Same old issues in American Politics

We may find ourselves amazed at what is happening in our political arena in our country at the moment, but while reading an essay by G.K. Chesterton in the Illustrated London News of November 17, 1928 I found the following description of the American situation:

      "The election is not a conflict between Democrats and Republicans, or between Drink and Prohibition or even in the first place between Agriculture and Finance. It is , in the simplest sense of the very strongest phrase, a conflict between light and darkness, between things understood and things not understood; between people who take a certain view of the facts, and people who have never yet even heard of the facts, between principle and prejudice; between cosmos and chaos."

     Chesterton was convinced that America was too large for a campaign to be able to adequately express its ideas and objectives.  The size of the country and the number of people meant that there were just large blocks of people who had no idea what the issues were, no idea of what the candidates stood for and so voted on instincts, fears and prejudices.  His subject was the anti-catholic fears against Al Smith in that election. The great fear that a Catholic president would become a slave to the Pope.  The very "Know Nothing" Party that, Chesterton suggested, was a very apt name for the party because they really did know very little about the Catholic faith and the world around them.

     There seems to be much evidence that we have not moved there far from where we as a country were in 1928.  We have so many new toys and yet we still play the old games.