excerpts from "The Basis of Civilization" (The Distributionist Review, 2/28/11)

"'Ideals,' says G.K. Chesterton, 'are the most practical thing in the world.' This is why we still defend the family. This is why we insist on the ideal of marriage as a permanent union between one man and one woman, which creates the only proper setting for bringing new souls into the world, and that this purely natural act should not be interfered with....

"An economy built on massive lending and spending cannot be sustained. But the reason it cannot be sustained is not merely economic, it is moral. It regards material wealth as the ultimate goal, and people as merely a commodity to achieve that goal. It is selfish and therefore self-destructive.

"An economy based on the family is self-sustaining. Its focus is on the nurturing and training of children and not on the mere acquisition of goods....Chesterton’s ideal was the productive home with its creative kitchen, its busy workshop, its fruitful garden, and its central role in entertainment, education, and livelihood. Unlike the industrial home, life in a productive household is not amenable to scheduling and anything but predictable....

"When social security was instituted, each retiree was supported by 15 workers. Now each retiree is supported by only three workers....

"Our lack of domestic life is reflected in the fact that we don’t have a domestic economy. We don’t produce anything....

"But the younger generation cannot pay the older generation because we have committed demographic suicide. We are paying a high price not only for slaughtering our unborn children but for contracepting them....

"We have seen the natural consequences of unnatural acts. We have witnessed a monumental economic disaster that is not the result of inflation or recession but of the devaluation of children.
"Chesterton says that every high civilization decays by forgetting obvious things. The obvious things are the ordinary things, and we have forgotten them. The modern world that we have created has brought with it great strain and stress so that even the things that normal men have normally desired are no longer desirable: 'marriage and fair ownership and worship and the mysterious worth of man.' Those are the normal and ordinary things. Those are the things we have lost, and we need to recover them."