable one. What I say is that when we realise that this principle exists at all, we see the whole position in a totally different perspective. We say that the Americans are doing something heroic, or doing something insane, or doing it in an unworkable or unworthy fashion, instead of simply wondering what the devil they are doing.
I wish to heaven more folks would bother to actually think, rather than assume they already know and go from there.
According To Hoyt 
Thank you, Foxfier.
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The Reader thanks you for the new reading assignment. Somehow he missed Chesterton in his readings on this great country.
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There is more truth in Chesterton’s fiction than in most news outlets.
Let me recommend =Tremendous Trifles=, a collection from his daily newspaper essays (365 days, 11 years). =The Diabolist=, =The shop of Ghosts, and =A Somewhat Improbable Story= are my favorites.
Next the last, and then the first, few sections of =The Ballad of the White Horse=, then, if you feel up to it, the whole thing. The last, for its picture of the evils spreading into the twentieth century. 《… and mild as a shaven clerk,/By this sign you shall know them, that they ruin and make dark.》《By thought a crawling ruin, by life a leaping mire,/By a broken heart in the breast of the world, And the end of the world’s desire.》The first few, because of truth, beauty, and ideas turned on their heads. 《For the end of the world was long ago and all we dwell today/As children of some second birth, after a judgement day 》《… Men may unearth where worlds begin/Or read the name of the nameless sin/But if he fail or if he win to no good man is told.》The middle, if you have the patience, for it is salted with gems.
Take =The Rolling English Road=, whose humorous theme takes a deeper and far graver turn in the last verse. =The Song of Quoodle=, humorous but devout and true. (An editor changed “old Gluck” in the second verse into “a Jew”, leading to modern, false charges of antisemetism. You can see which scans better.)
Or take =The Song of the Wheels=: Uneven, like most of Chesterton, but brilliant in many places: 《Man shall shut his heart against you and you shall not find the spring./Man who wills the thing he wants not, the intolerable thing./Once he likes his empty belly better than your empty head/Earth and heaven are dumb before him, he is stronger than the dead.》《You have engines big and burnished, tall beyond our fathers’ ken/Why should you make peace and traffic with such feeble folk as men.》《… in my garden there shall swing and sound and sweep/The noise of all the sleepless things that swing the soul to sleep.》
Chesterton is known for the Father Brown mysteries. He was elected Ruler of the famed Detection Club (Christie, Sayers, John Dickson Carr …) But his late collection =The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond= is in some ways stronger.
He wrote fantasy-tastic novels (=The Man Who Was Thursday=, =The Club of Queer Trades=, …) and serious treatments like =Orthodoxy= and =The Everlasting Man=.
Yes, you should read Chesterton. And most of all, you should enjoy him.
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I recall an excellent series on Chesterton which ran on EWTN some years ago. Indeed, he should be more well read these days, but alas- among the multitudes of youths it seems that the attention may only be held by imbeciles doing outrageous things in three minute videos. Yes, I am old- and reading was an integral part of my growing up. And in school, all the way to university, one was expected to be a reader!
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It’s less that their attention can be held, than that they’ve been taught by experience to extend no more than that much to those who have nothing else to recommend them. A sort of low-trust system with respect to investing one of the most precious things we have, time.
It’s a side-effect of those who had a duty failing in it; they were handed stones and told they were bread so often that they are not going to sink their teeth in unless they’ve got quite good reasons otherwise.
Thus, memes.
There are a lot of GK Chesterton memes, but he’s rather fittingly annoying in this. You can either get one tiny little phrase– “Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die.”– or you get… um…. :gestures up above, sheepishly: Multiple paragraphs. Which may or may not consist of a single complex sentence each.
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c4c
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Or as Sarah puts it, “Americans are the Odds Of the World”.
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Not only are we the Odds, we are an Odds Magnet. If you are getting treated crappily in your homeland for religious beliefs, Economic Desires, etc come to America where you can keep walking until no one gives a rat’s patootie what you do.
Emma Lazarus got it wrong its not
but, “Give me your weird, your eccentric, your huddled masses longing to be left the hell alone.”
We got them in spades and they are part of the life blood of the nation. Witness one of our Neuro atypicals in Chief, Elon Musk. Part of the intent of the lefties sucking in millions of economic refugees as illegal immigrants is that they are FAR more biddable than the native crop and the self imports.
