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Chesterton argued for democracy of the dead: http://www.chesterton.org/demo...

Atheism is indeed the most daring of all dogmas . . . for it is the assertion of a universal negative. -- G. K. Chesterton

No, it is not an assertion of a universal negative. Atheism is the lack of belief, not the active practice of non-belief. They are not the same thing.
I don't believe in Aliens from another planet. But I don't discount the possibility of Aliens, either. Given proof, I would be willing to accept Aliens as real, but as long as there is no proof, I do not believe them to exist.

Atheism is indeed the most daring of all dogmas . . . for it is the assertion of a universal negative. -- G. K. Chesterton

PART I. ON THE CREATURE CALLED MAN

I. THE MAN IN THE CAVE

Far away in some strange constellation in skies infinitely remote, there is a small star, which astronomers may some day discover. At least I could never observe in the faces or demeanour of most astronomers or men of science any evidence that they have discovered it; though as a matter of fact they were walking about on it all the time. It is a star that brings forth out of itself very strange plants and very strange animals; and none stranger than the men of science. That at least is the way in which I should begin a history of the world, if I had to follow the scientific custom of beginning with an account of the astronomical universe. I should try to see even this earth from the outside, not by the hackneyed insistence of its relative position to the sun, but by some imaginative effort to conceive its remote position for the dehumanised spectator. Only I do not believe in being dehumanised in order to study humanity. I do not believe in dwelling upon the distances that are supposed to dwarf the world; I think there is even something a trifle vulgar about this idea of trying to rebuke spirit by size. And as the first idea is not feasible, that of making the earth a strange planet so as to make it significant, I will not stoop to the other trick of making it a small planet in order to make it insignificant. I would rather insist that we do not even know that it is a planet at all, in the sense in which we know that it is a place; and a very extraordinary place too. That is the note which I wish to strike from the first, if not in the astronomical, then in some more familiar fashion.

One of my first journalistic adventures, or misadventures, concerned a comment on Grant Allen, who had written a book about the Evolution of the Idea of God. I happened to remark that it would be much more interesting if God wrote a book about the evolution of the idea of Grant Allen. And I remember that the editor objected to my remark on the ground that it was blasphemous; which naturally amused me not a little. For the joke of it was, of course, that it never occurred to him to notice the title of the book itself, which really was blasphemous; for it was, when translated into English, 'I will show you how this nonsensical notion that there is God grew up among men.' My remark was strictly pious and proper confessing the divine purpose even in its most seemingly dark or meaningless manifestations. In that hour I learned many things, including the fact that there is something purely acoustic in much of that agnostic sort of reverence. The editor had not seen the point, because in the title of the book the long word came at the beginning and the short word at the end; whereas in my comments the short word came at the beginning and gave him a sort of shock. I have noticed that if you put a word like God into the same sentence with a word like dog, these abrupt and angular words affect people like pistol-shots. Whether you say that God made the dog or the dog made God does not seem to matter; that is only one of the sterile disputations of the too subtle theologians. But so long as you begin with a long word like evolution the rest will roll harmlessly past; very probably the editor had not read the whole of the title, for it is rather a long title and he was rather a busy man.

But this little incident has always lingered in my mind as a sort of parable. Most modern histories of mankind begin with the word evolution, and with a rather wordy exposition of evolution, for much the same reason that operated in this case. There is something slow and soothing and gradual about the word and even about the idea. As a matter of

From your sig:
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.

So you're tolerant to others, as long as they're not intolerant, and when they are you're intolerant of them? Nope, no irony there. You'd probably find reading Chesterton to be quite a shake.

Actually, there are a number of "someones" in the last several generations who have preached a "third way." IIRC, the very term "third way" came from the Distributist movement in England (Chesterton and Belloc) before Blair and Clinton co-opted it to mean economic globalization that's not too commie and not too laissez-faire. :^(

The trouble is, it's tough getting any discussion that involves any nuance, historical perspective, or more than two sides through the media. (Which explains why sports events work so well on TV but serious discussions of real issues don't.)

So, for anyone who really wants to look at a "third way," you could start by trying a google search for Distributism, or at the Chesterton Society page and folling the links. Distributism is an economoic system promoted by G. K. Chesterton and Hillaire Belloc in England at the beginning of the century, which favors widespread private ownership of property and capital, vs. the concentration of property in private (capitalist) or state (socialist) systems. The Outline of Sanity is probably the best introduction to Chestertonian Distributism, although it seems to be only available in dead trees edition, so you'll have to check a paper library or bookstore.

