Word: chesterton
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...British writer G.K. Chesterton once offered this tongue-in-cheek theory of human origins: "If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head." In light of the comic outrages and tragic absurdities of almost any given week of news, it's hard not to agree. Which is why the best news editors know that when taking stock of events, a little wit is no less important than a proper fund of sober intelligence. That's certainly the working philosophy of Bruce Handy...
Despite his pragmatism, Riordan has a strong philosophical bent. A Jesuit- educated Irish Catholic reared in New Rochelle, New York, he studied under French philosopher Jacques Maritain at Princeton. Riordan still adorns his speech with quotations from St. Ignatius and G.K. Chesterton. He has a Midas touch as well. After graduating from the University of Michigan Law School, he moved to Los Angeles in 1956 and parlayed his $80,000 inheritance into a ) stock-market fortune. Today, after starting his own law firm and plunging into a 20-year succession of venture-capital deals, he is worth $100 million...
...this winding and flanking and circling back, Lincoln never lost sight of his fixed goal. He had to inch toward it or actually back off at times, but he was certain what it was. G.K. Chesterton has best expressed Lincoln's combination of fixed values and shifting tactics: "He loved to repeat that slavery was intolerable while he tolerated it, and to prove that something ought to be done while it was impossible to do it. This was probably very bewildering to his brother politicians, for politicians always whitewash what they do not destroy. But, for all that, this inconsistency...
...bliss has grown to extraordinary proportions, with magazines, books, records, mass merchandising. Large corporations have dabbled in New Age techniques to control stress in their managers. Some New Agers often affirm that all is God, hence all is good. As Chesterton said, "When men stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing; they believe in anything...
...what's wrong with tradition? G.K. Chesterton, no Harvard Protestant but an English Catholic, once wrote that "tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes: our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking around...