{"product_id":"whats-wrong-with-the-world","title":"What's Wrong with the World","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eChesterton begins by refusing the question everyone else was asking. The modern debate, he says, argues endlessly about means while assuming the end is settled. He inverts it: decide first what a good life for an ordinary family looks like, and only then ask what economics and politics must do to serve it.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003ePublished in 1910, this is the book where distributism finds its voice. Chesterton argues that both the industrial capitalist and the state socialist agree on the thing that matters most — that ordinary people should not own productive property — and merely differ over who holds it instead. Against both, he defends the small proprietor, the family, and the home as the proper seat of decision.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThat is subsidiarity argued from the ground up rather than proclaimed from an encyclical. The family knows its own business; the guild knows its trade; the parish knows its poor. A larger body that absorbs those judgments does not merely govern badly, it commits an injustice against the smaller one it displaced. Leo XIII had said as much in \u003cem\u003eRerum Novarum\u003c\/em\u003e; Pius XI would name the principle in \u003cem\u003eQuadragesimo Anno\u003c\/em\u003e two decades later. Chesterton makes you feel it.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eHe is also very funny, which is the reason people still read him and do not still read most of his opponents. The chapter titles alone — \"The Unmilitary Suffragette\", \"The Empire of the Insect\", \"The Wildness of Domesticity\" — tell you this is polemic written by someone enjoying himself.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eRead it with \u003cem\u003eThe Third Way\u003c\/em\u003e, which collects the foundational distributist documents including Chesterton's own, and with Belloc's \u003cem\u003eThe Servile State\u003c\/em\u003e, which supplies the historical argument Chesterton supplies the moral one for.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Amazon","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43704250433603,"sku":"Whats-Wrong-with-the-World-7808423428163","price":17.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0635\/4737\/5683\/files\/61EHgXk24aL._SY522.jpg?v=1787424082","url":"https:\/\/cafe.tollbooth-dpyc.com\/products\/whats-wrong-with-the-world","provider":"Good Brew","version":"1.0","type":"link"}