Tradition!

Sometimes I feel that future generations will be sifting through the ashes, wondering how they got to the point of complete ruin.

Years liberal progressive tripe is not the healthiest diet. But who knew?

Chesterton, in the opening chapters of The Everlasting Man, wrote the best takedown of “presentism” that I have seen. Worth getting that one if you don’t already have it.

But there is one thing that I have never from my youth up been able to understand. I have never been able to understand where people got the idea that democracy was in some way opposed to tradition. It is obvious that tradition is only democracy extended through time. It is trusting to a consensus of common human voices rather than to some isolated or arbitrary record. The man who quotes some German historian against the tradition of the Catholic Church, for instance, is strictly appealing to aristocracy. He is appealing to the superiority of one expert against the awful authority of a mob. It is quite easy to see why a legend is treated, and ought to be treated, more respectfully than a book of history. The legend is generally made by the majority of people in the village, who are sane. The book is generally written by the one man in the village who is mad. Those who urge against tradition that men in the past were ignorant may go and urge it at the Carlton Club, along with the statement that voters in the slums are ignorant. It will not do for us. If we attach great importance to the opinion of ordinary men in great unanimity when we are dealing with daily matters, there is no reason why we should disregard it when we are dealing with history or fable. Tradition may be defined as an extension of the franchise. 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 about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our father. I, at any rate, cannot separate the two ideas of democracy and tradition; it seems evident to me that they are the same idea. We will have the dead at our councils. The ancient Greeks voted by stones; these shall vote by tombstones. It is all quite regular and official, for most tombstones, like most ballot papers, are marked with a cross.

— From Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton – Chapter IV – The Ethics of Elfland

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/16769/16769-h/16769-h.htm#CHAPTER_IV_The_Ethics_of_Elfland

for a century our culture has been teaching that everyone from your parents and before were morons.
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“Culture” is not an agent. The teachers are people. Not sure it antedates the 2d World War.

In the absence of tradition every generation ends up having to reinvent the wheel over and over. How is this progress?