The Medical Mistake
Chesterton believed that our countless failures in
practical politics are due to a very simple logical mistake. He believed that politicians
and social commentators begin at the wrong end of the political question or
social problem. They begin with the remedy or cure.
We can see this today in what passes for political debate.
If there is a problem in education, one candidate will call for an increase of
federal spending on teachers' salaries, another recommends a voucher program to
provide parental choice, a third wants privatization and competition, a fourth
demands local control, and so on. Other social issues receive the same treatment.
Each politician has a portfolio of solutions to major problems as if he were a
physician with a black bag full of pills.
Medical science is content with the normal human body, and
only seeks to restore it. But exactly the whole difficulty in our public
problems is that some men are aiming at cures which other men would regard as
worse maladies.
Chesterton insisted that we stop this initial focus on the
remedy as if the body politic were a diseased patient in a hospital. He
insisted that we begin instead by settling the question of what it is we want.
We have to know what we are aiming for, what our goal is, or (to use
Chesteron's word) what our ideals are. Unless we agree on the kind of
society we think will be good, we have no chance of agreeing on the best
policies to get us there.
As usual, Chesterton's approach meets the test of common
sense. It is simple, original, and obviously correct to anyone who has heard it
explained. And, as usual, his advice in the matter has been completely ignored.
Gilbert! magazine is doing its best to correct that problem.
[For further reading in Chesterton's
works see What's Wrong with the World, especially Part One, Chapter I,
"The Medical Mistake"]. This is a piece of information included in Martin Ward's Chesterton
page.