Quotes from Dale Ahlquist

Increasingly I perceived myself as being neither on the left nor the right but as believing in a distinct "third position," mistrustful of big government of whatever political hue, which I perceived in the Orwellian sense as being Big Brother, the crusher of freedom.

question of whether we particularly want to go there. An Englishman can communicate with Manhattan by wireless, and he may yet communicate with Mars by more wireless; and, in both cases, nothing remains but the deeper and darker problem of thinking of something to say.

The free-lovers say: "Let us have the splendour of offering ourselves without the peril of committing ourselves; let us see whether one cannot commit suicide an unlimited number of times." Emphatically it will not work.

But the problem is that "inclusiveness" and "tolerance" are dogmas. It is not dogma that divides people. It is dogma that brings people together. The ultimate common bond is truth. That is why it is worth arguing about.

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

When Chesterton says we must not trust humanity, he especially reminds us not to put too much trust in politics or in whatever political party we pick. We generally expect too much from political parties, but none of them is based on any permanent philosophy, and, because of that, at some point they will conflict with faith.

We are no longer in a world in which it is thought normal to be moderate or even necessary to be normal. Most men now are not so much rushing to extremes as merely sliding to extremes; and even reaching the most violent extremes by being almost entirely passive. . . . We can no longer trust even the normal man to value and guard his own normality.

Changing the theology, changing the rules, does not bring freedom. Only truth brings freedom. And

The effect of this staleness is the same everywhere; it is seen in all drug-taking and dram-drinking and every form of the tendency to increase the dose. Men seek stranger sins or more startling obscenities as stimulants to their jaded sense. They seek after mad oriental religions for the same reason. They try to stab their nerves to life. . . . They are walking in their sleep and try to wake themselves up with nightmares.

Already there was talk of abortion, which Chesterton described as a "more than usually barbaric form of birth control," which goes against every instinct and "the common conscience of men."88 He said it should be called by its real name: "murder at its worst; not only the brand of Cain but the brand of Herod.

improvement over the older Catholic idea? Chesterton says that modern thinkers will not follow new ideas to their logical end; nor will they trace traditional ideas back to their beginnings. If

The Story of the Family". His first three points: The family is the most ancient of human institutions. It has an authority. It is universal.

Man can be defined as an animal that makes dogmas. As he piles doctrine on doctrine and conclusion on conclusion in the formation of some . . . philosophy or religion, he is . . . becoming more and more human. When

Wage slavery is still slavery. It may provide a few creature comforts, but a wage slave is even more disposable than a slave. Wage

The disintegration of rational society started in the drift from the hearth and the family," says Chesterton. "The solution must be a drift back.

Poetry is the flower of civilization," said Chesterton in one lecture. "Romanticism has worked itself out in our time in nonsense and dirt. We should remind the humanists that if poetry has become too personal it has also become unpoetic.

If you attempt an actual argument with a paper of the opposite politics, says Chesterton, "you will have no answer except slanging or silence.

modern world's unthinking slavery to fads and discussed the things it loses rather than gains from technology, the things it has forgotten from history, and its general lack of common sense. "The world is not so anxious to do things worth doing as to do things not worth doing, and do them very well."58

The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself. Other institutions must largely be made for him by strangers, whether the institutions be despotic or democratic. There is no other way of organizing mankind which can give this power and dignity, not only to mankind but to men.

But after having been forgotten, G. K. Chesterton is now enjoying a resurgence in popularity. Why? Well, the obvious reason is that people are reading him again. The rediscovery of Chesterton has less to do with his importance as a figure from history than his significance in the present.

We don't need a Church that moves with the world; we need a Church that moves the world.

The aim of argument is differing in order to agree; the failure of argument is when you agree to differ.

The other is to walk round the whole world till we come back to the same place… in other words, the next best thing to being really inside Christendom is to be really outside it. And a particular point of it is that the popular critics of Christianity are not really outside it.

In an age of universal education, nobody knows where anything comes from. The