Divorce versus Democracy

G.K. Chesterton was never one for comfortable consensus, and this sharp little essay proves it. Written in the early twentieth century when divorce laws were being debated in Britain, Chesterton mounts an unexpectedly radical argument: the push for easier divorce, he contends, isn't progressive liberation but a weapon forged by the wealthy to destabilize the poor. For Chesterton, marriage was the one institution that gave the common person something the rich could not simply buy their way around and, increasingly, he saw that being dismantled. Characteristically, he arrives at conservative conclusions through wildly unconservative reasoning, turning the era's progressive assumptions inside out with his trademark paradoxes. The essay remains a provocation, not because we must agree with Chesterton, but because he forces us to articulate why we disagree. Essential reading for anyone who wants to see how a brilliant mind makes an unpopular argument with rigor and flair.