What you need to know about G.K. Chesterton is that he wrote a book called “The Everlasting Man”. C.S. Lewis read it and became a Christian. G.K. Chesterton wrote commentaries on all kinds of things back in the day. He lived in a world of violent social upheaval and the rise of socialism and communism in political life that attacked all things that he deemed sacred. Under assault was Christianity, the home, the family, individual freedom, relations between men and women, the sanctity of life, ordered society under law – in other words he could be alive today. Sometimes he can take your breath away. He wrote an article called “In Defense of Property” where we find this interesting gem.
In the modern world we are primarily confronted with the extraordinary spectacle of people turning to new ideals because they have not tried the old. Men have not got tired of Christianity; they have never found enough Christianity to get tired of. Men have never wearied of political justice; they have wearied of waiting for it. Now, for the purpose of this book, I propose to take only one of these old ideals; but one that is perhaps the oldest. I take the principle of domesticity: the ideal house; the happy family, the holy family of history. For the moment it is only necessary to remark that it is like the church and like the republic, now chiefly assailed by those who have never known it, or by those who have failed to fulfil it. Numberless modern women have rebelled against domesticity in theory because they have never known it in practice. Hosts of the poor are driven to the workhouse without ever having known the house. Generally speaking, the cultured class is
shrieking to be let out of the decent home, just as the working class is shouting to be let into it.