Besides the English Distributists, there's a whole wing of American "agrarian" writers who advocate pretty much the same thing. My favorite is Wendell Berry. Berry is a champion of local enterprise and ecological sensitivity, and is a great antidote to WTO globalism.

For a great big collection of alternatives to McWorld, try The Case Against the Global Economy : And for a Turn Toward the Local . It includes pieces by Jerry Mander, Jeremy Rifkin, Wendell Berry, Ralph Nader, Helena Norberg-Hodge, and many others, including much discussion of NAFTA, GATT, and the WTO.

Summary: It's not that nobody has thought of a "third way." The problem is not lack of imagination for envisioning alternatives to the global rat-race. If you truly want an alternative, start making it happen!

I say that men have not been compelled by iron economic laws, but in the main by the coarse and Christless cynicism of other men.
-- G. K. Chesterton, "A Utopia of Usurers"

Care to show us some correct ones?

Oh, I think Marx hit the nail on the head with his "alienation of labor" idea -- that is, industrial labor is qualitatively different from agrarian/craft labor, because (1) the laboror is no longer in control of the "means of production", so he is working for somebody else, not himself, and (2) industrial labor treats the worker as an automaton, not as a real human. Based on my experience in factory work, I think he was 100% correct there. And he was justifiably outraged at the horrific abuses going on in the factory sweatshops of the early 1800's.

Now, Marx was completely wrong about the nature of the human problem (Marxian thought holds that people are fine, generous, and unselfish by nature, and if we can only get the social structures right we can create utopia), about "historical inevitability" and the natural progressions of societies (so wrong, that Lenin had to drastically revise Marx to explain Russian Bolshevism, as KM taught that it would be impossible for a society to move directly from a peasent/agrarian state to a Communist state without industrialization first -- precisely what did happen in Russia). And, of course, so awfully wrong about the "dictatorship of the proletariat" and the "withering away" of the State that it would be funny if it weren't so tragic.

Also, keep in mind that there are in fact many options besides Marx's "dictatorship of the proletariat" and Smith's "invisible hand" of laissez-faire capitalism. In fact, both stand for the concentration of working capital and the means of production in the hands of a few -- the difference being who those few are (Communists choose goverenment officials, Capitalists choose captitalists). For one alternative, try a search for "Distributism", or simply read some of the political works of G. K. Chesterton, such as What's Wrong With The World

Big Business and State Socialism are very much alike, especially Big Business.
-- G. K. Chesterton

Food: The same food Mom used to make, only even better - and much cheaper too. Why can't this happen (yet)? There is no cheap way to mass produce food. Most food comes from growing livestock or fields upon fields of plants.

While industrial food is neither as good or as cheap as what Mom used to cook (or that we can cook for ourselves today), we practically have this situation now:

• Notice that you said food that "Mom used to make," not "food that we make". The art of cooking in the home, especially from scratch, is being lost, and we are relying more and more on restaurants and highly preprocessed quick meals.

• In the restaurant arena, global chains are displacing locally-owned "mom and pop" restaurants. This is due to massive brainwashing (Sagans of $$$ spent on advertising, so that even a three year old child can recognize the various corporate logos), plus a "quality" approach that emphasizes non-variability in product. The burgers and pizza from my local "Mom's Diner" and "Pizza Oven" (I am not making these names up) are usually better than those from the Big Three [McDonald's, BK, Wendy's] and Pizza Hut. But, the delivery time is slightly longer, and a bit more variable. And, while the food at Mom's Diner depends on who's in the kitchen, a Big Mac is always a Big Mac. Most consumers are choosing the slightly lower cost and increased predictability of MegaBurgerPizza, and ignoring the globalizing/monopolizing consequences.

  These global food chains are also in bed with the other major global corporations, such as the media conglomerates. For instance, we all know who the PepsiCo restaurants are now, from the Star Wars: The Phantom Menace marketing, McDonald's toys are coordinated with the latest Disney release ...