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THIS
Thanks Foxifer. Most of the time I Puddleglum my way through America. It is good to be reminded WHY.
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The Autistic Country. :D
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I’ve always liked Chesterton. I find his understated humor quite breathtaking at times.
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Chesterton’s observation about Spencer and Herbert is very well taken. Indeed in Spencer’s early Social Statics, while he didn’t call for the abolition of the state, the final item in his list of rights that the state was morally obligated to protect was “the right to ignore the state.”
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I identify as Asatru, but that’s more practice than belief. It fills a need. But when it comes to belief, I remain a devout USAian.
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Thanks; excellent post! I’ve said it, and seen it from several others, but seeing that Chesterton agreed that America is an idea, rather than a place, confirms it. “American” is what you believe and how you act, not where you happen to live; I suspect that there are yak herders in Mongolia and Montagnards in SE Asia who qualify as “American”.
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Nothing is more radical than the Declaration of Independence, the main problem is living up to its meaning and intent. We the People, nuff said.
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It never seems to sink in the that Declaration says, “If your government isn’t doing its job, you have a duty to overthrow it, not just a right!” It is a profoundly radical document that cites legal precedent going back to the Magna Charta, English Bill of Rights, and other documents [the complaints].
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I may have commented here before about this idiot reporter who got owned about saying that the “evil” Christian Nationalists believe that “rights” came from G*d not from the Government.
Basically, her critics pointed out Jefferson’s words about “rights” in the Declaration.
Of course, Martin Luther King Jr talked about “Natural Rights” (ie from G*d) during the Civil Rights Movement.
That really was an idiot reporter. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
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The biggest problem is that nearly every lawyer, every judge, and every law school in this country has a mental image that the law starts with the Constitution. I hold that the Declaration of Independence is the foundational document of this country, without which we would still be a colony of England. It is both our divorce papers, and a source document for the Bill of Rights. And if there is any primary weakness of the Constitution, it is not acknowledgement of that, and the placement of the Bill of Rights as the beginning, not a set of amendments.
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I have seen elsewhere a certain troll maintain that we are not even a creedal nation but …..well his arguments get vauge after that and he talks about CivNat. He is correct in one respect, we are no longer taught about the Constitution or its importance to us and the world.
My oldesr sister was the last member of our family who took Civics, a required course, which discussed the entire evoluti9n of our constitution….and the teacher had them write out both the sarticles of confederation and the constitution and amendments, as well as discuss some of the Federalist Papers.
It was replaced with a couse called American History, used a 5th grade level text and taught by an incredibly boring teacher. He did know the subject and love itand believed it, but he was boooooooring.
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We are creedal *and*… Binary thinkers. Meh.
The problem is that two of our creeds are Christ and federalism.
People have a hard time with both.
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Tangential to this, but a Trump victory effect….the bank we go to has a teller who is male but has always worn lip stick, makeup, ladies earrings and nail polish. Today is the first I have seen him since the election. Nothing zip zilch nada. Still long hair, but that is it.
Baby steps
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Shall we change the meaning of “mere Trumpery” ?
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Superb article, excellent all around! Chesterton was indeed a master of the written, and spoken, word. His friendship, and good natured jibes, with C.S Lewis are legendary. BTW-if anyone here is a buyer of firearms via dealerships, you already know what I am about to comment. On the infamous form 4473, there are such questions as, are you a terrorist, are you a felon, are you here illegally and other such nonsense, as Chesterton so perfectly addressed. One can only suppose that some empty headed bureaucrat ( is there any other kind?) came up with the questions to fill in his hours of workday. I would love to know how may of those forms were rejected because of people admitting to their terrorist activities, plans to overthrow the government, interstate flight to avoid capture after multiple armed felonies. We know the forms are jsut there so the fedbois have a national registry.
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Those empty-headed questions on the 4473 are what is known as “compliance” questions. Should a terrorist or known felon misrepresent himself on the form and subsequently be arrested for some offense, a clever lawyer might get him off the immediate charge. But then the Feds can prosecute him for making a false statement on an official document.
As to the “national registry,” it exists only in non-digitized form, by Law, and the paper documents are only sent there when the dealer who sold the gun ceases to operate as a business. Which renders the whole compliance thing ridiculous. Our government is notoriously inefficient, even at oppression.
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luckily,,,
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TheRandomTexan got there first – these are the “Lying On An Official Form” questions that, in theory, let miscreants be jailed or, in Mr. Chesterton’s immigration entry forms instance, deported if it turns out they answered the way the question clearly directs them to answer, and then proceed to exhibit their anarchical polygamousness once they get in.
