To the Finland Station, by Edmund Wilson, is a book very much worth reading. Originally published in 1940, the book is a survey of people who wanted to re-invent the world based not on the facts on the ground but on the ideas in their heads. The Finland Station of the book title is the train station in St. Petersburg to which the Germans sent Vladimir Lenin and other revolutionaries, whom they thought would help undermine Russian involvement in World War I.
Like the French Revolutionaries before him, Lenin was a true revolutionary, not a tinkerer. Although the American War for Independence is often called the American Revolutionary War, it was not truly a revolution in the full sense of the word. Americans in 1776 no longer wanted to be part of the British Empire and wanted self-government, but they did not intend to overthrow the entire system under which they had been living. The French Revolutionaries in 1789 wanted so much change that they even changed the calendar, counting days from the storming of the Bastille instead of from the birth of Christ. The Americans had no such ideas; under Congress life for the average person was largely the same before and after the War.
Once in power, Lenin moved to redo the world based on his thoughts. This has long been the modus operandi of the revolutionary. The revolutionary sees a real problem; after all, Russia certainly had significant problems before Lenin took over. But instead of attempting to tweak the system to fix the problem, the revolutionary says that the entire system must be destroyed and recreated from the foundations up.
People being imperfect, there is no shortage of problems in human societies. Indeed, much in society can seem random or irrational. Just as a bush grows in the forest, human societies grow based upon the current conditions at any given moment. Societies adapt to these conditions as best they can, doing what works now. But these adaptations are agglomerated over time and sometimes either are irrational because of new conditions, or seem irrational because the people looking at them don't know why the adaptation was originally adopted. Seeing this branch sticking out here, and that branch sticking out there, and the fact that the bush is overweighted on one side and sparse on the other, the revolutionary decides it's easier to pull up the bush and start over.
The problem is, the bush is an actual living thing. The bush, for all of its problems, is functioning and growing to some extent, however imperfectly. If it's pulled up and something else is put there, that new thing might not work at all. And if we pull up the old bush in the hopes that the bush we can see only in our heads might someday replace it, we may well up with a bare patch of dirt.
G. K. Chesteron wrote about this human desire to tear down and start over in his book Heretics:
Suppose that a great commotion arises in the street about something, let us say a lamp-post, which many influential persons desire to pull down. A grey-clad monk, who is the spirit of the Middle Ages, is approached upon the matter, and begins to say, in the arid manner of the Schoolmen, “Let us first of all consider, my brethren, the value of Light. If Light be in itself good—” At this point he is somewhat excusably knocked down. All the people make a rush for the lamp-post, the lamp-post is down in ten minutes, and they go about congratulating each other on their un-mediaeval practicality. But as things go on they do not work out so easily. Some people have pulled the lamp-post down because they wanted the electric light; some because they wanted old iron; some because they wanted darkness, because their deeds were evil. Some thought it not enough of a lamp-post, some too much; some acted because they wanted to smash municipal machinery; some because they wanted to smash something. And there is war in the night, no man knowing whom he strikes. So, gradually and inevitably, to-day, to-morrow, or the next day, there comes back the conviction that the monk was right after all, and that all depends on what is the philosophy of Light. Only what we might have discussed under the gas-lamp, we now must discuss in the dark.
Systems which have gone on for years are often not perfectly rational. They are often unfair to some people at some times. The particulars are often hard to justify. But the thing that these system do is work. They don't work perfectly, but they work.
The Sexual Revolution (which is aptly called a Revolution) addressed some real problems. It is true that traditional marriage and family life were not completely rational or fair to everyone at all times. There were cases in which wives were not treated properly, and wives or children were sometimes abused. Some fathers no doubt lorded it over their wives and children. It wasn’t perfect.
But look what we have now. The #MeToo movement of a few years ago showed just how fraught and imperfect the idea of momentary consent can be. Did the woman consent? Did the man force her into something she didn’t want? Did she consent to some things but not to others? Will the man help the woman care for a child? Or will he try to force her into an abortion? Or will she abort a child he wants? Who can say?
Consent isn’t quite so ambiguous when a couple stands before a priest and several hundred people and agrees to marry. Responsibility for a child isn’t quite so hard to figure out when the couple promises to accept children. Carole King’s song famously asked, “Will you still love me tomorrow?” That isn’t quite as hard to determine when a couple comes together and promises to love each other for every tomorrow they have left.
The Sexual Revolution decided that marriage and family wasn’t the right system. We needed something different. Well, we have it. Perhaps the new system was supposed to help women and children. It doesn’t. It rewards the most predatory men in the society and harms everyone else. We took a system that was imperfect but good, and replaced it with a system that’s horrid.
Now we propose to tear down the binary system of men and women as it has been understood by all people in all past times. We seek to replace it with what? All we can say is, with whatever is popular today. And then replace that tomorrow. Will it work? Can we force our ideas onto reality and make our ideas the new reality? If anyone believes they can change the nature of reality through sheer force of will, they should perhaps first show that they can overcome gravity.
Vice President Kamala Harris has talked repeatedly about “seeing what can be, unburdened by what has been.” But “what has been” is what has gotten us here; imperfectly, but still here. Yes, make changes to solve obvious problems, slowly and with deliberation, always ready to reverse course if needed.
But determining to be “unburdened by what has been” is almost a guarantee of disaster. That idea should frighten us all.