Utopia of Usurers: And Other Essays
G.K. Chesterton understood that the small does not defeat the large by imitating its scale; it persists by refusal to be conformed to its errors. Instead of offering readers optimism, he offers them truth-a refusal to consider the battle between traditional sanity and modern madness finished. He understood that the fight was going badly but took up his position regardless, knowing that for men it is truth that matters, not "success" as the world defines it.
In this book, the battle at hand is that of the modern financial system and the deepest evil at its heart: usury or the collection of interest. Today, the "utopia of usurers" looks very much like an established fact. Usurers visible and invisible now hold financial claims against children who cannot yet protest, even against grandchildren not yet born. The rocket-builder keeps every eye on Mars while every pocket gets picked clean on the way there. Builders of "social networks" have nearly persuaded mankind that an artificial reality is the whole of reality. All seems lost.
But Chesterton would have gloried in such a moment, because he loved nothing better than a fight against long odds. He would not have lost heart, because he knew that no matter how the numbers ran, the enemy's victory depends on an illusion-a very large and very expensive one, resting on ground that actually belongs to a great many other people. Sometimes the most we can do is expose the illusion and sing the praises of the ordinary, the normal, the quotidian, and the human. When Providence smiles on our efforts, the illusion may well vanish into thin air, letting us see reality again in all its unpredictable, invincible beauty.
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