Anarchists were responsible for a number of assassinations back in the day, and having a way to deport anarchically active aliens was of direct procedural interest, especially in the large port of entry cities like NYC.
The “Illegal Drugs Much?” question on today’s ATF form 4473 is similar, though it’s also the reason I said “in theory”, as the Feds almost never bother. The Hunter case is the most topical recent exception, with the Feds dragged kicking and screaming into prosecuting the case by the high profile publicity of multiple contemporaneous videos establishing the clear crime of his asserting “Nope!” on this form.
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All good, correct points. But…
“anarchical polygamousness”?
I confess that my brain simply freezes when I try to parse that.🤔🤔😉
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All “former” dealer forms are routinely OCR scanned “for reference”.
Data was provided to at least one Pennsylvania university which is not prohibited to keep a registry, “for research”.
eForms are the current practice. “Compliance Visits” routinely access them.
Lots more.
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Thanks for the update. I do recall filling out the form electronically the last time I needed to top off my gun locker.
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“Our government is notoriously inefficient, even at oppression.”
………….
To be fair, the system was kind of headed this way by interference. Couldn’t kill it. But they could wrap it into absurdity (couldn’t resist).
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Don’t remember where I heard it, but for the question “Do you support the overthrow of the United States Government by force or subversion?” somebody answered:
“Force. Subversion is too unreliable, plus you have to deal with subversives.”
When confronted: “What? Those were the choices.”
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Phenomenal reply!!!!!! I am saluting, at least in spirit, the person who noted that! I have no way to post a picture here but greatly enjoyed a meme titled “The Pedantic Librarian” in which a vampire stood at a door asking a young woman, “Can I come in?”, and she replied, “I don’t know; can you?” with which he withdrew.
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Well, I agree at least with the intent of the phrase “by law” – although feds have never, afaik, allowed such trifles as the law to interfere with their designs. Did you see that video- I am sure it is still up – of the female ATF agent using her cell phone to photograph the paper copies of the form in a gun store? Personally, I took a recent survey of the young men in my own highly diverse neighborhood, and was assured that when any of them needed a firearm or a Glock switch, their local dealer did not ask for any forms to be filled out; his only requirement was that the transaction be in cash, and during his hours of operation, weekend evenings or nights, between 8 p.m. and 2 a.m. at the old Ruby Tuesday parking lot.
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Those actually make perfect sense, as therandomtexan points out– there’s also that if you’re trying to illegally buy a gun, it shows you absolutely did do so, not something like “the salesman filled it out for me.”
This is a third route from either requiring nasty people get one free shot, or cutting down all the trees of England to go after the Devil.
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Chesterton’s jibes were not with CSL but with George Bernard Shaw, and sometimes H. G. Wells. They were great friends in spite of their differences, and each gave as good as he got:
Chesterton to Shaw: To look at you, anyone would think there was a famine in the country.
Shaw to Chesterton: And to look at you, anyone would think that you had caused it.
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heh. I have, every time I see it/am asked it, chuckled at the modern version of the “are you an anarchist” question (ie, the “are you a terrorist or do you associate with terrorist groups” question)
It’s so silly, but…I love the silliness of it. And it’s variations of “have you ever been convicted of a felony” or “are you illegally in this country”
Human nature being what it is, I have NO doubt that somewhere, sometime, SOMEONE actually did answer those questions honestly, and were puzzled at the reaction.
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Edited for clarity: answered those questions in the *affirmative* honestly, that is.
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I recall, from an article I read sometime back in the ’60s, that a fairly high official (Cabinet level or equivalent) in either the Eisenhower or Kennedy administration who was filling out a security form, and came to the question (paraphrased) “Did you or anyone in your direct family ever participate in rebellion against, or advocate the overthrow of, the US Government?” His answer, “Yes” caused a bit of consternation, until he clarified, “My two grandfathers, who both fought for the Confederacy.”
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Let’s just say I puzzle polygraph examiners.
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The late Jerry Pournelle observed that he missed the sting in the tail.
At the bottom, you swore under penalty of perjury that it was all true. Therefore, you could lie, and we could throw you in jail for lying.
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Or more usefully, boot you without much needing to prove a crime.
The downside of creeds is having to one choose what to do with those who chose to reject them.
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