• Does anyone remember the "We're Beatrice" ad campaign of years ago? The food processing industry is very similar to the automotive industry -- a few mega-corporations, with lots of supplier companies that are wholly or partly owned. The variety of labels on grocery store shelves is deceiving, because the same company will have different "product lines," and often the generic "alternative" is simply the same food without the heavily-advertized label.

• As for farmers, while "save the family farm!" is occaisionally heard from the lips of politicians and celebrities, it's nearly too late. The U.S. Census Bureau has stopped counting farming as an occupation, because there aren't enough farmers left to be statistically significant. Of those who are left, the traditional "family farm" has become nearly extinct. Most farmers who are left are becoming "mega-farmers," relying on huge acreages and automation to farm as much as possible. Which leads into the next problem ...

• ... that the "inputs" for farmers are controlled by a small network of large MegaCorps. There has been massive consolidation in the agribusiness industry in the last several years. This includes equipement suppliers (example: the John Deere - CASE/IH merger), the seed suppliers, and the pesticide suppliers (often the same company, example: Monsanto). This leads to situations where, for a given year, more than 25% of the U.S. corn crop is grown from a single hybrid variety, and Roundup Ready(tm) soybeans have gone in four years from zero to 55% of the U.S. soybean crop. (Roundup Ready(tm) soy is a patented gene, leading to similar problems with corporate control as software patenting.) Anyone who thinks variety in both the natural and corporate ecosystems is a good thing, and who likes to eat, ought to be concerned about such things.

• Finally, the market for farm crops is dominated by a few huge global corporations, such as Cargill. So, farmers are buying their "inputs" from a market dominated by megacorps, and selling into a market dominated by megacorps. Even worse, in markets such as beef and pork, some of these large buyers are also the largest producers, and buy from themselves first. So, smaller meat producers only make sales when the large packing houses didn't create enough for themselves. This is one reason why, earlier this year, hog prices were lower than the cost of raising pigs, and effectively lower than Depression prices.

  This is one reason farming is declining in popularity, as no sane person will do it. As my father puts it, he works a day job to support his farming habit. :^/

For anyone interested in this subject, I highly recommoned starting by reading The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture by Wendell Berry. Or anything else Berry has written. For an older, but eerily prescient perspective on why corporate monopolization is bad, and what we can start to do about it, see G. K. Chesterton, especially The Outline of Sanity

But there is another strong objection which I, one of the laziest of all the children of Adam, have against the Leisure State. Those who think it could be done argue that a vast machinery using electricity, water-power, petrol, and so on, might reduce the work imposed on each of us to a minimum. It might, but it would also reduce our control to a minimum. We should ourselves become parts of a machine, even if the machine only used those parts once a week. The machine would be our master, for the machine would produce our food, and most of us could have no notion of how it was really being produced.
-- G. K. Chesterton

Having to compete in a market is sufficient to serve the public interest. The only way a company can fail to serve the public interest and still make money is when the company has [been given] a monopoly.

Your faith in "free" market competition to serve the public interest is touching, but it's not one I share. Last time I checked, companies exist to serve the private interest of the owners/shareholders. One hopes that companies can do well by doing good, but it's simply a happy side effect when that private interest and the public interest coincide.

p.s. I'm sure you're quoting Chesterton out of context. He was as anti-government as the next liberal.

Per the American Chesterton Society quotes page, this is from G.K.'s Weekly, 10-April-1926. I confess to not having read the context of that particular essay. However, I have recently read all of What's Wrong with the World and The Outline of Sanity, in which Chesterton makes an extended case that Capitalism and Socialism are, rather than opposites and mortal enemies, nearly twins. So I rather doubt that I'm taking him out of context.

(TOoS is Chesterton's tract on Distributism, the political philosophy he advanced with Hillare Belloc against both Capitalism and Socialism. It advocates the widespread distribution of property into many independant enterprises, such as family farms, local stores, and cottage industries, as a bulwark against the encroaching power of both State (Socialism) and Corporation (Captialism).)

"It may be very difficult for modern people to imagine a world in which men are not generally admired for coveteousness and crushing their neighbors; but I assure them that such strange patches of an earthly paradise do really remain on earth." -- G. K. Chesterton, The Outline of Sanity

"From the standpoint of any sane person, the present problem of capitalist concentration is not only a question of law, but of criminal law, not to mention criminal lunacy." -- G. K. Chesterton, The Outline of Sanity

"Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists." -- G. K. Chesterton, The Uses of Diversity