Re: Thought experiment
[Rod Dreher  03/13 04:10 PM]

Charles in Michigan writes:

For many of us on the right you've started a long overdue discussion. Many thanks. One of the thefts of the 20th century was to deprive us of even the language with which we could state our beliefs. You were either a communist, a liberal, or a capitalist, all terms to be defined in terms of economic philosophy.

I feel as if I'm slowly awakening from a century long amnesia.

Anyway, to your question about Chartres vs a megachurch. By definition, a conservative conserves the past. Not as you would a dead object d'art or a decrepit antique, but as a kind of ancestral flame that must never be allowed to go out. The times sure aren't favorable to Chartres and its message, but that doesn't let us off the hook. We're still accountable for what happens on our watch.

To speak more broadly, I think all old things, man made or not, old churches, old buildings, old monuments, old homesteads, old places, old trees serve to remind us of who came before, what they thought, what they lived for, what they died for. They inspire public recollection and, if I can resurrect the word, local virtue.

(So do people, sometimes. For example, right there is happening a kind of economic cleansing of the Maine Coast. The increase in real estate values has pushed up the property taxes to ruinous levels. This means Mainers who have lived by and from the sea for generations are being forced to sell their homes and lands, and move elsewhere. As they disperse, a stern but noble culture of the sea will vanish forever. We lose role models but gain satiated yuppies. No doubt similar destructions of our moral resources are going on all over the America, always in the name of the free market)